Fusion

@Kilroy70
Yes, it would be wonderful if a way was found to have fusion and direct conversion to electricity, that would be a lot more efficient than what we contemplate now, just heat up a bunch of water to steam and hook that steam to turbines, it's a proven method but I think you can't get much more than 40% of the energy produced by the reactors, fission or fusion.
The only way I can envision a direct conversion would be somehow to make a pulsing magnetic field which would allow some kind of transformer action at a safe distance. Right now they would be satisfied with just getting ten times the output in power V the power input, say 50 megawatts producing a half gigawatt through release of heat.

@bunnyknight said
@sonhouse

So once this fusion becomes perfected and cheap, could it be easily weaponized?

Will any angry, frustrated teenager be able to vaporize a city with it?

Weaponizable yes, but not easily. Realistically, only states have the resources to do this. Al Kaida, IS, and similar groups have not the resources to weaponize fusion; they would have to invade a functional installation and hold it ‘hostage’ to weaponize it.

A single operator cannot weaponize fusion; hand-held fusion weapons are not possible.

@kilroy70 said
It's good to avoid making nuclear waste, but how would you get electricity from nuclear fusion? Nuclear reactors (fission) heat water that turns to steam that drive turbans that produce electricity. Does it work the same way with fusion? Would the energy created by fusion be used to heat water for driving turbans? If so how would you get the energy produced by fusion to the ...[text shortened]... ear an operating fusion reactor... at least not until (and without a doubt) it is proven to be safe.

Fusion does not generate electricity. What it generates is a lot of heat, some light, and a pressure wave. Using the heat to boil water to make steam to make pressure to turn a turbine (not a "turban"😉) to move a magnet inside a coil of wire to make electricity is very inefficient. The chief advantage of fusion over fission is that you get a lot more heat out of it per unit of fuel.

Burning coal does not generate electricity either, for that matter.

The best way to generate electricity, in terms of reducing efficiency loss through conversions, is to harness something which is already moving, such as wind, tides, or falling water, to turn electric generators.

@moonbus said
The best way to generate electricity, in terms of reducing efficiency loss through conversions, is to harness something which is already moving, such as wind, tides, or falling water, to turn electric generators.

Well, or the photovoltaic/photoelectric effect.

@Shallow-Blue

Agreed, but there is a long way to go on that, technically; the efficiency is not great.

@moonbus
New work has produced a single cell with near 40% efficiency. Here is one report of 30% efficient cells:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6729050

This is the present record:

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/05/23/new-record-for-solar-cell-efficiency-39-5-built-upon-quantum-wells/#:~:text=The%20Department%20of%20Energy's%20National,techniques%20for%20constructing%20quantum%20wells.

The problem with those cells is cost, about 10 dollars a watt, compared to less than one dollar for ordinary cells and some at 10 cents a watt so these kinds of cells would be for space not Earth since the cost doesn't matter so much as getting the maximum energy from the lightest systems since it is launch cost is overriding anything else at this point in time.

At that price, 10$/watt, a megawatt would be ten million dollars and that is minor compared to the cost of launch.

@moonbus said
@Shallow-Blue

Agreed, but there is a long way to go on that, technically; the efficiency is not great.

True, but the sun you don't catch goes on to help plants grow, while the wind you don't catch blows the tiles off your roof. If I had the funds, I'd put solar powers on mine.

@sonhouse said
@bunnyknight
What do you mean? The fusion thing is ALREADY weaponized, that is how you get megaton bombs.
The only thing we will get from fusion is electricity, not much of a way to weaponize a box that weights 300 tons or more🙂 Aircraft carriers have nuclear fission already, enough juice to run for months without stopping, don't think going to fusion would give them much ...[text shortened]... gy but if they can the end result will be much less dangerous ways to use in terms of nuclear waste.

Obviously we're not talking about existing H-bombs which are even more complex for an angry teenager to make than A-bombs. We're talking about pure fusion which is still only a dream. But if this dream ever comes true in a 300 ton box, how can you be sure it can't be scaled down? Yesterdays computers required a 300 ton box, now they fit in your pocket.
So if this new pure-fusion tech ever becomes common, it could open up more problems than solutions, unless humanity eliminates terrorism and injustice, and the chance of that is slim to none.

@bunnyknight
That may happen in a couple hundred years but not THIS century for sure, it is going to be 2050 before even what we have theoretically starts producing energy.
I don't see any way fusion besides fusion bombs can be used for any kind of weapon unless it is only the power source for some other kind of weapon, laser or some such.

@moonbus said
Fusion does not generate electricity. What it generates is a lot of heat, some light, and a pressure wave. Using the heat to boil water to make steam to make pressure to turn a turbine (not a "turban"😉) to move a magnet inside a coil of wire to make electricity is very inefficient. The chief advantage of fusion over fission is that you get a lot more heat out of it per unit o ...[text shortened]... mething which is already moving, such as wind, tides, or falling water, to turn electric generators.

I was assuming it would work to heat water. But I don't know how the heat from a fusion reactor could be transfered from a plasma chamber over to a pool of water outside the chamber. Sonhouse gave an answer that makes sense, seeing as how you can't just open a door to a chamber filled with hot plasma in a somewhat stabilizing magnetic field.
Just the idea of being near one of those things gives me the willies.

@Kilroy70
Not as much of the willies as standing next to an operating FISSION reactor....
One time at University of Cincinati I was firing up a used ion implanter which is an ion accelerator and it generates quite a bit of Xrays, especially by the accelerating electrodes which are rings connected together with resin filed with lead powder, which reduces the Xrays but doesn't eliminate them, so I worked on the beam line, aligning the focusing magnets while it was running, I could see the beam through a sight glass and could tell when it was in focus, beam goes from the size of a coke bottle across and then down to something like a fat pencil when focused so I did indeed get the willies for the one minute it took to focus the beam......

@sonhouse said
@Kilroy70
Not as much of the willies as standing next to an operating FISSION reactor....

What would scare me even more is standing next to an antimatter reactor that has a really cheap circuit breaker which feeds power to the magnets.

@bunnyknight
One slip and you are history, kind of like dropping a hot bottle of nitroglycerin🙂
Except a bigger boom. MUCH bigger🙂
It's funny, there is work going on to make a fusion rocket for space travel but the engineering is actually further along with the idea of anti-matter for propulsion, you get a lot more bang for the buck so to speak🙂
The thing about anti-matter rockets is this:
Once you master the art of magnetically containing that bad stuff, you just feed it to a rocket nozzle where regular matter meets and all hell breaks loose and you go FAST. A system like that would be orders of magnitude simpler than fission or fusion rockets.
Now, if we can just find some anti-matter🙂
Actually, there are studies supporting the idea we can have a huge chicken wire sphere in space charged up to 100megavolts or so and some fancy engineering and anti-matter which is floating around space would be preferentially attracted to a magnetic trap and then to wherever it is needed. It is said if it was used in a rocket say on Earth, you would only need a few milligrams of the stuff to get a huge rocket into low Earth orbit. And a REAL AM rocket could get fairly close to c, so a trip to Alpha Centauri for instance, 4 odd ly away could be done in maybe 6 years or so.
That would be a GREAT place to visit, 3 stars in that system, more bang for the buck and they think there might even be a habitable planet around the small star there.
Oh well, come back in a couple hundred years and maybe we will have all that......

@sonhouse said
@moonbus
New work has produced a single cell with near 40% efficiency. Here is one report of 30% efficient cells:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6729050

This is the present record:

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/05/23/new-record-for-solar-cell-efficiency-39-5-built-upon-quantum-wells/#:~:text=The%20Department%20of%20Energy's%20National,techniques% ...[text shortened]... 10$/watt, a megawatt would be ten million dollars and that is minor compared to the cost of launch.

Quantity drops prices drastically. This is where big govt programs can really make a difference. If govt were to invest in the research and give tax breaks to startup firms in this branch, the breakthrough would come sooner.

@moonbus
They did that with the Manhatton project and see where THAT led us🙂