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GenghisKush

Well-known member
some of these experimental fusion reactors are really very beautiful instruments by themselves, apart from their function.




still, I think molten salt fission reactors are the way to go - safe and cheap and built on tech that already exists.
 

armedoldhippy

Well-known member
Veteran
i've been reading more on the fusion ideas. exactly -what- would you construct something out of to contain a reaction that could conceivably reach around oh...150 million degrees ? unobtainium ? :unsure:
 

GenghisKush

Well-known member
i've been reading more on the fusion ideas. exactly -what- would you construct something out of to contain a reaction that could conceivably reach around oh...150 million degrees ? unobtainium ? :unsure:
at those temperatures the stuff you're working with is no longer gas, it's all ionized - one or more electron has been stripped off because the kinetic energy of atoms that make up the gas is larger than the energy it takes to remove an electron; the atoms are moving fast because they're hot (and high pressure). so unlike a gas made of neutral atoms you're dealing w a "plasma" of positively-charged ions (I guess they're trying to fuse deuterium, so heavy hydrogen nuclei - a neutron stuck to a proton). first off, because they're all positively charged and because like charges repel, the ions in a plasma will be pushing against each other in a way that neutrally-charged gas molecules don't. despite that, you're dealing with stuff that has an electric charge (a positively charged nucleus) and that means you can move it with clever modulation of the electromagnetic field. they call these magnetic bottles. for single particles, they're called penning traps.
 
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