Nuclear Fusion-Fission Hybrid Could Destroy Nuclear Waste & Contribute to Carbon-Free Energy Future

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2009/01/27/nuclear_hybrid/

Nuclear Fusion-Fission Hybrid Could Destroy Nuclear Waste And Contribute to Carbon-Free Energy Future

January 27, 2009

AUSTIN, Texas — Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin have designed a new system that, when fully developed, would use fusion to eliminate most of the transuranic waste produced by nuclear power plants.

The invention could help combat global warming by making nuclear power cleaner and thus a more viable replacement of carbon-heavy energy sources, such as coal.

"We have created a way to use fusion to relatively inexpensively destroy the waste from nuclear fission," says Mike Kotschenreuther, senior research scientist with the Institute for Fusion Studies (IFS) and Department of Physics. "Our waste destruction system, we believe, will allow nuclear power—a low carbon source of energy—to take its place in helping us combat global warming."

…



The scientists say their Super X Divertor invention has already gained acceptance in the fusion community. Several groups are considering implemented the Super X Divertor on their machines, including the MAST tokamak in the United Kingdom, and the DIIID (General Atomics) and NSTX (Princeton University) in the U.S. Next steps will include performing extended simulations, transforming the concept into an engineering project, and seeking funding for building a prototype.

[sakabatou]

1. Until it gets built, it's just a step

A good step nonetheless.

[whistle]

2. This would be the answer because only nuclear fusion provides sufficient

...high density energy flux for the needs of 21st century technology applications such as hydrogen fuel, salt water desalinization, rare element production, unlimited electrical energy production, etc.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Would such flux require a flux capacitor?

And can it be installed in a DeLorean?

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. No

It is much too big to fit in a DeLorean.

[Ian David]

3. I've been suggesting exactly that since 1987. n/t

[NNadir]

6. How is it that people are so attached to fantasy and so abysmally uninformed?

I read the primary literature of "fusion blanket" technology as a regular part of my reading program to keep current, since there is some practical science in it on high temperature molten solutions.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09203796

The number of operating fusion reactors is pretty close to the number of exajoules of solar energy that has been hyped for going on 50 years as "world saving" by people who know next to nothing about real technology, who sit around amazed by the popular drivel in the popular press.

It would be difficult for any technology to be as safe as nuclear fission already is.

In spite of producing energy on an exajoule scale each year on a scale of decades, when challenged, dumb anti-nukes cannot produce ONE person who has been injured by used nuclear fuel.

Yet, for religious reasons these same people - who couldn't give a fuck how many people die from wind accidents, or electronic waste, or dangerous fossil fuel waste, are obsessed with so called nuclear waste.

The "risk" of fission products and actinides is well known from the 2 billion year history of the Oklo reactors, but it's not reported in junk maganzines written by junk reporters with the scientific education of Walleye Trout. It's as close to being zero without actually being zero.

In spite of this observable reality, stupid people come around all the time bad mouthing that form of energy because they can't think, can't read, and can't accept anything that is other than a fantasy whose consequences can be ignored because the form of energy in question doesn't work.

I don't think there will be an economical fusion reactor working on a 1000 MWe scale in the life time of anyone now living, although I've been hearing drivel about them forever.

I do know that the irrational twirps who can't understand even the trivial basics of nuclear technology live in deathly fear of tritium.

I can just imagine these same lunkheads facing tritium at millions of degrees C.

There is about 20 kg of tritium on the entire planet, and almost all of it is in Canada where it was made in fission reactors, mostly CANDU types. This couldn't run a 1000 MWe reactor for six months.

http://fire.pppl.gov/fesac_dp_ts_willms.pdf

Oh, and that tritium "breeding" scheme would collapse in twenty minutes without access to actinides, the same actinides that gives all the mystical retards at Greenpeace intellectual wedgies.