New nukes ?

[The Natural Philosopher]

I am inclined to agree with you. We have a natural progression from noma reactor=>breeder=>fusion, but the fusion we dont need for a few thousand years really

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not really. Most of the background is either leftover heavy elements from the earths formation or cosmic rays.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes it will be amusing watching Germany,France and Ireland shit their pants>

[Tim Streater]

For animals, it's the potassium. About 0.01% of naturally occurring potassium is potassium-40 (K-40), which is radioactive; it has a half-life of just over a billyun years, so its not hugely radioactive, although it is the largest source of radiation in animals (and humans).

Every second, about 4300 atoms of K-40 decay in your body, yet the damage these decays do is largely repaired automatically by various cellular mechanisms.

K-40 is considered as a primordial isotope: a long enough half-life that it was there when the Earth was formed. A lot of it has decayed since then, but there's enough left in the Earth's mantle to be contributing a few hundred GW of heat towards keeping the mantle viscous if not quite liquid.

[Paul]

I think there have been some good technical articles written about the realities of fusion. The details aren't exactly secret. No matter what fuel you use, it always runs a bit dirty (the housing becomes radioactive). Even with HE3.

They mention this one has been testing with Helium, but I don't know if the purpose was to actually cause fusion or not, or just as a test gas. If they were fueling it, you'd think the helium would be HE3. But that's not mentioned.

The reason I like that one, is the shape was determined by a computer optimization program. The plasma likes to twist and turn ? Let it twist and turn. Then apply field corrections to keep it on its twisted path, so it doesn't buckle. This makes more sense than making perfectly symmetric containers and having the plasma "have a fit" and twist and turn on you.

The article says the assembly time of that one was "1 million hours". Think of all the overtime hours for the machinist.

The outstanding question at the moment, as far as I know, is what to clad the inside of it with. They have a plan but I don't know how realistic their plan is. Or whether it's a place-holder plan.

Paul

[williamwright]

Really really interesting!

Bill