Via M Simon, this is, well, what we’ve been saying for a couple years now:
“It promises energy so cheap as to be virtually free. Some scientists believe that power would be driven down to 1% or less of its current cost. Even if it were 5% or 10%, though, the impact would be staggering.
“The economic roots of global poverty would disappear. Within a decade, desalinized water, food, transportation and most physical goods would plummet in price. The Third World would achieve a higher standard of living than the First World enjoys today. The First World would have options that are almost inconceivable. Whole sectors would collapse, but new ones would rise and more than compensate for the lost equity values.”
It almost goes without saying: This technology still has many hurdles to clear. “But the chance that polywell is what the scientists say it is, however, requires that we watch this very, very closely,” says Patrick.
One percent is a stretch. Ten percent is entirely possible, though.
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Thanks!
I am all for fusion, all for cheap abundant energy that would transform the world.
But if you think that transformation will be entirely peaceful and beneficial to the human race, you might need a lesson in Unintended Consequences.
Don’t underestimate the destabilizing effect of such a transformation to our fundamental economic assumptions.
CC,
Most transformative inventions like this have been greatly increased peace, as well as living standards. Most of us are too young to remember the initial effects of railroads and electricity and telegraphs, which also greatly upset the assumptions of the time.
It’s hard to see much downside to a cheap clean non-weaponizable energy source.
The Saudis would be unhappy about it, but they’ve made some basic preparations against this.
The Iranians would be unhappy, with nuclear weapons.
Dave and Dishman:
When electricity, telegraphs and railroads “transformed” the world, it was a much slower world, a much less connected world and a much less interdependent world.
I say again, I am a huge supporter of fusion and want very much for it to succeed. But the day someone announces nearly infinitely abundant energy at 1/10 the current price, there will be significant negative consequences around the world. How significant? I dunno, but I can easily see the middle east flare into major war, I can see countries (like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Mexico and Venezuela) whose economy is dependent on massive oil exports react with military actions to “protect their economic interests” etc. Such an announcement would herald a massive redistribution of economic power in the world.
It’s a different world today. The stakes are much higher, and the power in the hands of irrational zealots is much higher as well.
I don’t doubt there will be some manner of chaos.
The question (which is rather important to me) is the full extent of it.
I don’t think Oogo would be able to do anything.
The Saudis have made preparations, and believe they can survive.
The Russians will probably look for a pragmatic way forward. It may not be pleasant, but I don’t think it will be a catastrophe.
Mexico will be a mess no matter what.
The Chinese will reconsider the “inevitability” of conflict with us, and probably conclude that making money has served them well and will continue to.
If it happens soon enough that Iran collapses without using nukes, then it’s all good. Otherwise, it’ll be messy.
I hope you are right Dishman, but I also hope that world leaders who are (hopefully) following the potential introduction of abundant, cheap, environmentally acceptable energy realize that it is frequently the Law of Unintended Consequences that drives social unrest, and that they had better be preparing for a transition that is not all sweetness and light.
CC, wouldn’t the existing energy transportation, transmission, and usage infrastructures have to be radically altered before other energy source markets would collapse catastrophically from far cheaper polywell fusion competition?
I don’t think the world’s hunger for gas and oil is going to decrease anytime soon, and while anti-human luddite ecoweenieism enrages me, I can easily live with a drastic drop in the usage of coal on not only human but general environmental health grounds. And while nuclear fission make have trouble too, OTOH I have foreign policy reasons to welcome that as well.
Ack:
There would have to be significant changes IF the energy we are talking about is the energy people use to heat their homes and fuel their vehicles, but nobody’s talking about putting a fusion reactor in a car yet. So the major change would be bringing fusion powerplants on line and bringing them onto the existing power grid. That would be no different than hooking up a coal, natural gas, hydro-electric or nuclear power plant, so the real answer to your question is “no, not really, not yet.”
Of course when we start converting to electric vehicles (>cough<) that infrastructure will have to change, but that’s already a goal of the environmentalists so nothing changes much there either.
… But (continuing my last comment) one thing that much cheaper electricity delivered over existing power lines WILL do is actually make electric cars MUCH more economically viable.
Suppose we can build a water to gasoline plant using a fusion power source that is 30% efficient. That puts a cap on the price of transportation fuel.
Or being a little more realistic a water to ethanol plant.
If these polywell fusion reactors are simple, reliable and inexpensive enough, we could do damn near anything we wanted to with them. We could solve our water problems in the American west overnight by designing and building turnkey water desalination and pumping stations to provide fresh water for drinking and irrigation anywhere we wanted in the world. We could design and build plants that did nothing but generate hydrogen from sea water. That hydrogen could be used as direct fuel or as part of an infrastructure based on hydrogen fuel cells. If we really wanted to appease the Enviro-nuts, we could devote entire fusion reactors to pulling carbon directly from the air. In fact there are few problems in the world that cannot be either solved, or made significantly easier TO solve by cheap, abundant, environmentally approved energy.
In the for what it’s worth department, there was a news story out last week from a naval research lab indicating cold fusion has been demonstrated.
Dave, I have a question. Can you point me to a source critical of Polywell, one that you think makes a reasonable argument instead of just sniping etc.? Im not saying its a source you need to agree with obviously, but rather just the one youd point to as a good principled disagreement.
my imaging physics background makes me wonder if there aren’t any xray byproducts from having the electrons zooming around in proximity to the hydrogen ions. its a serious problem in CT imaging because its junk energy wavelengths that interfere with the image and increase radiation dose. I guess dose isnt an issue in energy, but you are going to probably sacrifice a lot of efficiency that way, which is going to eat into your output/input ratio.
frankly between Polywell in the long term and pebble bed reactors in teh shortterm, I dont see how we cant win the energy game. I am pessimistic about Obama’s support for nuclear power, but I figure if he doesnt step up we can buy energon cubes from the Chinese.
also – i may be surrendering my physics phd for asking such a stupid and basic question, but am I correct in understanding that teh fundamental difference between a polywell and a bussard reactor is that the polywell uses a magnetic field instead of a physical grid for the cathode (though the anode is still a physical surface) ?
and that the fundamental difference between a polywell and a tokamak is that the tokamak uses no physical electrodes, only magnetic fields? I had assumed that tokamaks dont use electrostatic acceleration, but i could be/probably am wrong about this.
yes i guess i could google but i think you’ll give me a more integrated answer.
Aziz,
Hrm, well, its a bit difficult because the arguments are extremely technical. The closest thing would be Art Carlson’s arguments on Talk Polywell in the theory forum. His arguments are probably wrong (the WB-7 results appear to rule out much of what he claims) but he does argue reasonably.
The reasonable argument you will hear the most often is the Rider paper that claims to establish limits on IEC fusion power well short of net power. However, studies done since then tend to argue Rider was probably incorrect in several of his assumptions (for instance, Rider assumes square wells, but it is now established experimentally that parabolic wells are more realistic and give large Q values).
The best argument against Polywell is that something we don’t know yet will cause losses to scale much faster than the r^2 Bussard proposed, or other unforeseen effects will doom a larger machine (electron maxwellianization perhaps, which isn’t an issue in smaller machines). Don’t let enthusiasts kid you, given the poor record of fusion device predictions in general these negative outcomes are still susbtantially likely.
Aziz,
Don’t be ashamed, I humiliated myself more than a few times learning about Polywells. Still do, actually.
Polywell is more or less synonymous with Bussard reactor; there were some polyhedral magnetic well machines proposed before Bussard but he greatly refined them and trademarked the term Polywell. What you’re describing in graf 1 is actually the main difference between a fusor and a Polywell. A fusor has a physical cathode, a Polywell confines electrons magnetically to create a virtual cathode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
The difference with a tokamak is a bit more obvious.
Basically, a tokamak is a heated plasma confined by magnetic fields. The really difficult thing is to keep the plasma hot enough for fusion (10-100KeV). In IEC fusion (fusors and Polywells), you don’t heat particles, you accelerate them with a cathode (temp=velocity), but it’s very difficult to get a high density because in a fusor that would melt your grid, but on the plus side it’s trivially easy to accelerate particles to tens of KeV.
So in a tokamak, density is easy and temperature is hard. In IEC, temperature is easy but density is hard.
dave that was succinct and clear. thank you!
i think that the radiation losses i mentionmed above might be one of tose negative outcome factors. who knows whether they can model it (the mag fields are pretty hairy in there, arent they?) but as you scale up, the problem will get worse. We call it brehmstrahlung radiation in imaging physics and its always a problem.
It’s a different world today. The stakes are much higher
Actually, no, the stakes are much lower because food and water are so plentiful now. That’s one reason wars have declined so much. There are fewer war deaths now as a percentage of population than at any time in history.
Also, Acksiom is correct: there will still be a huge market for dense liquid energy like gasoline, because it has obvious utility. Everything would just get cheaper, at the expense of current electric power plants.
Sorry Aziz, I missed your x-ray question. Yes, that is called bremsstrahlung (braking radiation) in fusion as well and is a topic of much discussion. Bussard believed this could be avoided:
Rick Nebel, the current lead scientist, has talked in more detail about how this could be avoided. There are various strategies, such as fuel mix and manipulating virtual anode height.
It’s really more of a concern for second-generation Polywells that would fuse hydrogen with boron-11 (this is highly desirable because it produces no neutrons, just alphas that can be converted directly to electricity), because the energies involved are much higher. First-gen Polywells would burn D-D or D-T, and brem should be a minor issue there.
It’s probably worth noting here that brem is MUCH bigger problem for tokamaks, because a tokamak plasma is Maxwellian whereas a Polywell strives to be monoenergetic.
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