Fusion energy was: SNOW JOB

[quoted original message omitted]

> KH.Ranitzsch Wrote:

> You don't seem to be aware of the ratio of the energy outputs of

Not precisely, but you have obviously educated me. Thanks.

> For any given mass of

THAT much I WAS aware of - I am not an engineer, neither am I a buffoon.

> As an illustration: The effect Nuclear weapons is measured in Megatons,

> that

Either way, it still means my point was valid, that a smart high-tech
force
will take along hydrogen conversion equipment or have a built-in
conversion capacity to prevent a loss of fuel supply.

2B^2

> On 6-Feb-02 at 14:04, Brian Bilderback (bbilderback@hotmail.com) wrote:

> Either way, it still means my point was valid, that a smart high-tech

It depends, if you can use the common isotope of hydrogen then your equipment
is a couple of electrodes and some kind of compressor to capture and compress
the hydrogen. You could get that anywhere that had a tech high enough for
gasoline engines.

OTH if you only fuse the deuterium isotope seperating it could be a bit more
difficult. AFAIK all current research on fusion is using deuterium. Anyone
know how you seperate deuterium from normal hydrogen?

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> Roger Books wrote:

> On 6-Feb-02 at 14:04, Brian Bilderback (bbilderback@hotmail.com)
wrote:
> > Either way, it still means my point was valid, that a smart

If you have hydrogen gas, you can use gaseous centrifuges. Compared to
isotopic seperation of uranium hexaflouride (mass differs by three parts four
hundred), seperating deuterium from hydrogen (with a mass ratio of three to
two, maybe four

[quoted original message omitted]

> On 7-Feb-02 at 02:36, K.H.Ranitzsch (KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de) wrote:

Pharoh Ramses did not have a null-gravity tank nor was he firing
Plasma weapons. You are also assuming high efficiency. You shouldn't be
jumping down anyones throat when your assumptions are as much a shot in the
dark as his.

Remember, we don't have anti-matter with a 50% heat efficiency.
We have fusion, even if we only use 0.0001% of the energy we are still in
wonderful shape because we are burning water.

K.H.Ranitzsch schrieb:
> ----- Original Message -----

> If you just assume the factor 1 million:

To Roger: (Sorry, hit the delete button before I decided to answer)

I was not talking about antimatter annihilation, but about fusion and fission.
Nor about high efficiencies. I illustrated my argument with nuclear explosion
which are awfully inefficient.

http://www.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/home.html
Has a section on nuclear physics where the available energies are discussed.
They are given in eV (Electron Volts, a convenient energy unit for events at
the atomic scale) and MeV (Million Electron Volts):

Ennergy from antimatter annihilation (proton + antiproton) : 2x 1875 =
3750 MeV Energy from fusing two protons (hydrogen): 2.2 MeV Energy from the
fission of one Uranium atom: 200 MeV Energy binding an electron to a hydrogen
atom: 13.6 eV The latter is an upper limit for what you can get from a
chemical reaction. Burning hydrogen and oxygen will produce rather less
(sorry, don't have a number handy). A factor of about a million. Anitmatter
annihilation produces a thousand times more than that.

http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/plambeck/index.htm
"The binding energy of the atom is given by the Einstein equation as
[...]  1.43 x 10+13 J/mol). This amount of energy is much greater than
the normal energies which are involved in the formation of chemical
bonds, a few to a few hundred kJ/mol."

"a few hundred KJ" is 10E+5 J, compared to 10E+13 this is a factor of
10E+8 (100 Million)

Whatever way you cut it, and even assuming extremely poor efficiencies, with a
nuclear engine you wouldn't have to worry about refuelling for the foreseeable
mechanical lifetime of the tank. This holds even for any energy use which we
can realistically asses (e.g.GEV mobility or Laser guns).

How long a tank with grav drive and a plasma gun will run on a full
tank of hydrogen is left as an exercise for the reader :-)

Greetings

On  7-Feb-02 at 05:42, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de
(KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de)
wrote:

> Whatever way you cut it, and even assuming extremely poor

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. 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. 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.

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.

Roger Books schrieb:
> I'm betting that whatever way you dice it fuel is so

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

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

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

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

Greetings

Roger Books schrieb:
> Now, we're betting on it being made small enough to

Even if you use a liter of water a day, fuel will basically have stopped being
a logistics burden. My rather small car has a 40 Liter fuel tank. I don't know
what size a M1's or Leopard's fuel tank is, but I bet it is rather bigger.
Enough for months of unrefuelled operations.

Your crew will need more drinking water than that, even in temperate climates.

Greetings

> From: KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de (K.H.Ranitzsch)
*snip*

Done now? Fell better?

Good.

All along, my point has been that FGP will be efficient enough that the "Oops,
we're out of fuel" scenario probably won't be an issue in any but the most
extreme cases. My intention was not to agree that fuel WOULD run out, rather
it was to show that if it DID, it would be rather simple to replace. I think
we're in agreement that FGP will be efficient and reliable.

If by implying that forces might want to take along fuel conversion gear, I
offended your scientific sensibilities, I apologize. However, there was no
need to take such a condescending tone. I DO understand just how significant
operable fusion power would be for energy efficiency. I simply understood that
it was beside my point.

2B^2

[quoted original message omitted]

> From: KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de (K.H.Ranitzsch)

Well handled, my good man. No hard feelings.

2B^2

> KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

(snippage)

> If you have a fusion reactor, it will run for a looooooooong time on

Just one question...(no I am not questioning anyone's logic here..)

I love the idea of fusion also. But I have a hard time getting any info that
relates to games...ie: how long will the fuel last, how big a typical reactor
would be, ect...

At our current stage of fusion development, how did they (the science boys)
figure a little hydrogen will go a long way?

In the RPG GURPS Space, they include a fusion reactor for players ships, which
"takes no fuel...internal fuel supply lasts 200 years." When I read this, I
thought Steve Jackson had blown a gasket...didn't seem real. After reading
Traveller, where the smallest fusion reactor takes 20 tons (liquid) hydrogen
fuel to move a 100 ton ship (displacement) 1 parsec in a week...

I quess my question is this: Is this a real possibility? No foolin?

If so, that would be super cool!  8-D

> "K.H.Ranitzsch" wrote:

> In the 1950's, people were much more naive about nuclear power, and I

The nuclear plane was discontinued for the simple reason of cost
effectiveness. Unless it carried fuel for reheat (which defeated the purpose
of nuclear power), it was no faster than a conventional bomber (and we are not
referring to the Valkyrie or Hustler), yet many times the cost.

> The most horrendous project I have seen was "Pluto", a cruise missile
Added
> "bonus": any land under its flight path would have been uninhabitable

I question that a crashed Pluto could be anywhere near as bad as an RBMK1000.
The TORY reactor does not burn in contact with oxygen, so the worst vector for
the fission products is eliminated. The engine itself does not produce a lot
of fallout as there is not that much dust in the air. The neutron activation
of materials that it flies over produces short lived radiation, so it would
only be uninhabitable for a short time (this is of no consolation for any
living thing underneath as it flew by, but we need dosimetric data to
determine the real hazard). More importantly, the RBMK is rated at two times
the TORY's output (maybe three). TORY does not have anywhere near the same
inventory of