Fusion power gets slammed

[jpak]

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060306/full/060306-13.html

ITER consortium Fusion reactors are an expensive dream that will never provide economical energy.

That's the controversial position of a nuclear physicist who once worked on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bomb. And it makes bleak reading for scientists involved with the ITER project.

ITER, meaning 'the way' in Latin, is an experimental fusion reactor that will be built in southern France (see 'France wins fusion project'). Its proponents hope that it will lead the way for reactors that generate electricity without releasing greenhouse gases.

But the projected costs of building and maintaining a plant, let alone getting it to work, are simply too high for fusion ever to become a viable power source, according to William Parkins, formerly chief scientist with the California-based technology company Rockwell International and author of an article in this week's Science1.

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[pocket]

1. and man will never walk on the moon

.

[The Doctor.]

2. As technology improves,

It will become more feasible.

I'll read the article before I get bent out of shape.

[rfkrfk]

3. I'm kinda tired of --> billions of poor people don't deserve electricity

as an editorial position

edited for typo

[jpak]

4. Yes, the poor and dispossessed cry out for affordable fusion power!

Damn those naysayers...damn them to hell!!!!!

:rofl:

[Odin2005]

5. Fusion = Coal becomes obsolete.

[NNadir]

6. Fusion energy is very unlikely to have any major impact in our lifetimes.

People love to wax enthusiastic about it, but I think it is just another one of those deals in which the press is more positive than the reality. We may argue that spending money on fusion energy is more attractive than spending money on war - on the off chance that it can ultimately produce, but for the time being we must rely solely on forms of energy that have proved themselves on an exajoule scale.

So far, fusion energy doesn't work anywhere and no plant has operated connected to a generator. I very much doubt that any such plant will operate in the period of extreme emergency in which we now find ourselves - the climate catastrophe.

One of the big problems is that most of the energy of fusion energy is gamma energy, which is notoriously hard to convert to heat.