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#1 2004-03-01 17:44:28

Earthfirst
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From: Phoenix Arizona
Registered: 2002-09-25
Posts: 343

Re: Fussion power plant - A way to make it work

I have come up with a way to make fussion to work, up to now fusion plants have used more power than they have given back. The main problem is that they use a big magnetic ring and spin hydogen until they have plasma. That takes a lot of energy, althought they have gotten fusion to happen, it was only for a short time. In the sun gravity pushs every thing together and raises the temp high to fususe hydrogen. Here on earth we cant do that. Although spining it very fast but then the plasma cant touch anthing because it to hot.
My solution is to add AP or antimatter, by injecting small amounts into the plasma the energy released would heat it enough to fuse. After that the fussion energy could maintian it self, the heat could extrated like in a nuclar plant.
It is like priming the pump, instead of providing all the energy by spining it, a little AP adds lots of energy to get fusion started. I never heard of any one trying this, injecting AP.
What do you think?


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#2 2004-03-01 17:51:38

ERRORIST
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From: OXFORD ALABAMA
Registered: 2004-01-28
Posts: 1,182

Re: Fussion power plant - A way to make it work

Sounds neat where would you get the AP?

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#3 2004-03-01 20:39:10

GCNRevenger
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From: Earth
Registered: 2003-10-14
Posts: 6,056

Re: Fussion power plant - A way to make it work

Tokamak fusion reactors don't really spin the hydrogen plasma, it only squeezes it... Anyway, anti-protons (AP) require an ungodly amount of energy to make, and the reason we don't have fusion today is because the reaction takes a huge amount of power to maintain too. If you had to run the AP making equipment all the time, it would surely take more energy than it made.


[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

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#4 2004-03-03 11:00:50

Earthfirst
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From: Phoenix Arizona
Registered: 2002-09-25
Posts: 343

Re: Fussion power plant - A way to make it work

My point is that you would only need a small amount of AP to to the temp high enough for fusion to happen with the protons. I think that you thought that I meant a antimatter power plant. That would need lots of AP, but I meant a hydrogen fussion plant, where a small amount of AP if injected into the plasma to heat things up. To kick start the fusion process, once the fussion process got going it would not need any more AP. Also they have all ready created a small amounts of AP in labs, I dont now how much energy is released when AP destorys a proton. but it is a lot so it would not take a lot of AP to heat up a small area to the temp of our sun core were fusion happens. After the heat from fusion would keep hot enough for fusion to go on.


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#5 2004-03-03 12:14:02

Algol
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From: London
Registered: 2003-04-25
Posts: 196

Re: Fussion power plant - A way to make it work

Its a sound idea but the ammount of antimatter that is produced each year in big accelerator labs such as CERN or Fermilab corresponds to the energy that would allow a 100 W light bulb to shine for 15 minutes. Also, making antiprotons costs about 10  billion times more energy than is finally stored in their mass.

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#6 2004-03-04 09:10:55

Earthfirst
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From: Phoenix Arizona
Registered: 2002-09-25
Posts: 343

Re: Fussion power plant - A way to make it work

I see, both techs are not that advanved, but combining both techs together could prove to have strange results. So as of now their has only been a small amount of AP made and at great cost. But if there were lots of people making AP over a couple of years, I think about a gram could be made. A gram of AP could provide enough power to light the usa for many years. It would take many years to make enough AP for a fussion power plant, but when the right amount is used. You could heat the plamsa hotter than the sun core, then the fussion process could power it self like in the sun. All you would have too do is add more hydorgen and take out helium.
Then all the power made from fussion could be used to make AP, then you coould have AP power plants. Or use the AP in an space ship, from what I know such a ship could reach 50% light speed.


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#7 2004-03-04 10:33:59

GraemeSkinner
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From: Eden Hall, Cumbria
Registered: 2004-02-20
Posts: 563
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Re: Fussion power plant - A way to make it work

If the temperature is hotter than the suns core, how do you contain it?


There was a young lady named Bright.
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
in a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
--Arthur Buller--

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#8 2004-03-04 19:55:02

Earthfirst
Member
From: Phoenix Arizona
Registered: 2002-09-25
Posts: 343

Re: Fussion power plant - A way to make it work

Easy the plasma never touches the wall of the torus. Electro magents confine the plasma and spin it in a small area that is a vaccum. Since AP is held in a megnetic bottle it would be easy to stick some into the plams torus.
I check out that chern web site, they are the one doing all the research on antimatter. They explian antimatter pretty well chech it out your self. Apparently they have invented an AP factory that can make lots of it, more so than the old way they did it. Why AP could soon be powering our cars, homes, and world soon!


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#9 2004-03-10 18:46:32

SBird
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Registered: 2004-03-10
Posts: 490

Re: Fussion power plant - A way to make it work

Adding antimatter to a fusion reaction wouldn't be terribly helpful, I'm afraid.  It's fairly straightforward to get the fusion plasma in a tokomak to the required temperature for fusion - what is difficult if keeping the plasma stable at the pressures required.  What happens is that the plasma contains its own elecrical current and magnetic field which begins to interact with the containment field in a very non-predictable fashion.  Inevitably, the plasma becomes unstable, escapes the containment and reacts with the vessel walls and the reaction dies. 

CERN has an antimatter factory, yes but it's never going to produce a practical amount of antimatter.  Antimatter will never be used to power a car - it doesn't make sense to do so.  There are no natural antimatter deposits that we can mine so we have to make the antimatter ourselves.  Antimatter production is incredibly inefficient, if you took the entire world's present power consumption and put it into making antimatter, the resulting antimatter would have enough energy to run a lightbulb for a few minutes.  (the earlier comment on the amount of antomatter made every year was way to optimistic - all the antimatter ever made wouldn't even be a microgram of material.

Not to mention that it's probably the deadliest substance in existence - if your magnetic containment system fails, you're facing anything from a sudden burst of high energy gamma rays to a continent destroying explosion.

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