Meditation on fusion

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Richard Hull
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Meditation on fusion

Post by Richard Hull »

We, only in the last century, have come to realize that we live in an electronic world. The world being our little planet with its life-sustaining atmosphere, water and ecospheric, orbital good fortune. By the electronic realization of our world, I mean that only through advances and discoveries of the 20th century did we come to fully recognize the electrical/electronic nature of "nature" on earth become fixed.

We are bound up in an auto-assembled, self-erecting, self sustaining and evolving planet in which all is functioning at the electronic level only. Life is chemistry even at the biological level. Chemistry we have come to understand is a purely electronic process as orbital electrons are exchanged, bonded and set free at the level we have come to call the "unit electron volt" level of energy application or production. Photo-synthesis, the manufacture of everything, the explosion of gun powder, nitroglycerin, etc., is a mere "unit electron volt" exchange of molecular energies.

Electricity and early electronics, which were only fully understood in the 20th century is, at its core, the flow of electrons in conductors or in a vacuum. Later electronics, in the solid state, is explained partially by the flow of the absence of electrons, holes, at the quantum level.

The 20th century also heralded man's understanding and use of nuclear energy in the form of fission using already extant mineral deposits on this planet. This effort vaulted man's understanding of nuclear processes far beyond the unit electron volt level he had enjoyed for Millennia, yet only recently understood, to the mega-electron volt energy level of nuclear physics.

Unfortunately, matter, as we use it, will not withstand mega-electron volt energies. As such, only the early use of nuclear energies fell to explosions and destruction. It was discovered that fission, the first nuclear energy, could be controlled rather easily, much like a steam or gasoline engine. We learned to release stored nuclear energy implanted within mined uranium by an ancient exploding super nova, in a controlled manner to boil water. While a nuclear process, we are just replacing countless millions of tons of mined coal with a few hundred tons of mined uranium to still boil water to turn generators to make electricity. We need flowing electrons at the unit electron volt level to conduct our daily lives. As long as the earth has been around, unit electron volt processes have been changing and shaping earth and its life and environment on land and at sea.

Fusion is the latest Goddess we seek to control. Why? As coal, uranium, oil and natural gas are messy, nasty and of limited supply on earth, we realize that fusion energy is clean and a virtually unlimited fuel supply for it exists on earth.

We woke up to the fact that all electronic processes, from life and its many chemical processes, from the electrical grid, to our modern smart phones derive 100% of their energy from fusion! Fusion is at the core of all earthly energies, be it fusion produced billions and millions ago by exploding super novae or the fusion energy arriving from our sun, shining down on earth for as long as the earth has orbited it. Yes, it is stepped-down fusion as unit electron volt energies that were stored in decaying plant matter over millions of years. Man, only since his first use of fire, utilized this energy to heat himself, cook food, produce steam, make electricity and electronics. Solar fusion lifts water vapor into the air and the cooler altitudes condense it out to fall as rain over the higher elevations as gravity drags it down to lower altitudes. Man has learned to first drive water wheels to mill grain, turn machinery and now produces gigawatts of electricity. All of this is powered by the fusion energy of the sun and the gravitation of our massive planet.

We seek to harness this universal source of nuclear energy granted only to stars. Hydrogen, which at the atomic level, holds no stored energy within it either nuclear or electronic is the universal fuel for stars. Stars cannot exist without the potential energies of electrostatics and gravitation. These potential energies do reside in hydrogen. It is through these potential energies applied to large aggregates of hydrogen that the nuclear fusion process is allowed to exist and to these potential energies, alone, that there is light, magnetism, electron flows, plasma, etc., extant within the universe. There is no kinetic or dynamic energy endemic to the universe. Only potential energies within matter.

There is a vast gulf affixed between naturally stored nuclear energy and intrinsic nuclear energy........

There is "stored nuclear energy" in Uranium. It is in the form of binding energy between nucleons forced against all reason to form the uranium nucleus. This binding energy appears as increased mass in uranium. This mass increase came from an exploding super nova, which produced normally forbidden stellar fusions to take place. Any form of stored energy is incredibly easy to get at and control; so it is with uranium.

There is "intrinsic energy" in the hydrogen atom due solely to its unit mass which, in the fusion process, partially disappears as energy. Intrinsic nuclear energy is not a storehouse of nuclear energy. This is observed as a mass deficit in the resultant fused atom. Fusion is a highly resisted process by the hydrogen atom for, as a nuclear entity, it is highly stable. Tremendous forces must be brought to bear to make fusion happen and to continue the process. We know now that any two atoms can be made to fuse, but with ever increasing difficulty as the number of nucleons within its nucleus increases. This is the opposite of stored nuclear energy as is the case for fission in uranium, where auto-release of energy occurs by the mere proximity of two fissile masses! We see this auto-release in nitroglycerin with the mere application of a slight shock to the chemical. (stored chemical energy)

One may spin on about dark matter and dark energy, but these are imagined by the mind of man to explain the un-explained within his rather rigidly codified learning at this point in time.

Man uses potential energies here on earth to create kinematic, electrical, electronic and even fission nuclear processes. Most of these potential energies are brought about by the application of fusion energy on our sun through the store of electronic single electron volt level energies in matter on earth.

The "controlled" fusion quest on earth remains ever elusive due to the very nature of the required circumstances demanded to allow its nuclear process to begin and yet be contained and maintained. Gravity and electrostatics allow it to begin and continue within the stars.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
TerryJSaunders
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Re: Meditation on fusion

Post by TerryJSaunders »

Some issues I see with the fusion approach is that it still approaches fusion in a simple way. Fusion is not some static event that can be made to sit still and behave. We still use chemistry’s that still try to emulate population 3 stars-despite the fact that our planet circles a population 1 star.

The predominant element in the Sun is hydrogen, and then helium: by mass, it is 70% hydrogen, 28% helium, 1.5% carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, and 0.5% all other elements. The 2% is what is missing from the system.

Of course, the devil is in the details. The Teller-Ulam design involved intuitive leaps that made the H-bomb possible. Our generations attempt to refurbish weapons had great difficulty. There was a level of implied ignorance that made those devices and materials work. I think a star is a lot like that. You start pulling elements out and it doesn’t work. Every element has its job to do. A star is not a diesel engine-the simple application of heat and compression has it's limitations.

Terry Saunders
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Richard Hull
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Re: Meditation on fusion

Post by Richard Hull »

I do believe the trace elements in the sun or any star are not worth thinking about as a way to fusion. Instead, those 2% elements, including the 28% helium are there solely due to the Billions of years of fusion that has been going on to-date. The hydrogen sort of resides in its own feces.

These feces are any star's ultimate undoing as fusion of the heavy stuff, once it builds up to a critical point, is just not possible. At some point, a star may first blow off part of its heavier mantle, perhaps in stages, but ultimately the pollution it has made within itself burning hydrogen, helium, all the way to carbon forces it to go nova.

It is painfully obvious man will never fuse pure protium. He is constrained to "hunter gather" deuterium and generate Tritium in fission systems.

There is no secret mixture to start up a star, just a massive preponderance of hydrogen, gravity and electrostatic operations to separate and keep separate the electrons within the working environment from rejoining the protons. The key creation in stellar fusion is the neutron. The neutron is the atomic building block from which all other matter, both stable and unstable is created. Beyond pure protium, every atom made thereafter has a required compliment of neutrons.

The extra elemental crap found in long burning stars is just that. Of course, that "crap" is what we actually use to make things and drive our daily lives here on this orbiting slag heap.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: Meditation on fusion

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Fusion is the fundamental source of all energy used in the universe - even uranium (the stored energy Richard mentioned.)

But that element is mostly created during the fusion by 'neutron rich' materials (found in neutron stars) that is created after two neutron stars collide to form a black hole; the leftover debris created during the collision process is thrown outward (rich in such super heavy metals like gold, platinum, silver as well as uranium) and this is what seeded the stellar media; this was the primary source of the very elements that we mine here on earth today!

Think about the gold ring someone wears - it was mostly created in the staggeringly massive collision between two neutron stars five or more billion years ago! That in turn, drifted in space until it seeded our original nebular that coalesced into our solar system; where a metal enriched star (called Sol) ignited due to gravitational compressive heating of the primary gas, hydrogen.

In fact, this very process - neutron star binary collision - was just observed via the gravity experiment and also recorded by various optical/radar instruments both proving this model and providing good data on the types/amounts of said 'super heavy elements' created. Science is amazing - both as objective truth and making the cosmos understandable to our minds.
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