VeganPizza69 ⓋNew research shows renewables are more profitable than nuclear power
thewutWith newer nuclear reactors that use helium or thorium to contain the temperature (the type that do not need water to regulate reaction)
You can produce plasma from anything and run it through a giant magnet (like in fusion) but with nuclear to generate electricity directly.
That sounds like “pie in the sky”:
The problem with fusion reactor is exactly the containment of the plasma and avoiding that it dissipates its heat through light emission.
If that was solved we would be better off doing fusion since deuterium (a heavier form of hydrogen atoms because it has 1 neutron in the nucleous) can simply be extracted from the water and the H+H fusion reaction releases more energy than any fission reactions (and, funilly enough, would produce the much rarer helium that’s needed for those reactors of yours).
The problem with fusion reactors is exactly the containment of the plasma and avoiding that it dissipates its heat through light emission.
That’s one problem. Neutron embrittlement is another.
Yeah, I was just addressing the previous post.
In all fairness I only checked what’s going on with fusion once in a while as my background is Physics (as in, I started a degree in it and then ended up going to EE because in my home country there really only are jobs for theoretical physicists, not the more hands-on kind) and hence only know it at a superficial level (of somebody with the background to understand Particle Physics but not a domain expert).
Yeah, I do know about the embrittlement of the container walls due to neutron emission from the fusion reaction (no idea how bad or not that is compared to the rest), but last I check plasma containment was still a bit of a problem as was the plasma cooling through photon emission (mind you, that might not be as much of a problem for the kind of temperature of the plasma the previous poster was mentioning, which - I assume - are less that what’s need to induce fusion).
That said, all in all it just sounds strange to use fusion to generate a plasma - I mean, bloody fire generates a plasma (which is what the flame is - so I don’t quite see the point of it. That whole thing sounded a bit too much like “fancy sciency words thrown around to deceive the ignorant”.