Talk-Polywell.org

Iran begins fusion research. Not many details. My guess is that it is bomb oriented.

http://www.islamidavet.com/english/2009 ... loitation/

Actually, I would not be surprised if they really want it for energy generation. The Persians are a rather proud, haughty people who want to believe that they are capable of achieving anything they can. They consider themselves to be a superior people (kind of like the Japanese) who look down on their Arab neighbors. They are also fascinated and obsessed with technology as well. They would most certainly consider successful development of fusion energy to be demonstration of their superiority complex.

It is worth noting that the Persians had an extensive nuclear program during the Shah's time, for both energy production and nuclear weapons development. We didn't object to it at the time because, after all, the Shah was our ally. The first thing the Khomeini did when they came to power was to shut down both nuclear problems. They were not to restart them until around 1995 or so.

I like the bit that says "The energy derived from the nuclear fusion can provide the needed energy of the world for 3,000 to 10,000 years, considering the increasing growth in energy demand, Soltani added."

He is clearly anticipating a simply enormous amount of energy usage then if we can possibly use up all the deuterium by then!!! I guess that'll be for the interstellar ships to spread Islam, the Religion of Peace, all over the galaxy.....

I agree that the Iranians are proud and bold and are, indeed, a press-ahead people for whom it's not actually so odd to believe that they really are doing all this for energy purposes. But there is also a capricious nature to be wary of.

chrismb wrote:He is clearly anticipating a simply enormous amount of energy usage then if we can possibly use up all the deuterium by then!!!

You're not kidding. I crunched the numbers once, using the assumption that all the deuterium in the worlds oceans are burnt into helium-4(D-D gives tritium or helium-3, both of which are easier to consume than deuterium).

It's enough energy to give a world of 10 billion people 60 kW thermal per person for 1 billion years.