Favorable Comments made by ONR on Polywell Fusion

Antice · Post by **Antice** » Fri Jul 23, 2010 7:02 pm

how about being stuck in your car because you forgot to take a couple of iron nails out of your pocket before getting in.

WizWom · Post by **WizWom** » Fri Jul 23, 2010 7:03 pm

chrismb wrote:TNT = ~4GJ
kWh = ~4MJ

Carrying around energy always has its dangers. Infrastructure energy always has its dangers. For a given energy type, the more of it, the more dangerous it is.

Safest common energy/engine combination yet devised = diesel fuel. (it'll put a lighted match out, if you throw one in to a bucket of the stuff.)
Most economical mass produced energy/engine combination = diesel. (~40MJ/kg, 100kg diesel = 1 tonne TNT = 1,000kWh)

.....now go figure what fuel will [continue to] dominate....

http://physics.info/energy-chemical/
puts hydrogen at 142MJ/kg; also propane and methane both are above diesel.

And diesel is about 10x TNT energy density. But TNT is a VERY old explosive. And specifically designed to be stable, like most explosives.

chrismb · Post by **chrismb** » Fri Jul 23, 2010 7:08 pm

WizWom wrote: http://physics.info/energy-chemical/
puts hydrogen at 142MJ/kg; also propane and methane both are above diesel.

And your point is??.....

What's this got to do with economy and efficiency? I was just relaying the "energy density and safety" of diesel because "energy density and safety" was the origin of the question.

....You go figure the mass required to store 100kg of H2 in a car!...then, once you've done that test, go throw a lighted match into it and see what happens!

Fuel cells can currently top diesel for outright fuel efficiency... now show me how economic it is to produce this hydrogen....

WizWom · Post by **WizWom** » Fri Jul 23, 2010 7:09 pm

In first-year physics they say because the field can spread out infinitely outside the coil, that the effective magnetic field is 0 outside. This, of course, is a bit simplistic, but it's what they said.

kunkmiester · Post by **kunkmiester** » Fri Jul 23, 2010 10:18 pm

There are ways to keep magnetic fields from going places you don't want, so I wasn't worried about that.

I think the big issues would be storage density, the cryogenics, and the potential of having the equivalent of several pounds of explosives under the hood.

93143 · Post by **93143** » Fri Jul 23, 2010 10:34 pm

kunkmiester wrote:There are ways to keep magnetic fields from going places you don't want

20 T magnetic fields? At the very least it's going to add weight...

IntLibber · Post by **IntLibber** » Thu Jul 29, 2010 4:58 am

Note that the EPA's recent court ordered regulation of coal plant mercury emissions, based on the faulty science of fish fed mothers milk causing developmental disorders in their babies, is being moved forward and is projected to force the closure of 20% of coal power plants in the US by next summer.

I'd say if Nebel and crew come out with positive news and get funding for WB-D, they will have their choice of shuttered coal power plants to use as a test bed.

IntLibber · Post by **IntLibber** » Thu Jul 29, 2010 10:19 pm

Whoever buys the proceedings of that ONR meeting, please post them up here, or email me. I'm interested in writing a piece on it for WUWT.

hanelyp · Post by **hanelyp** » Sat Jul 31, 2010 5:52 am

IntLibber wrote:...projected to force the closure of 20% of coal power plants in the US by next summer.

Citation please?

Sounds like we may be facing power outages next summer.

Roger · Post by **Roger** » Sat Jul 31, 2010 11:14 am

hanelyp wrote:
IntLibber wrote:...projected to force the closure of 20% of coal power plants in the US by next summer.
Citation please?

Sounds like we may be facing power outages next summer.

A number of older coal plants will be replace bu new lants. 1 maybe 2% will be shut due to solar wind and nat gas coming on line. % of electricy from coal has dropped from 52% to 48% due to solar wind and nat gas coming online, this trend can be expected tp continue in the next year. OTOH closing 20% of coal plants means about a 10% reduction in electricity, unacceptable from a national security standpoint. And totally unrealistic.

mvanwink5 · Post by **mvanwink5** » Sat Jul 31, 2010 7:23 pm

Roger wrote: A number of older coal plants will be replace bu new lants. 1 maybe 2% will be shut due to solar wind and nat gas coming on line. % of electricy from coal has dropped from 52% to 48% due to solar wind and nat gas coming online, this trend can be expected tp continue in the next year. OTOH closing 20% of coal plants means about a 10% reduction in electricity, unacceptable from a national security standpoint. And totally unrealistic.

Until wind can be predicted, wind power must backed up by other sources. A good 2 week high pressure event will stall out those wind farms and require standby power to run reliably. When it occurs in an extreme cold spell such as happened in England, those immoral coal plants had to run to keep people alive. Solar is even worse when your peak is at night. So, you can't abandon coal and replace it with wind and solar, it is a simple fact. It is just fantasy.

mvanwink5 · Post by **mvanwink5** » Sat Jul 31, 2010 7:40 pm

For every wind farm (or solar), a gas turbine or natural gas plant is built. Denmark imports their electricity from across the fence (a con job just like California). Wind, solar = natural gas these days (or nuclear, but that is slow to build and not everyone can do it). Wind is a win - win for Pickens, it's a con.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Sat Jul 31, 2010 7:54 pm

hanelyp wrote:
IntLibber wrote:...projected to force the closure of 20% of coal power plants in the US by next summer.
Citation please?

Sounds like we may be facing power outages next summer.

http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/laws-g ... 768-1.html

http://greatlakesecho.org/2009/05/06/ep ... on-abroad/

Some plants could have a hard time meeting the proposed cap, which could push domestic cement production into countries with even less stringent environmental standards, said Andy O’Hare, vice president of regulatory affairs with the Portland Cement Association.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/76566/ ... l-shutdown

[The rules] would force utilities to invest tens of millions of dollars on technologies to remove the substances. Many of those plants are about 50 years old and are already inefficient. "Those investments are just not going to be justifiable," said Dan Bakal, director of electric power programs at Ceres, a group of environmentalists and institutional investors.

Francois Broquin, a co-author of reports on coal by Bernstein Research, said the combined rules could push as much as 20 percent of U.S. coal-fired electric generation capacity to retire by 2015. "Obviously that will have an impact," he said.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Sat Jul 31, 2010 8:05 pm

All this craziness ignores China and India. We reduce CO2 output by 20% and China (now on par with the US for CO2 emissions) will double their CO2 output. And that does not even count India.

Enviros are insane.

What does it all mean? The Enviro bubble is about to burst. Sad really. Because some good has been done. And why do I say the bubble is going to burst? Well the plants to be shut down will be mostly East Coast plants. And the East coast grid is not in good shape.

Me? I'm about 10 to 15 miles from the Byron nuke plant. 2+ GWe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nucl ... ng_Station

Enginerd · Post by **Enginerd** » Sat Jul 31, 2010 10:35 pm

MSimon wrote:Enviros are insane.

Not insane. Well intended... After all, nobody wants dirty air, and nobody wants oceans covered with oil slicks, and nobody wants poisonous dirt.

"Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not
by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate
actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high
ideals toward virtuous ends."
- Isabel Paterson