China's Fusion Reactor Experiment

They are scaring Americans and Russians to keep away. They can also sell this idea to some countries and extract funds or oil. China has little oil. Let us see who is their real target. China never makes noise otherwise. If they do so then 100% suspect their claim. Fusion is nothing special and all it need a flask full of water and two ultrasonic probes to create fusion. You can do this at your home and watch the water forming a brilliant glow.

Also see these cold fusion stories that were news

http://jnaudin.free.fr/coldfus/index.htm

This is not Cold Fusion, but hot fusion using the "Experimental "Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor, nicknamed "artificial sun." This work was done by the Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which is a world leader in high energy physics research. The data of this test will be submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference in Austria, where certainly it is to be scrutinized extensively. If the data is research is found to be flawed, then the CAS will suffer a humiliating loss of credibility. Certainly the results were well scrutinized before such a report was released to the press.

Time will tell, but at this moment, there appears to have been a significant jump in Fusion technology. Again, this has nothing at all to do with cold fusion. These technologies are worlds apart. We are talking about the difference between glass bottles on a shelf in someone's garage as compared to a massive superconducting magnetic bottle and fusion initiated by one of the most powerful laser arrays ever built.

I'll put my money on more upcoming successes with this technology and further developments by the CAS.

Dear Sid,

I do not dislike your story at all. It is good one.

If it is not a joke and is real then I think the entire world can fund the Fusion Technology in their own countries (not China - I do not trust them). It will also make for other countries to go in full gears to do the same and give up oil energy or fusion energy. If something goes wrong with such reactors and energy comes out and let chain reaction ON then we will not have life system on the earth for millions of years again. It will reset the earth. Some one going to do it one day for sure. All it takes is one nuclear device and few drops of water in the mid of the explosion compressed to the level of getting Helium out of Hydrogen.

It sure is a good message and good news for Physicists to get more funds all over the world for another 10 years. Engineers will also get funds for high temperature material development. You can see surge in Fusion research papers, Government meetings, China visits, jobs, advertizements and lots of International and local government fundings. I think it is good news so I give you full five points. I do not trust China theory but it is a good news for research funding. I think those scientists may otherwise may be very near to the door where death waits for them daily so they might have injected this idea to get funding and life for them for another 10 years. Not a bad idea. You will know very soon about it. Lots of scientists will go to China now and will pay them huge entry fee. They will say, funds the project and then enter. This is not at all a bad idea. It is much better than asking funds to push away SWIFT TURTLE - American space war program. I greatly appreciate China brain now. They can dig their life out of nothing. I have zero trust on this. Not that I suspect fusion theory but making anywhere to call it a reactor sounds a bull shit story to me. I may be wrong and will not mind to be wrong as this is something we all want in 10 years.

I think you have got things a bit skew wiff. Firstly I thought, and I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong, that the cold fusion you referred to earlier has been well and truly shown to be false.

Secondly if what you said about a fusion reactor getting free were true then the world would have ceased to exist when the first hydrogen bomb (meaning an unregulated uncontained fusion reaction) was set off. If fusion containment fails the temperature and pressures rapidly drop and the reaction ceases. You can wreck your reactor but that's about as far as it will go.

As for reactors why not use a nuclear furnace. You take a core made of an element that will fission if an extra neutron is fired at its nucleus but that is not concentrated enough or capable of a sustaining a chain reaction then bombard it with neutrons from a controlled source. The result is that you can control the amount of energy being generated by controlling the neutron source. In the event of an emergency all you need to do is interrupt the supply of extra neutrons and the reactor shuts down. You can also use reactors like this to get rid of plutonium breaking it down into smaller non-radioactive elements.

Well, if you like the story and want to believe then go ahead. I am not against it.

I can not disclose too much about fusion bomb. Basics are known to all. I can only say that this is something experts can do badly only once. Who so ever does it.

Fusion reactor story sounds good but take it with a pinch of salt.

Shyam, That is a grant money fraud to take advantage of the BS flying for years after the Pons and Fleischman fraud or foolishness.

There is craze of pushing stories these days. there was an story that you will be taken back and forth your past and future, star treck etc and perhaps it may be their new story getting done in that Fusion Reactor. You get some crack in the reactor wall and some Helium leaks out or some one simply open a Helium cylinder and all think there goes Fusion Reaction and Never Ending Power for the world.

Wohhh. Great Idea. If it is really true or was true and one can generate fusion energy then India can give up pipe line from Iran and can get electrical connection from China.

If you don't see all Presidents of the world visiting China now and all hotels of China booked then what else to say. Do you think the entire world is sleeping?

That's right, the depth of BS for grant funding is incredible.

For good reason too. Take a dubious, shaky theoretical prospect, canvas it to fund-holding executives who has no clue, promise a breakthrough in global terms of energy salvation, production or utilisation, and your salary grows by factor of ten for the next few years.

Any such fancy program financed, is made for one third the experiment (which every one knows deep-down is bound to produce jack-sh**), and two thirds retainer salaries for five years ahead, sometimes for longer, for the crew and (never forget) the management.

What came of the trillions poured on Cold-Fusion over the years?

A-Lot. In personal salaries.

Give us all a brake. Enough is enough. We ARE fools. we know that by now.

Why add insult to injury?

Some years back I worked for a University and during the introductory phase of employment all new employees went through and induction which included a lunch with the Vice Chancellor.

Anyway, the VC another employee and myself were talking when the subject of how finding needed to be more closely tied to achievable results in a manner similar business. In other words my fellow employee was saying that funding for departments and research programs needs to be more closely tied to definite achievable and profitable results rather than to projects and programs that were delving into the unknown.

Now that's fine when you are in business where the primary goal it to return a profit, but universities are not primarily businesses and need to carry out research work that specifically delves into the unknown. Unfortunately with research work you never really know what you are going to find until you carry out the research so there's no way to say if or how profitable the work you are doing is or isn't until you actually do it.

That's just the nature of research, you never really know until you spend the money and if you were to tie funding to guaranteed results you would never find anything new and improve the knowledge base of mankind.

As for my associated new employee, well he didn't last more than a couple of months while I continued on for several all be it frustrating years.

Oh yes, having worked for and with universities as an undergraduate, contractor and employee covering some three decades I have never come across a wealthy researcher. There more often than not they're broke and have their arse hanging out of the same pair of jeans they have been wearing for the last decade.

• That's right, the depth of BS for grant funding is incredible.

I agree that there is a lot of crap going on with funding research, but if you want to find the ones that are making a motser they're usually in the field of military research and development rather than general scientific research.

To that last remark, I couldn't agree more, especially since military research is completely and totally funded by tax payer's money

How much oil does Bhindia have??????

Roger,

"...three seconds of fusion", why hasn't the world acclaimed this feat? Or are the Chinese just blowing smoke to screen a conventional nuclear program?

Bob

Fusion has been achieved before many times, it's sustaining the fusion that is the trick. The chinese originally were shooting for 90 seconds, so 3 seconds is a bit short. Still, I'm not going to criticize them for failing, I'm sure they learned a lot in the process and they seem like they seem like the only major player aggresively pursuing fusion power.

I believe the Chinese, but for non-technical reasons, but for statistical and cultural reasons: In China every boy and girl has the same opportunities to reach the highest levels of education, and this is a reality that can be proved easily, just visiting China, and travelling to any city or even company operations outside cities, it is a reality that you can see by yourself easily as a day life experience in all china's territory.

But in India, where 160 million people were born as Pariahs, the boys and girls born under that condition have no opportunities, I mean statistically. Of course, there are some infinitesimal exceptions to these oppressing and ferocious rules.

Nowadays it is perfectly possible to demonstrate that there are no statistical differences between the DNA genetic content of a Pariah and a Brahman. I guess that Universities like that in Utar Pradesh should disclose this reality soon, even if this declaration detonates a social Krakatoa explosion in India.

We have in our memories the drama of Stalin GULAG and the millions of slaves that died there working for free for the soviet state, but I wonder why no newspaper, and no politicians worry about the drama of Indian Pariahs, this drama is even worse than the Islamic genocide in Darfur, however there are no news about this.

Pariahs are creatures of God, as any of us, they are not impure, they do not deserve the ferocious humiliations that they suffer under the oppression of almost all upper classes.

If India wants to increase its credibility, India should dare to do a definitive cultural revolution to end the oppression of the Pariahs. I know that this is already a reality in paper laws, but still it is neither a cultural nor a mental reality.

Please, please, please do not take this as personal, I am not offending you, just that I know about India's drama due that we have some immigrants here.

Jaime Soto Figueroa

http://www.matharts.cl/

Chile

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

India's high castes are extinguishing themselves by the simple procedure of embryo selection. In many area the ratio of male to female is 1.2:1.

They use ultrasound and abort females and try again and agin to get a son.

That means 20% of their kids will never find a wife from their own group, a crippling long term burden.

The caste system is fading away and as education improves it will decline. Remember suttee? That's gone.

Right after the conception instant there is a human being, so abortion is homicide of an defenceless human, and abortion of females is the maximum sin, so India's high castes are already impure, they will die and return to Earth as worms.

The castes system in India has been dominant for some 3500 years, so the horror system will not fall without a revolution. India needs and deserves a violent revolution. Indians are conflictive people precisely for the castes system.

In the rural areas I read that people are trapped into the old caste system by feudal and peer pressures and even education and language. So a villager cannot just put on the clothes of a high caste person as he would be outed by his envious neighbours who would want to drag him back down to their level. He will also not travel easily in high caste society due to language and educations which varies a lot.

In the cities, there is more ability to move across castes if you can get the manners and language correct as education gets more standard in the cities and in time this will spread and get rid of castes totally.

Does suttee/sati still happen? Apparently it does, but less and less with time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suttee

If China or for that matter any country makes great Fusion Technology to come into existance then they will not talk to any one unless they built few hundreds of such reactors, pushed their economy way above the rest of the world and then ask the world to bow down to them and cm bagging for technology ideas. There will be red carpet to the scientists and engineers. I don't understand why they will start claiming so early. I think they are looking for survival funds and it may just another paper work and why world is getting carried away with that when it is not meant for others. If you have money and want to put in Chna research then you do so. Most of the Chna people believe that they need Indian brain to run their country. Hence, some Indian fellow might have given them an idea to explore new method of funding. This sure is not a China way. They have a lot of fush-fush close talks and never go public. I have been very close with many in Singapore, Malaysia and also seen their Sanfrancisco life. They only count money use chaep methods and use Indian brain. Perhaps they are good at China food and below Thai food. We are waitng a Chernobyl in China that may happen any time. We will get dirty dust so worried a lot.

Community based problems are man made and this only shows low standard of mental development in general population in India and many other countries. People will learn and will get rid of them in time. You learn less from good and more from bad reasults. There was atime when there were many women for a man and now there will be many men for a woman. Cycle of natural experiments goes on and Darwin's Theory prevails.

http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/

This is erroneous. As I understand it only hydrogen was used in the plasma. The press release mentioned ITER and the fact that it would fuse deuterium and tritium and operate at a power level of 500 MW, that and the fact that verbs in Chinese lack tense, somehow got mangled together to attach some of the attributes of what was planned at ITER with what was done at EAST now.

EAST is a major milestone in that it is the worlds first superconducting tokamak fusion reactor and that is a major accomplishment because how to form brittle ceramic superconductors into suitable coils, and get them to operate in magnetic fields of 10 or more Tesla's without losing their superconductivity, were non-trivial engineering challenges.

In my view fusion energy is badly needed and so I am very excited about the quicker pace of China's fusion energy program.

Actually, I've written an article in detail which I hope addresses some of the confusion but I am always interested in more authoritative information sources. I am still learning Chinese so I have to depend heavily on other peoples translations or machine translations (which are horrid), particular in technical matters.

http://www.eskimo.com/~nanook/science/index.html

Take a look at: China's EAST Fusion Reactor

Sorry if formatting is weird, this editor is doing odd things.

I think the chinese might have achieved a sustained fusion of 3 seconds.The trick is to achieve sustained fusion on a continuous basis & keeping it safe which will take huge resources & time.China has huge financial resources so it is not rationale to think they are looking for funds.

Another thing I found tragic on the thread is India bashing.Every country has its own version of racism & drawbacks.So why point only India?In such a technical thread seeing racism in the shape of India bashing is really tragic.

Indian

Actually they have reached plasma state for about fifteen seconds ago and that was over a year ago and since then they have been silent and mum. They are the leaders in fusion tech right now well ahead of other countries.

The Chinese have no reason to lied, this experiment was witnessed by many and was well publicize. I hope that they reach their ultimate goal of 1000 secs which they may have already, it has been nearly 2 yrs since they achieved 15 secs.

China has been very mum on this subject but rumors has it that they have made many improvements in their model reactor and are making good progress. They are very secretive in what they leak out and selective. I have no doubt that they will be the first country to have a good opertating fusion reactor---20 years from now.

The Chinese may well ultimately get their fission reactor going but I am not sure that the toroidal concept is the correct way to go.

Some time back I watched a video report on research that was being carried out by the US navy in the use of a multi-axis magnetic field rather that the common toroid system. They ultimately run out of funds and only built relatively small test confinement chambers but the results they achieved were on par or better than those any of the toroidal reactors had achieved.

The problem with fission technology is it's lead time and personally I have the feeling that the toroidal concept is fundamentally flawed.

The threat of global warming means we need answers now and there is enough technology out there to dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and give us the time to develop new technologies like fission.

I think the Toroidal method is better than the laser firing on Hydrogen bubbles.

China has the most urgency in devleoping alternative energy to run the country of 1.5 billion. They are graduating more scientists than the USA by far and their schools are top tier. They have already achieved 15 secs of plasma state two years ago and from what we know they have made many advances in this field. We are running out of oil and it is getting too expensive, if it was not for the Iraq war we would be the leader in this field. Perhaps Obama may be more receptive in this field.

G'day Shyam,

• I think the Toroidal method is better than the laser firing on Hydrogen bubbles.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the LASER part only to get the initial temperature and pressure high enough to kick off the fusion process. I must admit I havn't followed LASER concept but don't they then need some sort of magnetic containment system to maintain and control the process.

As for the toroidal magnetic containment principle I agree with Dr Farnsworth that it's not the best way to go. As he says, just look up in the night sky and see how many toroidal shaped nuclear fusion reactors you can see? The grand total of ZERO would seem to indicate that it's not the best and most efficient way to go and using a spherical containment system would be a better solution. If you do a CR-4 search on "Farnsworth" you should be able to find some links to his work and there is a really good presentation that's worth taking an hour or so to watch.

In response to the guest in post

• China has the most urgency in devleoping alternative energy to run the country of 1.5 billion. They are graduating more scientists than the USA by far and their schools are top tier.

Currently China is purchasing coal from Australia by the mountain load and we have more than enough to keep China happy for a couple of centuries so they aren't going to run out of energy soon.

However, this doesn't solve the problem of global warming and climate change which is going to bite us badly in the very near future and long before the fossil fuels run out.

It's also true that China is pushing scientists and engineers through their universities at a phenomenal rate but I get the impression that it's not working out the way they would like.

China's record in the manufacturing arena sort of give the game away. In a attempt to reduce production costs many manufacturers have moved their manufacturing facilities to China where the cost of labour and factory floor space is considerably lower. Unfortunately things havn't gone too well and hardly a day goes by between horror stories about items manufactured in China having cataclysmic quality control problems.

My personal experience has seen equipment from a company that had an impeccable reputation for quality and reliability taking a serious nose dive. The faults in brand new units went from less than 0.1% or less than 1 in 1000 items having a fault, to somewhere between 150% and 200%. Not one single item arrived fault free with every second unit having two or more faults. Regardless of what was claimed about testing and quality control even the most cursory testing would have revealed none of the items they were manufacturing worked. Then you have modifications and the use of dangerous or toxic substances that have been banned in the developed world, being implemented or used without even informing the designers.

The problem has become so bad that I have actually seen specifications being sent out to potential contractors that have a clause that states they will not accept anything that is manufactured in China.

It's only an opinion and my evidence is anecdotal, but I just can't see a country that has trouble manufacturing toys to the designers specifications without screwing it up being able to get a fusion reactor going.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the LASER part only to get the initial temperature and pressure high enough to kick off the fusion process. I must admit I havn't followed LASER concept but don't they then need some sort of magnetic containment system to maintain and control the process.

Their intention is to trigger each laser fused pellet make a net energy contribution and light off a large number of them.

https://www.llnl.gov/str/Sep06/Bono.html

https://www.llnl.gov/str/Oct07/Menapace.html

https://www.llnl.gov/str/Hill.html

http://physci.llnl.gov/Research/Tokamak/

https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/242706.pdf

Several of my colleagues have gone to China recently and have seen the many advances taken place there such as the Tibetan high Altitude railway, three river gorges Dam, Hengzhou Bridge nearly 24 miles long suspension type, the meglev and the electric vehicles that they are getting ready for the 2008 Olympics, some of the ranges in these vehicles will astound you.

China's next big task was and is the fusion reactor----they are very optimistic on what is going on there but they are very mum on it. From what I gather from my friends they have probably made many advances. All they told my friends is that it still have a long ways to go but they are learning and improving the apparatus.

I have several friends who are going to check out the elctric vehicles in China in two months. We can use a few thousand of these ourselves. They are going to have over 3000 of this in use. Buses, sedans, carts, etc/

I hope that either India or China will lead in the development of the fusion reactor because the USA and the other western countries are too bogged down with oil. Both countries have very smart and capable scientists. Some of my scientist colleagues are due in China in a few weeks and I hope to learn more about China and its technology and I have heard that India's tech is very adsvanced also of course we all know that India have the top three science and technology institutes in the world. India is a country to reckon with once they straighten out their politics.

Money is the mother of all invention. Since the price of oil has skyrocketed in the last year. People has come up with plenty of cars that do not need gas nor oil but rather they are practical or not is another story but I am confident that it will be.

The 2008 Olympic ceremony was fabulous and so many countries were there participate was also fantastic. Behind the scene, China is going green--solar powered buildings, wind power and many vehicles operated w/o oil nor gas. From what I have heard from my friends over there they are going full steam ahead with their fusion reactor and they are getting ready to build a new one that is much more advanced soon. China and India are the ones to watch to lead the world into new and bewtter technology for mankind while we are bogged down with oil and gas.

Hi Guest,

You stated

• Behind the scene, China is going green

RUBBISH

The Chinese government had to shut down all the industry in and around Beijing and only allow cars to be used every second day for nearly two weeks before and during the Olympic Games.

Beijing is so badly polluted that it's rare to see blue sky and visibility is severely reduced nearly all the time. You can't even see the top of some of the taller buildings and the government was forced into the draconian actions I mentioned to get the air quality to an acceptable level. I also know that a considerable number of the Australian athletes were extremely worried about how the pollution would effect their health and performance.

If that's going green then I would hate to see what not going green would be.

I think you are wrong, it is a language barrier, the Chinese are getting a green pallor = green

I can't quiet follow that, could you elaborate somewhat?

The pollution is making them go green from nausea, like sea sickness etc.

You are right China still have a huge pollution problem. The gov't needs to worry more about the health and welfare of its people not their own pocketbooks. Several of my colleagues just came back from there, the chimneys of those factories are leaking lot of unsafe stuff and sewage are just pour out untreated. Many have to die before they address this issue. But China is making a serioues effort in going green and for humanity sake we hope it is not too little and too late. This is much more important than the fusion reactor. My colleagues told me that very soon they will be building a second reactor that's much bigger than the first. Propoganda perhaps spending all that money while its people are starving and polluted to death.

The thing that is so frightening about the Chinese is that they don't care once they get started on something they do not plan to stop, just like the Great Wall a piece of junk that caused many to lay down their lives. They got started with the fusion reactor and you know they are serious, no turning back.

The Chinese government are also notorious for not giving a stuff about the consequences of their actions on others or event their own people.

One of their space shots went horribly wrong and the launch vehicle came crashing down slap band in the middle of a population centre and demolished a large chunk with the people living there.

To date they still wont tell you how many people were killed and only grudgingly acknowledge that the launch went wrong. It there weren't a bunch of foreign reporters watching the launch I doubt the world would have never been even told about it.

Yes China because of its big ego will have the first "successful fusion reactor" but at what cause? The Great Wall has killed millions and now these reactors cause billions while pollution and human rights abuse go uncheck. They need to learn the word "green". But none the less, fusion reactors will help with greening of China if it is done right.

I am pretty shock to hear that Masu. China is still a closed society. That's totally unreal .

I just managed to dig this Wikipedia article up on the incident.

Apparently it was a Long March rocket that was being used to launch the US Intelsat 708 satellite. It appears that the thing went wrong right from the get go and came down in a nearby town.

The fact that it was a US satellite explains the foreign reporters and so far the Chinese are only admitting to 56 civilian fatalities.

However, they kept the reporters locked up for some time as the only way out of the complex was right through the crash site. One of the reporters managed to get some sneaked footage of the crash site on the way out and it turned up on one of the discovery channels in a documentary I saw a few months back. From the reports filed by the reporters there and the footage that was sneaked out the death toll was more like an order of magnitude greater.

It was a while back now but from memory the footage showed numerous high density housing structures completely obliterated by the explosion when the rocket hit the ground.

According to Wikipedia the worst admitted launch failure was a Russian accident during repairs while the rocket was fuelled with 126 being killed. The reason that the Long March incident stands out is due to the victims all being civilian and not being involved in the launch.

If anybody can dig up any other links that may shed further light on the incident I would appreciate it if you could post them on this thread.

Further to my last post on the Long March 3B accident I managed to find this piece of video on You Tube of Intelsat 703 Long March launch failure that also shows the smuggled footage of the crash site.

Have a look and see what you think for yourself.

I'm sorry to say but to me either the clam that only 53 people were killed is either exceedingly lucky or a woeful underestimate.

Something else that's worth noting is the time stamp on the video of the crash. The rocket clearly goes amok almost as soon as it leave the pad and well and is well and truly out of control before it even clears the tower. However, the total flight time is nearly one minute which should have given them more than enough time to safely destroy the launch vehicle before it hit the ground.

This leads me to ask

Since it was blatantly clear that the rocket was totally out of control right from the get go why was it not deliberately destroyed prior to impacting the ground?

What I think is that this has nothing to do with Fusion energy. Please - take the hate rants elsewhere where they might actually be on subject and they wont bore us to death any more.

G'day IRON_MAN,

I would suggest you get used to threads wandering off topic, it's pretty much the norm at CR4. Actually, it's really a reflection on what happens when you get a crowd of engineers together and lubricate their thinking with copious quantities of beer, wine and other pleasurable beverages.

• Please - take the hate rants elsewhere where they might actually be on subject and they wont bore us to death any more.

There is no hatred to or of anybody or anything all I am doing is adding to the discussion with information I happen to have which in this case happens to be negative.

Also, if you find a report on an engineering stuff up that resulted in the death of a significant number of innocent people boring then I would hate to see what you find stimulating.

"...The threshold temperature of hydrogen fusion (sometimes called a proton-proton reaction) is on the order of 10,000,000 K to 14,000,000 K or 10 to 14 million degrees Kelvin. Blazing hot!..."

There is no such thing as cold fusion, it's a hoax, and prominent western physicist declared it again and again, ever since the first claims of cold fusions were dribbled into the public media, some twenty years ago

Furthermore, at such temperatures, containing, confining and controlling any sustained chain reaction, other than in the practical form of a nuclear explosion, is as unlikely as the claims of sustained reaction of "Cold" Fusion.

If fusion could be harnessed into an industrial energy production for consumer production, like is already done with fission, it could turn the whole of modern human civilisation upside down.

Now, how likely is that ?

I don't doubt that the Chinese will have the first practical fusion reactor but at what cost? Just like the Great Wall millions died, the Grand Canal, and the burial ground of the "Yellow Emperor". It is going to be a "Pyrrhic Victory" when that happens. Millions are starving in China yet they want to spend billions to build the reactor, it is similiar to our Iraq war. It has been over two years when they achieved 15 sec plasma state, how much they have advanced no one knows but we know for sure their ambitions are huge they are not sitting on their butts. They want to show the world that they are #1. They had already done that to a certain degree in the Olympic Games . But if they don't improve their human rights, pollution control and feed its people it means nothing. How about some religious freedom, freedom of speech,stop stealing patents and licenses and fair and equal trade.

Reaching plasma state of excited gas (at some 6,000 Kelvin) is far from achieving continuous, stable, fusion chain-reaction (at some 14,000,000 Kelvin) which is also containable, or, in short, not in the form and aggression of a nuclear explosion.

The latter is like trying to bottle a full hurricane in a grocery paper-bag.

Allow me to doubt that, with all due respect.

Practical fusion reactors will go a long way in the greening of the world but in doing so would the initial steps and mfg of the reactor give off waste or toxic by-products beyond what is practical? I believe that a commercial fusion reactor will be produce perhaps not in our life time but it will be achieve.

Too bad that fusion chain-reaction can only be achieved as a hydrogen bomb or in the core of main-sequence active stars.

Commercial fusion reactors is a ferry tale for uninformed suckers, willing to throw their hard earned money away.

I suggest we shall all sit and wait for the Chinese to admit it too.

G'day guest,

• Commercial fusion reactors is a ferry tale for uninformed suckers, willing to throw their hard earned money away.

What's a ferry tail, is it some kind of roll on roll off ship?

Ok, jesting over and I assume you actually meant "fairy tale".

I can't say that I agree with your statement that it is a fools errand. Yes, achieving a stable fusion reaction other than in hydrogen bombs and the core of stars is difficult but I don't think it's impossible.

Whether or not the way we are currently going about it is the best or even a viable solution, but one thing is for certain and that's the product of slamming two deuterium nuclei together with sufficient energy is a helium nucleus and bucket load of energy.

Given what is happening to climates, environments and pollution the world over that's primarily a result of our addiction to fossil fuels can we afford not to at least try to get fusion power going. We need to be looking at any technology that has potential to supply us with clean energy and fusion reactors are one of those technologies.

Which brings me to ask the following question:

Prey tell why do you think it's a fairy tale?

I would have to agree with those who think it's a race to find some fool's gold

You say "achieving a stable fusion reaction other than in hydrogen bombs and the core of stars is difficult" What in the world does this mean ? ? ?

How would you think you would go about it, when everyone else in the the scientific community thinks it's a hoax and does for the last twenty years ?

http://www.metafilter.com/29556/Top-ten-scientific-hoaxes

Or as remarked once in Princeton "Today, most of the scientific community worldwide dismisses cold fusion as a hoax; yet there is still significant, albeit largely "underground," research in ..."

http://www.princeton.edu/~chm333/2002/spring/Fusion/tour2/coldfusion2.html - sorry, link no longer available

or

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy99018.htm

or

http://www.surrealscoop.com/2008/01/scientists-admit-to-cold-fusion-hoax.html

Believe you - me, the list of respectable sources claiming that cold fusion being a folly is a mile long, and growing steadily. I somehow had the impression that a serious forum such as this, would have recognise this simple fact, especially following the grand parade of colossal failures under this silly caption.

G'day guest,

• You say "achieving a stable fusion reaction other than in hydrogen bombs and the core of stars is difficult" What in the world does this mean ? ? ?

It means that trying to hold on to something that is as hot as you need to produce nuclear fusion is no easy task and requires some very complex engineering that we have to date not been able to master.

• Or as remarked once in Princeton "Today, most of the scientific community worldwide dismisses cold fusion as a hoax; yet there is still significant, albeit largely "underground," research in ..."

I didn't say anything about cold fusion I said Nuclear Fusion and the Chinese reactor like most of the other attempts uses a toroidal magnetic field to contain plasma at extreme temperatures and pressures. There's no cold about it this stuff is hot in the extreme.

As for "cold fusion" then yes it's a load of garbage.

To fuse two deuterium nuclei you need to overcome the repulsive electromagnetic force due to the two protons in each nucleus. This repulsive force works on an inverse square law so every time you halve the distance between them you quadruple the force pushing them apart. The only way to get them close enough for the strong nuclear force to take over it to give each of the nuclei enough kinetic energy to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion and since heat and the temperature of a substance is really a measure of the kinetic energy it's by definition impossible for cold fusion to take place.

• How would you think you would go about it, when everyone else in the the scientific community thinks it's a hoax and does for the last twenty years ?

Well first off since I was talking about hot not cold fusion it's not a hoax but I don't think the current attempts are the way to go about it. Personally I thing the toroidal containment system is where everybody is going wrong. To quote Dr Robert Bussard look at the billions of naturally occurring fusion reactors in the night sky and count how many toroidal shaped stars can you see?

NONE, ZILCH, ZERO, NIX not a single one, every last one of them is spherical.

Personally I believe that the way to go is the Polywell concept that uses a series of coils arranged on a polyhedron that ultimately produce a spherical containment, but it's a little more complex than that so I suggest you follow the link to find out how it works.

If you would like to see Dr Bussard explain how it works then I suggest following this link to the Should Google Go Nuclear? video. It's a fairly long presentation but thoroughly worth the time.

Oops, small correction to my last post where I said:

To fuse two deuterium nuclei you need to overcome the repulsive electromagnetic force due to the two protons in each nucleus.

Which is obviously incorrect as a deuterium nucleus contains one proton and one neutron hence only one neutron per atom not two.

It might be worth looking at the difference in the way nuclear fusion is achieved on earth as opposed to how it happens in stars.

In all our attempts and this includes hydrogen bombs, the process involves slamming two deuterium nuclei into each other with enough energy to overcome the electromagnetic repulsive force due to the proton in each of the nuclei.

In stars it's different and here four protons or hydrogen nuclei are rammed into each other to form one helium nucleus that contains two protons and two neutrons.

The reason we don't try to do it the same way starts do is that it's considerably more difficult to get four positive sub atomic particles close enough to fuse than two positive and two neutral so the way to go at least initially is to use deuterium rather than hydrogen..

Masu, let aside the 'cold fusion' crap, my main concern with the feasibility of hot fusion reactors lies in confinement, and in turn, integrating the heat-transfer (or any other energy-extraction) system with the supposedly-confined core.

At any temperature above the mentioned 14,000,000 Kelvin, the resulting ambient pressures are way beyond any structure one could imagine, let alone remaining stable enough, to maintain other attached support structures and mechanisms, which are supposed to function properly under those said temperature and resulting pressure levels.

Not remotely 'a Hurricane in a paper bag', but more likely 'an exploding grenade in a medicine capsule'.

This is so much more than simply stretching the imagination, this is very, very unlikely, regardless of the magnetic confinement chamber geometry, be it of any shape you like.

I simply cannot picture this regardless of means and resources known.

On stars and Nuclear explosions, it's "easy": there's no confinement as such, and the heat or radiation transfer is by means of convection.

"...our attempts and this includes hydrogen bombs, the process involves slamming two deuterium nuclei into each other with enough energy..." - We do this by using an extremely skillful fission implosion for triggering, to step over the temperature / pressure threshold barrier, required to get the nucleons into nuclear proximity

How could we replicate this in confined chambers simply to allow for the chain-reaction to take place ?

The persisting pro claim was that the quest for fusion reactors is not a hoax because humanity really and desperately needs a clean source for viable energy, while I maintained, that this is exactly why the mere idea of it is used for scams popping from any possible pseudo-scientific angle: our collective, desperate need for clean energy source, make us a perfect mark for those who wish to scam - mainly vast sums of research money.

Having such hopes for that new kind of holy grail, who would resist any attempt at it ?

G'day Yuval and others,

• How could we replicate this in confined chambers simply to allow for the chain-reaction to take place ?

Nuclear fusion is not like fission in that it isn't really a chain reaction as it is not self sustaining. A chain reaction is a is a self sustaining reaction that once triggered will carry on unless you either do something to stop it or the raw materials run out.

It's sort of like having two substances that can burn, one that will continue burning after it's ignited and another that will self extinguish if the initial source of heat is removed.

The current crop of power generating nuclear plants utilizes a self sustaining fission of ²³⁵U by hitting it with a neutron. The result is two smaller nuclei ³²Kr, ¹⁴¹Ba and three free neutrons which can then fly off and cause three more ²³⁵U nuclei to do the same. Now this is definitely a self sustaining chain reaction that will continue until either ti runs out of ²³⁵U or we do something to get rid of the free neutrons.

A fusion reactor is a completely different animal entirely as for the reaction to take place you need to give the nuclei enormous amounts of kinetic energy to overcome the electromagnetic force that is keeping the positively charged nuclei apart. This means extremely high temperatures and pressures and unless you maintain these the fusion will cease and the energy output will drop to zero. This is in no way a chain reaction as it is not self sustaining.

The thing about nuclear fusion is that we can see it works every day between sunrise and sunset, the question is how to do it on earth?

Unfortunately it's now 05:10 here in the land down under and the Earths local fusion reactor is showing that it will soon be above the horizon. I have to at least try and get some sleep, but I promise I will return to this thread later today and look at the process on nuclear fusion in more detail. In the meantime I would recommend that anybody that is following this to watch the Should Google Go Nuclear? Video. It is fairly long but covers nearly all the things that have surfaced in this thread including the funding of research.

G'day yuval, guests & others,

• How could we replicate this in confined chambers simply to allow for the chain-reaction to take place ?

The reason that controlled fusion is hard to achieve is that it requires several emerging technologies to all work 100% and at the same time.

Ok, so how does it work and how do you contain it?

First off you start off by turning the deuterium into plasma which involves heating it until all its electrons have enough energy to disassociate themselves from the nuclei. Now, once you have done this you are only left with the single protons and neutrons in each nucleus and a gaseous substance that due to it's lack of electrons is highly positively charged.

This is where the magnetic containment comes into it as like electrons in a cathode ray tube you can manipulate the deuterium nuclei with magnetic fields. Currently most of the attempts use a toroidal containment system and it's not that difficult to achieve the stable containment of the plasma, that was pretty much mastered nearly 30 years ago.

The next step it to increase the strength of the containing magnetic field so that it squashes the plasma to the point where fusion takes place. Unfortunately this is much more difficult to do than say and requires the use of superconductors which is one of the emerging technologies we have not yet perfected.

Nonetheless, several experimental reactors have been able to trigger and maintain true and confirmed nuclear fusion but so far only for very short periods of time. It also has taken more energy to trigger and contain the fusion that you get back.

However, it is definitely possible to achieve nuclear fusion with magnetic containment systems and given enough time, money and the perfection of the various technologies there is no reason that a stable and contained nuclear fusion reaction can't be achieved.

You also asked how could the energy from the fusion be harnessed.

There are numerous ways this could be harnessed, one of them being some sort of heat exchanging system built into the containment chamber. Another could involve the use of the cores positive charge to generate a usable electric field although I'm not 100% certain how to achieve this. Anyway, the point is that it could be used in several ways to generate usable energy.

Anyway, my personal opinion is the same as Dr Bussard's ant that is the toroidal Tokamak is while being a good research tool not the way to go to get a stable sustainable fusion reactor. One of the big problems is the difference in the magnetic field density on the inner and outer radii of the toroidal container that causes a non‑symmetric containment which is going to be a huge problem. To me the Polywell is the way to go because it is much closer to the way fusion occurs naturally in stars.

Something else that while sounding a bit science fiction is worth mentioning. If we are ever to have any sort of serious chance of leaving Earth then it can only be achieved using some form of matter-energy conversion system. You just can't achieve anything like the sort of energy density and power to weight ratio you need for any realistic interplanetary travel. That means either a fusion or matter-antimatter reactor and both need superconductors and magnetic containment systems.

Stable and energy generating fusion reactors are still a fair way off and I can't see them being useful in the short term to solve our addiction to fossil fuels but that doesn't mean the research isn't worth doing, it just changes the priority somewhat.

Ultimately there is only one thing certain about scientific research ant that is you can never know what you will learn of find out until you do the research, but that in no way is a reason to not do the research. I remember when LASERS were first developed, they were labelled as one of the greatest scientific discovery that had no useful application. Boy, did they ever get that one wrong and that was at most a generation ago.

I think the scientists, Pons and Fleischmann, where just wrong. Cold fusion didn't start out as a hoax, but the results where proved to be unrepeatable. The state of Utah funded the NCFI (National Cold Fusion Institute) with GE, but produced no results supporting the existence of cold fusion and conventional nuclear physics show the probability of these reactions is vanishing small.

Now I think you have a lot of true hoaxers trying to pass off cold fusion as the real deal. I've heard all the yada-yada about the scientific community suppressing all the evidence to protect their turf...etc. etc. However when something violates everything we know about nature you need some rock solid hard proof before you start whining that there is conspiracy against you. As Richard Feynman says "Nature can't be fooled" (people can though)

A good book to start with would be "Bad Science: The short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion" Gary Taubes.

From what I have heard from fellow scientists that went to the Olympics of 2008 in Beijing to learn about the latest in scientific technology in China. The Chinese have made great advances in their fusion technology and may soon build another reactor .

The thing that we must know about the Chinese is that they are a bunch of fanatics and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. They have improved a lot of details in their reactor and soon they are going to build an even better version. Fusion energy is a must in China, a nation of nearly 2 billion, the 1.2 billion is understated. Many things that we deemed yesteryears ago impossible are now realities. I hope the Chinese or the Indians will come up with a practical fusion reactor.

We all hope that some fusion energy source will become practical. How likely is it to become reality, is another matter.

The same could be said about population control, drug abuse and disease control, environmental and pollution control, artificial intelligence and cybernetics, economical and political stability, fair taxation systems, viable welfare for the poor, and so on.

And on and on.

And on.

I'm fifty-five years old, and all the above was mentioned in my early youth, when global population was half it's present size, and the end of the human civilisation was not yet a viable option seriously discussed, as it is these days.

You do the math.

G'day folks,

• We all hope that some fusion energy source will become practical. How likely is it to become reality, is another matter.

Personally I believe that it will become reality, but I doubt it will be soon enough to have any appreciable difference on climate change in any sort of realistic way. This is a total guess but I would hazard to say that they will crack the stable fusion within 15 to 20 years but becoming financially viable depends on how much we need it.

Then again, if global warming causes the sea level to rise by about 1.0 m the inundation and damage to major population centres may change peoples priorities and get it going a lot faster.

Like any new technology it requires research facilities, equipment, personnel and of course money with fusion being a little more money hungry that average due to the technology required. However, if the money that was spent on just one deep see oil platform or one years worth of cosmetic changes to car designs were put into researching sustainable energy I can just about guarantee we could find a solution to our energy needs.

One scientist recently said that all we need is 1% of the ocean surface we can provide all the electrical needs of the world--those wave generators. So with that is a fusion reactor really neccessary? The need for alternative energy is in our vehicles,we need to stop depending on oil and be at the mercy of a few countries. But it is nice to have fusion reactors because it provide almost limitless supply of energy.

A century's worth of oil wasted to move wheeled metal boxes about, instead of clever use for chemical and material production, is a colossal infamy. I wonder how future generations will judge this, in a proper historical perspective.

The practical shift for electromagnetic drive and production systems, has it's own challenges and possible problems: efficiency of non-polluting batteries for vehicles, practical range between re-charge cycles, and concerning the big picture, let us mention the ecological tax electric-production schemes imposed on our collective environment, be it nuclear (fission), kinetic (oceanic wave flappers), gravitational (Hydroelectric), and wind or solar driven harvesters.

Nothing for nothing, gives nothing. Each would tax the environment in it's own typical way. The problem is not energy production efficiency or pollution per-se.

Let me bluntly put it: our globe simply cannot support an unlimited number of people, in any aspect you would care to name: Energy, Food, Shelter, Space, any support system we may care to maintain, is bound to collapse, facing an overwhelming number of people.

An urgent population-growth control, is the key, for any speculative prospect of future human and biomass survival.

It's as simple as that.

• One scientist recently said that all we need is 1% of the ocean surface we can provide all the electrical needs of the world--those wave generators.

1% of the earth's surface is a hell of a lot of space and would need more than all the world's production facilities to manufacture the equipment.

"One scientist recently said that all we need is 1% of the ocean surface we can provide all the electrical needs of the world--those wave generators."

Have you worked out just how big 1% of the ocean surface is? Or the cost of covering that with wave generators?

The energy density required to solve our energy generation problems is simply not available with any of the "sustainable" alternative energy schemes.

Fusion power, when solved, will have this energy density and has the potential to be significantly cheaper than our present energy sources.

While Fusion may never become practical energy producer, due to myriad problems theoretical and practical, there's still Fission, with some 50 years of proven practice, and efficient production

Does fission energy have the "density" required ? France exports surplus electricity all over Europe having satisfied their domestic needs via fission.

One percent of the earth's surface is not bad, one percent of its volume is bad. Some countries already have ocean wave generators and are doing quite well. The biggest hurdle is corrosion. Ocean, wind, solar and biomasss is the way to go for our energy needs. Fusion is the way for our back up and military use. Several countries in Europe are leading the way and China and India are getting theirs. Fusion is still 25 to thirty years away.

"...Fusion is still 25 to thirty years away..."

- That is even better than Artificial Intelligence !

Israel is the pioneer to artificial intelligence. It is a small country but its electronics are second to none. Seriously there are better choices for meeting the world's energy needs than fusion. How safe is it nobody knows, how can we contain the tremendous amount of energy giving off still long ways from mastering that, how can we keep this reaction sustained and what is the cost? Ocean, wind, solar and biomass is the way to go for now. Fusion is more for our egos to see who is smarter and technologivally more advanced. Our money can be better psent, it is estimated in US$ that it may take several trillion dollars before we can get into commercial use, research, devleopment, materials, labor and administrative fees and other fees. The feasibility is not good as some of you already said. But I could guarantee you one thing China will stop at nothing to produce one to show that world that they are a major power. Pride and self-esteem is what drive those people.

"...China will stop at nothing to produce one to show that world that they are a major power..." - I'm sure that many of China's adversaries will be happy to see it waste colossal amounts of effort and resources trying to "tame the dragon", meaning, trying to harness fusion reaction for energy production.

The difference between the effort to extract usable energy by fission and fusion is that in fission you are allowed to take the thermal advantage of natural isotope decay, emitting surplus members of the nucleus, directly (with proper damping techniques, using graphite and other absorbents) into a medium to naturally convert this into heat, or, to over-simplify this, kinetics of nucleons from the radiating isotopes are converted into heat in the exchange medium, and that heat is fed through a heat exchange system, to drive electric generatos.

This is a "Fluke", a freak phenomenon, brilliantly taken advantage of, by ordinary proven thermodynamics, to drive electric generators, which will happily work with any other source of heat.

This is not an option with fusion.

There, it's a straight forward reaction, pretty much uncontrollable, once the temperature barrier for nuclear proximity, is shattered.

How can Israel be a pioneer to artificial intelligence, when artificial intelligence is yet a non-entity?

Artificial intelligence is a science fiction term, not a technological reality.

Grow up people, and make a distinction between fantasy and fact, will you please?

G'day folks,

In post #69 our gust stated:

• Seriously there are better choices for meeting the world's energy needs than fusion. How safe is it nobody knows, how can we contain the tremendous amount of energy giving off still long ways from mastering that, how can we keep this reaction sustained and what is the cost?

I agree that at the moment there definitely are more appropriate technologies that could be implemented immediately and produce results faster and more economically than nuclear fusion.

However, that doesn't mean we should jut forget about the technology. In response then:

• what is the cost? A truck load of money. Getting it to work is going to be very expensive but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. The average deep sea oil or gas platform will set you back about US$1,000,000,000.⁰⁰ but we build them by the dozen. The worlds biggest car manufacturers spend even more on nothing more than cosmetic changes to their cars without paying attention to far more important items like safety, efficiency, etcetera, yet we accept and often encourage such a wasteful attitude. If we were to spend that amount of money then you would almost certainly be able to develop nuclear fusion technology to the point that a stable reaction could be maintained, yet we complain about scientists spending a fraction of that on something that has so much potential.
• How safe is it nobody knows? Well actually we do. Put simply it is far safer than any of the fusion reactors currently in operation on every continent with the exception of Antarctica and that's before we start looking into the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and the need to isolate it from the biosphere for around 200 plus millennia. While the reaction in a fusion reactor is the same as that in a hydrogen bomb it is a controlled reaction rather than an uncontrolled reaction in the bomb and is triggered in an entirely different way. In order for the reaction to take place the temperature and pressure needs to be phenomenally high and far greater than any physical container could contain. As a result the plasma which has a positive charge is held in place with a massive magnetic field. If this field were to collapse of fail then we don't end up with an uncontrolled reaction like we have in a bomb or fission reactor. Because the temperature and pressure drop rapidly when the field collapses the fusion reaction ceases abruptly and the plasma cools adiabatically as the temperature and pressure drop and core expands. By having a large enough secondary container you can fairly easily prevent the fusion fuel from escaping into the biosphere. At any rate even if it did escape it's only a mixture of helium and deuterium nuclei that quickly pick up electrons and become He and ²H₂. There is a certain amount of residual radiation from the secondary containment vessel but it is minimal compared to the sort of waste fission reactors generate. Fission reactors have the potential to produce a meltdown if the reaction is not controlled and regulated properly and can have cataclysmic results should a breach of the containment vessels occur yet we continue to use them and there is talk that we should be building even more.
• how can we contain the tremendous amount of energy giving off still long ways from mastering that, how can we keep this reaction sustained: These are the technical questions we need to develop answers for and while we are not there yet but that doesn't mean it's impossible and that we shouldn't be trying to develop a viable technology that can harness nuclear fusion.

While nuclear fusion isn't likely going to be our salvation when it comes to global warming and climate change, we should be looking to the future and trying to develop the technology. If we are ever want to travel from Earth to even the planets in our solar system we are going to need fusion reactors. You just can't get the energy needed in any other way so until we have a working fusion reactor even getting a man to Mars is going to be nigh on impossible.

It's like the difference between a diesel electric submarine and nuclear powered submarine. The electric submarines are really surface vessels that make relatively short sojourns below the surface. The need to either come to the surface or close enough to it to put up a snorkel in order to supply the air their diesel motors need to recharge the batteries. A nuclear submarine is a true submarine that lives and is at home beneath the water. Currently the limiting factor is the crew and the food they need to sustain them, otherwise they could stay and operate without coming even close to the surface for years.

There is only one thing certain about research and that is you don't know what you will end up with or what you are going to discover until you do the research. A small percentage of business and political leaders see this uncertainty as an overwhelming reason for not carrying out research. However, if we were all to subscribe to this narrow minded, selfish and idiotic notion rather than sitting in front of computers and conversing with people the world over we would still be living in trees and eating fruits, berries and uncooked meat.

Look up the word artificial intelligence--we are using it everyday for example robots, automation, computers, cell phones etc. Innate intelligence is what most of us have you need to differentiate that from artificial intell.

For a small country like Israel, they may have developed the nuclear bomb and hydrogen bomb all by themselves w/o any outside help which is a tremendous feat. These people are smart and give them credit. They are truly God's people as our VP Cheney said.

But anyways many of you feel the same way as I do, there are better ways to harness energy than fusion. We need to do away or greatly diminished the use of fossil fuel in our cars. I am currently working very feverishly with my colleagues on that. There are many ways that we can use to power our cars----biomass, fuel cell,

electric and natural gas, oil from various sources etc.

Thank you masu very good post. Fusion if perfected is definitely more efficient than fission. However in the immediate future other means are more feasible. Since the explosion in oil prices many people are finding other means to save gas.

China has a massive railroad system and structure, the next thing on their mind to save energy is using nuclear power locomotives. Good luck if they ever come up with the technology to miniturized the nuclear power plant small enough and powerful enough to power a locomotive. So far GE has the most advanced locomotive in the world and China has already ordered 300 of them. Can China one up GE, I don't think so.

so far GE

The latest on the rumor mill about China and its fusion reactor program is that they have achieved plasma state for their goal of 1,000 secs and are talking about buil;ding a second one.

I have not heard much about China as regards to fusion for a long long time, anybody knows what is going on?

Probably was a PR stunt in the first place

China has finally achieve its goal of plasma state for 1,000 secs.

I predict in 2018 they will have a commercially operated reactor. Several years ahead of time.

It would be appreciated if you could post any links to articles that could confirm this claim.

It is easily accessible in the internet--wilileaks. Trust me the Chinese are working furiously in being the first country to utilize fusion power. With their powerful computers assisting it is when not if. If we were not stuck in the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan we would and should be the first nation with fusion energy. The Chinese already have the fastest and most powerful computer in the world and in a year or two they are coming out with one that's four times as fast,you can check that out easily in the internet also.

In a recent article , NIF believes that sustainable fusion energy can be achieved by 2012. The NIF or National Ignition Facility is located

forty miles East of San Francisco.

I sincerely hope that nuclear fusion is as close as people are intimating, however, keep in mind, containing plasma for 1,000 seconds is not fusion, it just means that you can hang on to the fuel and keep it hot. Containing and then more importantly utilizing the fusion reaction is a totally different ball game and at the moment I don't think any real attention is being paid to how one might capture and then utilize the energy once a sustainable fusion core is obtained.

This is a guess but even if a sustainable fusion reaction is achieved by 2012 I doubt we will see any operational fusion power stations prior to 2030, but that's got more to do with controlling and maintaining the bureaucracy than controlling and maintaining the reaction.

Keep in mind folks, we're not just talking about hanging onto a piece of the sun we're talking about hanging onto a piece of the sun's core and that is in no way a trivial matter.

The scientists at the NIF at Livermore says that by 2020 they will have a viable fusion reactor going in other words commercial. That facility is three times the size of a football field, they are putting 4.5 billion dollars into the project initially, they have already attained sustainable fusion but I do not think that they have reached their goal yet. As for China they are pretty secretive about their project(s)

what we know is from leaks from reliable sources. Iran has been bragging about how they can bring fusion on in a few years but I kind of dismiss that because even the top most advanced countries have not been able to do it.

At the NIF, 192 laser beams were fired at a glass container containing deuterium and tritium, 1.3 million joules of energy was released tremendous net gain in energy proving that once this process can be controlled and sustained we have something going.

"they have already attained sustainable fusion"

Where did that come from? Admittedly Australia is on the other side of the planet but I haven't seen, heard or read anything about anybody achieving a sustainable nuclear fusion reaction.

However, I would dearly like to be proven wrong so If you have any information about this so called sustainable fusion reaction could you please post links to it so we can all read about it.

No one has achieved controlled sustainable fusion yet but the NIF says it is possible and probable by 2012. Here are the countries who thinks they can do this soon: 1. Iran 2. China 3. USA of course 4. North Korea.

Fusion is the Holy Grail of energy production, you bet people are working hard to achieve it and they will at all costs.

"...it is possible and probable by 2012..."

Wishful thinking is a wonderfukl excuse to fund fantasies - I though the 90's Cold Fusion Scam was over and done with.

How naive of me

http://www.warmdebate.com/water-car-hoax

"Here are the countries who thinks they can do this soon: 1. Iran 2. China 3. USA of course 4. North Korea."

Yea right, do you think two totalitarian regimes like Iran and North Korea have more than a snow ball's chance in hell of achieving sustained nuclear fusion?

If you put date 2012 now and then 2013 next year and then 2014 next to next year then people think it is close so they can give a lot of funds. If you tell 2020 then they will say wait, there is little or no funds. It is psychological game plan.

It is more short of statistical now. However it is sure worth doing this experiment.

How can you be so sure it is worth spending any more funds on top of the 30 billion dollars already spent during the last 25 years on Cold Fusion, all over the world ?

When some corrupt top scientist scam up to create a basic research with a an experiment-mechanism designed to give controversial validity of results, it can be safely called a fraud, a scam to milk research funds for proving a shaky theoretical assumption by funders who are not intellectually equipped to review or contradict those shaky assumptions - you can understand how that fraud works.

Such scam can only work when top scientist come up with such design, to test the unprovable using avantgarde theoretical claims which non of the funding executive can understand or disprove. Such scam can only work in claims for Bacic Research.

It could never work with claims for applicable research...

Any guess why ?

"...Trust me the Chinese are working furiously in being the first country to utilize fusion power..." - Trust is a beautiful thing. I have seen no such link yet.

It is as if I would tell you that fusion reactor is already working in my back-yard for the last year or so - enabling my humble electric consumption with some extra juice for my neighbors.

Trust me. The thing was published last week in wikiLeaks.

Right... My reaction exactly...

As said before: the coolest fusion reaction known to man, is possible at 14,000,000 degrees. Man has no confinement and utilisation technology for such high temperature - except in the form of a bomb.

Get real, will you ?

Yuval, as I mentioned before there are at least four different countries that says they will be able to tackle fusion fusion soon. Just read about it in the internet.

One of this country is the USA,which almost never lies. Those NIF scientists said so not me. 2012 sustainable fusion.

If the USA says so,it is reliable--2012.

Where ? - Just one link of the US to saying so - Please - let us see for ourselves

Is a link to the stated above too much to ask for ?

Just look this up=== NIF sustainable fusion possible by 2012 ===at least five different places will tell you. Fusion is not that hard as you think,there are a lot of people smarter than you and have the resources to do it===Iran,North Korea,USA and China.

So basically - you cannot refer us to any viable link where it says fusion research have any credible rsults.

Happy New Year