Well, fission is really only feasible for a short period of time as we've only got 80 years of commercially viable Uranium in the ground
Fusion has the advantage of using an abundant source of fuel. From what I've read about it - and the gazzes I've exchanged with a b3tan involved in an experimental fusion reactor project - the main constraint is one of containment. It's more of an engineering problem than a theoretical physics problem.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:44, 2 replies, latest was 13 years ago)

what are you planning to fuel your fusion reactor with, out of interest?

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:45, Reply)

Kittens :(
He's an awful awful man
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:47, Reply)

it's spelt Kityums.

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:50, Reply)

Plastascine that you heat in the oven.
Hard as a fucking rock that stuff.
(Bazongaloid, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:48, Reply)

Fimo

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:48, Reply)

pricks who play hockey and have gay nicknames

(quintsy, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:49, Reply)

It's not my fusion reactor
I could build a model one out of lego if you'd like? I can fuel it with little bits of lego.

As I understand it, it comes down to sourcing Deuterium, which is very abundant in seawater.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:50, Reply)

which you'll need to extract from seawater.
which needs power. lots of it. it's the same argument as to why hydrogen fuelled cars are a gigantic fucking scam, ecologically and sustainably speaking.


Look, I'm being deliberately facetious here, I'm sure there's something in fusion, I'm just pointing out that there are massive flaws in it, which people somehow brush under the carpet with something that's seen as "the future"
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:52, Reply)

Hydrogen fuelled cars would be great
but it's difficult to store and trasnport the hydrogen, and difficult to manufacture it in situ efficiently.

But solve eitehr of those problems and BAM free electricity.
(Bazongaloid, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:54, Reply)

erm, dude
you're made of hydrogen and so is the sea

you don't need to 'manufacture' it
(quintsy, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:56, Reply)

neither of those are the problems at all (well, they are, but not the really big one)
it's impossible to make hydrogen in any quantity without catalytically cracking hydrocarbons. Which a) uses hydrocarbons you could have just burnt in a petrol engine and b) takes place about 1300 centigrade, meaning it uses up just a tiny bit of energy to make it.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:57, Reply)

Turn the thermostat up a bit and BAM!

(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:59, Reply)

You can electrolyse water.
Only not very efficiently. Which is one of the points I made above.

Do keep up.
(Bazongaloid, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:59, Reply)

The sun also emits a lot of Deuterium
The surface of the moon is covered in the stuff apparently. Of course, we can't sweep all the shit off the streets of London at a reasonable cost, let alone the surface of the moon, so that may be a few decades off just yet.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:02, Reply)

you can't at scale.
using current tech you could probably electrolyse enough water annually to cover about 1% of the private vehicles in London, I think.

And it uses more energy to electrolyse water than you get by burning hydrogen and it always will do, that's not a problem that can be "solved" because it's a fundamental thermodynamic principle. So, it's not free anything. It's a higher cost both financially and in energy terms, it's just a load of smoke and mirrors to make it appear not to be.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:05, Reply)

That is rendered nearly moot if the energy conversion has been done already.
Those fossil fuels required energy input to get to their current state, it just took many millions of years.

If we sweep up solar deuterium from the surface of an asteroid, the sun has already done the hard bit for us.

In theory of course.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:22, Reply)

that might well be fine for a fusion reactor
it's not gonna power a hydrogen car though, which is what we're on about here.

Although, I'm prepared to take at least a small punt that the energy required to get a harvesting vehicle clear of the earth's gravitational pull might be more than you could ever recover from the deuterium it could collect.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:25, Reply)

Well, we already send vehicles with electrolyticly separated hydrogen and oxygen to the moon
Which is a far better use of it than simply cracking it to power millions of cars, wasting gigawatts of energy in the process merely as a sop to the big oil companies who are investing in hydrogen storage technology.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:39, Reply)

Cracking methane emitted from landfills.
This is another revenue stream that will make me a billionaire.
(PsychoChomp, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:04, Reply)

+ once I can persuade someone to invest several million pounds in my not-yet-started start-up company

( tangledupinblue hairy badge with moving eyes, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:05, Reply)

just run the cars on methane. it burns.

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:06, Reply)

only the really hot ones

(quintsy, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:12, Reply)

It's not emmited consistantly
and a lot of it leaks away. It's not gonna work.
(Bazongaloid, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:14, Reply)

Tell me about it
Someone in my office is fucking leaking a lot of it right now

:-(
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:18, Reply)

alright then anerobic digestors.

(PsychoChomp, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:24, Reply)

These are a great idea
and should be used everywhere. As should waste incinerators.
(Bazongaloid, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:33, Reply)

Fully agree
doing some stuff with the whisky industry up here associated with that. About the only downside of AD units is that they don't handle high protein levels very well so you have to be selective about the food waste you put it them. But otherwise they're a no-brainer.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:38, Reply)

I agree, they kick out a decent amount of heat as well.
I wonder if there's much study about the ideal size for them.
(PsychoChomp, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:38, Reply)

fucking shitloads of studies, yep
they are fairly flexible, although too big and the heat is a problem. Plus, they self-poison.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:41, Reply)

There was a piece a few years back
about a guy who signed up for every piece of junk mail he could, and then every morning loaded it into a device that compressed it into bricks and used them to power his furnace.

Not practical on a large scale, I suspect.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 14:38, Reply)

Shhhh, don't tell people what i do for a living!

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:46, Reply)

pfft

(quintsy, Thu 18 Oct 2012, 13:50, Reply)