Hi guys, recently watched a very short documentary about a Doug Coulter and his DIY fusor research (hosted by motherboard of Vice network). Heres a link to the vid: https://youtube/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iIOZ_aMrKos Anyway in the comments section I saw Doug had commented something interesting: Ed Sm Mar 7, 2014 You have such confidence about your work , hope yo do , but that things are being in development from 70s ? and not results by now , the more near future is focus fusion from nasa to mars missions that will be interesting , but i im much more confident the real energetic breakthrough will be thorium reactors. Doug Coulter May 2, 2014 +Ed Sm No, Farnsworth/beam collider fusors have gotten ZERO money for official big sicience to develop. Now theyre so concentrated on tokomaks, or the LIF at LLNL (which is not for making energy) that they cant admit they put their bucks in the wrong place... Thorium breeders have some very nasty issues the fans gloss over. Im not holding my breath. India is working that one more than anybody else right now. Breeders have vastly increased chances of going prompt critical and the safety mechanisms proposed by the true believers are a frigging joke and will be less effective than either Chernobyl or Fukushima. shottymonsta (thats me btw) Dec 23, 2014 +Doug Coulter What is prompt critical? And I thought the frozen plug valve was fail-safe, can you go into more detail about why the safety mechanisms are a joke? Doug Coulter Dec 23, 2014 In a normal fission reactor, not all the neutrons from each fission come out at the same time, some are delayed. This gives you time to adjust the net amount of fission by adjusting control rods (short term) or changing the amount of dissolved boron compound (eats neutrons) in the cooling loop (longer term). Prompt critical is when n is > 1 - a bomb if you have bad luck. n==1 is a stable chain reaction, >1 is one that builds up rate with no limit, N> 1 so there are spare neutrons to breed the fertile fuel into fissile fuel (EG, Th232 into U233 by adding a neutron and waiting for a beta decay). Th232 doesnt fission, you have to breed it into a U isotope first (you can, in theory do all this in the same reactor). Make a mistake and dont catch enough - boom. There is no time in that case for a safety mechanism to kick in, (were talking very tiny fractions of a second here - 10e-8 or less) and thats why the so-called safety systems are a joke. Its also why every single breeder project has melted down or been shut down, its just too damn dangerous even for those who dont sweat tricky stuff. If you can think of a way to detect, then shoot in some neutron absorber in less time than a nanosecond, you might be onto something there...but so far, no one even thinks that is possible anytime in the foreseeable future. So, for you experts on here what would your response be RE: Dougs prompt critical comment.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 15:47:06 +0000
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