Re: Fusion energy was: SNOW JOB

Roger Books schrieb:
> I'm betting that whatever way you dice it fuel is so 
> plentiful and easy to extract that once you get beyond 
> the point where it is commercially viable development will
> cease.  

The "commercially viable" is still very much an open question today. I 
basically agree with you, but... 

> If you told a power plant company they would burn 1000 
> Liters of water a day to supply the electricity to London
> they would jump on it. There would be no incentive to make
> it any more efficient.  

Not quite. 
What do you mean by "burn 1000 Liters of water" ?

A) Pump in 1000 Liters, fuse a minuscule part of the hydrogen, send the 
rest out of the chimney ? 
 Fine, no problem.

B) Pump in 1000 Liters, fuse most of it, convert a minuscule part of 
the energy to electricity ? 
 Tough, you will get an awful lot of waste heat that you have to get 
rid in a reasonable fashion.  

Same for an AFV, of course.

> Now, we're betting on it being made small enough to run an armoured 
> vehicle, but I bet nobody would really care if it needed the 
> hydrogen from a liter of water every day.  Once you reach that 
> point there is no incentive to get better it efficiency will mostly 
> stop going up.

It will depend on how the fuel will have to be supplied to the reactor. 


For example, Implosion fusion experiments rely on tiny pellets 
containing frozen hydrogen. They have to be the right size and shape 
for the process to work. You would want to use them in a fairly 
efficient fashion. 

> And no, desert worlds are not a reason if it has humidity 
> you can extract from the atmosphere.	If it has no humidity 
> you pick up a comet.

At which point you start again to worry about the efficiency.

Greetings