I think I'm stumbling over this section. You go Fusion / Fission / Fusion. The other sticky point is the 20th century gave us Fission (like nuclear power) and the 21st Century has shown Fusion has potential.... but not scalable yet
"Far beyond this, though, the 20th century gave us nuclear fusion, reaching into the millions of degrees.
Modern nuclear detonations, very different from the controlled fires we’ve been talking about, can reach temperatures hotter than the Sun’s core, hotter than a hundred million degrees."
We have constrained and unconstrained Fission (power and bombs respectively) and we have prototypes using plasma and electro magnetism to begin showing potential of Fusion but only just in the last decade.
I think my conclusion came about much faster than it could have been, and I was also reaching my limit for how much I wanted to write today. That being said, you have a valid point, and it might be a good idea for me (or us, really) to do something more comprehensive on nuclear energy at some point.
I was certainly clear in my own mind when I wrote this that I wanted to talk about fusion, and I think some of the confusion I created (and passed over to you) may arise because I compared fusion we've produced here on Earth (nukes during the 20th century, and very recent proof-of-concept here in the 21st) with something we see everyday that's really hot, the core of the Sun (fission, obviously).
The impetus to write in the first place was a little question I had that I knew would be tough to answer: what's the hottest thing we've made, and what things held the record over time? I realized right away that there was a difference between controlled heat and an explosion, for instance. This could easily be two distinctly different pieces.
🤣 You're still confusing me 🤣 What we've created thus far is Fission (separation of radioactive elements) and what the sun does is Fusion (combination of hydrogen into helium in a plasma)
(I even had to edit this comment!) The fusion we created on planet Earth during the 20th century is in the form of nukes. Nukes get hotter than anything else we've ever made, and now we have a tantalizing prospect of (perhaps) being able to control that insane heat in the future.
Any better? If not, let's come back to this conversation in a few months. I'm exhausted.
haha. 🤣 Well.... To add another layer of complexity, Fission is how we do nukes and nuclear energy in general...
Where it gets weird is that in a thermonuclear warhead we first split (fission) the atoms but then the explosion actually pressurizes the vessel so much that it combines material (fusion) into a bigger explosion.
This is the concept behind the hydrogen bomb. Fission fuses hydrogen into helium and creates more energy.
I like the story, the progress made until now. It's like reading a well-crafted short story. But I have a question. Why do you doubt man's ability to make fusion power economical?
I'm not sure I doubt it, per se. It's more about having no reason to think we'll be able to do it any time soon. To be clear, I do think fusion will be economically viable, but I think it's a lot like solar panels: Voyager I has them, and that's how it's able to send info back to us, even today! But they didn't make any kind of economic sense until very, very recently. They cost more to install than the energy they provided.
You might be confusing nuclear fission with fusion. The nuclear explosions are fission, our current reactors are fission. Fusion is still not viable.
It's not economically viable, but fusion did return more energy than was put in back in 2022: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/nuclear-fusion-passes-major-milestone-net-energy.html
I did mean fusion, but if I misspoke, well hey, that does happen! I think what I wrote is right, though.
I think I'm stumbling over this section. You go Fusion / Fission / Fusion. The other sticky point is the 20th century gave us Fission (like nuclear power) and the 21st Century has shown Fusion has potential.... but not scalable yet
"Far beyond this, though, the 20th century gave us nuclear fusion, reaching into the millions of degrees.
Modern nuclear detonations, very different from the controlled fires we’ve been talking about, can reach temperatures hotter than the Sun’s core, hotter than a hundred million degrees."
We have constrained and unconstrained Fission (power and bombs respectively) and we have prototypes using plasma and electro magnetism to begin showing potential of Fusion but only just in the last decade.
I think my conclusion came about much faster than it could have been, and I was also reaching my limit for how much I wanted to write today. That being said, you have a valid point, and it might be a good idea for me (or us, really) to do something more comprehensive on nuclear energy at some point.
I was certainly clear in my own mind when I wrote this that I wanted to talk about fusion, and I think some of the confusion I created (and passed over to you) may arise because I compared fusion we've produced here on Earth (nukes during the 20th century, and very recent proof-of-concept here in the 21st) with something we see everyday that's really hot, the core of the Sun (fission, obviously).
The impetus to write in the first place was a little question I had that I knew would be tough to answer: what's the hottest thing we've made, and what things held the record over time? I realized right away that there was a difference between controlled heat and an explosion, for instance. This could easily be two distinctly different pieces.
🤣 You're still confusing me 🤣 What we've created thus far is Fission (separation of radioactive elements) and what the sun does is Fusion (combination of hydrogen into helium in a plasma)
(I even had to edit this comment!) The fusion we created on planet Earth during the 20th century is in the form of nukes. Nukes get hotter than anything else we've ever made, and now we have a tantalizing prospect of (perhaps) being able to control that insane heat in the future.
Any better? If not, let's come back to this conversation in a few months. I'm exhausted.
haha. 🤣 Well.... To add another layer of complexity, Fission is how we do nukes and nuclear energy in general...
Where it gets weird is that in a thermonuclear warhead we first split (fission) the atoms but then the explosion actually pressurizes the vessel so much that it combines material (fusion) into a bigger explosion.
This is the concept behind the hydrogen bomb. Fission fuses hydrogen into helium and creates more energy.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb.htm
Conversely the bombs we dropped on Japan were pure Fission.
Our current nuclear power is pure Fission
They are experimenting with Fusion for nuclear power but are still struggling.
As the name implies, fire isn't the only thing Homo Erectus learned to "control and maintain."
I don't know why I keep doing this.
Don't you change.
Don't you encourage this behavior.
Don't tell me what I can't do!
I would tell you to "control and maintain" a civil discourse, but that ship has sailed it seems.
https://youtu.be/Bvc0lHEBKo4
We all know Andrew only wrote this to use the phrase "homo erectus" in a serious context.
I like the story, the progress made until now. It's like reading a well-crafted short story. But I have a question. Why do you doubt man's ability to make fusion power economical?
I'm not sure I doubt it, per se. It's more about having no reason to think we'll be able to do it any time soon. To be clear, I do think fusion will be economically viable, but I think it's a lot like solar panels: Voyager I has them, and that's how it's able to send info back to us, even today! But they didn't make any kind of economic sense until very, very recently. They cost more to install than the energy they provided.
So if it takes ~2,800 degrees to make a horseshoe, does that mean a fusion reactor can make ~35,000 horseshoes in the same amount of time?
*Genghis Khan has sent you a chat request.*
That's actually a very good question that's probably above my pay grade! Let's enlist a physicist to help us out.
Nothing like a good fission/fusion discourse to start a foggy day.
Fusion, fission, foggy, fantastic!