Science Squabbling

Potentially the most important news of the last 100 years. Cool.

^^^ So so this! It breaks my heart that most people I know don't give a shit when I start ranting about ITER. If it ends up being efficient enough to become a viable everyday energy source. It'll literally change everything.

Peter Higgs has been awarded the Nobel prize in physics.

Total energy of a system is conserved.

Not true, forum posts are sometimes deleted without any replacement.

Not true, forum posts are sometimes deleted without any replacement.

I have it on good authority that for every deleted post someone posts in the bike helmet thread, thus maintaining the 'pointless post' total...

Foffa thread >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Peter Higgs has been awarded the Nobel prize in physics.

Higgs Boson (pictured) will get extra food for this tonight:

Higgs Boson (pictured) will get extra food for this tonight:

Since the observation of the Higgs boson has precipitated this award, I can only approve of this. Also, increasing his mass seems somehow appropriate.

^ lol

It would be even more appropriate by firing her food at her at near light speed.

Although I imagine Dammit's other half may be a bit miffed when he starts flinging Whiskas around the house.

She'd probably be alright with it to be fair, throwing food at the walls is one step closer to painting them.

at near light speed.

But how will he cope with their change in mass?

headexploding.gif

I throw Monty's food all over the flat and he chases after it.
Mind you, it's little biscuits, not tins of horsemeat.

But how will he cope with their change in mass?
He'll have more time to think about it...

The mass will not change. Mass is an invariant.

Of course the momentum will no longer be equal to the product of mass and velocity, which is where I think this misunderstanding comes from.

Total cost around £50 Billion for a working reactor. (About the cost of the HS2 consultation)
ftfy

If

ftfy

Peter Higgs has been awarded the Nobel prize in physics.

Repost that for you

I bet it's a PHiggs.

^^^ So so this! It breaks my heart that most people I know don't give a shit when I start ranting about ITER. If it ends up being efficient enough to become a viable everyday energy source. It'll literally change everything.

As a power source for the foreseeable future, is this really much different to fission in practice ? Both could (if run properly without cutting corners) supply plenty of power without poisoning anyone, and both are fairly easy to fear-monger against. I think we'll see see more "OMG they might lose control of the reaction and melt the world, we need crippling safety restrictions" if fusion is ever enough of a near term threat to the profits of existing power station owners.

fusion has little to no radioactive waste. And non radioactive fuel.

It's a totally different environmental cost, Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three mile island, all would be largely trivial in a fusion plant

All that helium though, we'd all have squeaky voices.

fusion has little to no radioactive waste. And non radioactive fuel.

It's a totally different environmental cost, Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three mile island, all would be largely trivial in a fusion plant

But this isn't the case is it? Everything inside a fusion reactor becomes radioactive and parts wear out, need to be replaced and disposed of. So you still end up with a lot of radioactive material that you have to do something with.

Just because the fuel isn't radioactive, doesn't mean there's no problem.

But this isn't the case is it? Everything inside a fusion reactor becomes radioactive and parts wear out, need to be replaced and disposed of. So you still end up with a lot of radioactive material that you have to do something with.

Hardly. Most of the waste, which is the core itself will have a much much shorter half life. less than 100 years. Low level waste? Around 100 odd, which is way better than the output caused by fission reaction and all the heavy metals. If I remember right, you don't have to have very specific building materials (If someone could expand on that) so you could technically use materials that don't become easily radioactive.
Waste management for a fusion reactor will be far far easier than for a fission one.

^^How radioactive? 'Bury it in concrete for a 1000 years' reactive, or 'not as bad as a weekend in Cornwall' radioactive?

Think chak answered this.

As a power source for the foreseeable future, is this really much different to fission in practice ? Both could (if run properly without cutting corners) supply plenty of power without poisoning anyone, and both are fairly easy to fear-monger against. I think we'll see see more "OMG they might lose control of the reaction and melt the world, we need crippling safety restrictions" if fusion is ever enough of a near term threat to the profits of existing power station owners.

Well, there's an awful lot more accessible tritium around than uranium (millennia vs centuries), which is a plus for fusion, as well as the lack of nuclear weapons proliferation concerns. Of course, the thorium fuel cycle (also fission) is suggested to solve both those problems, but that is commercially unproven.

The side effects of losing control of a tokamak would be very bad for the tokamak - e.g. ITER will have a stored magnetic energy of 6.4 GJ == 1.5 tons of TNT or a large bomb going off - so the reactor would be utterly destroyed - but not much more than that. The reactor (ignoring fancy pants aneutronic fuel cycles) will be lightly radioactive (isotopes generally with half lives < 20 years) but we can reasonably plan to keep a power station site safe for a century unlike with fission's waste needing tens of thousands.