[ExI] pentagon wants orbiting solar power stations

[John K Clark]

"hkhenson" <hkhenson at rogers.com>
> The microwave beam is only about 1/4 as intense as sunlight

If you just wanted it to produce enough energy to just run the cars in the
USA the solar satellite in Geosynchronous orbit would look larger than the
full moon as seen on the Earth, and the receiving antenna would cover
several of the larger states in the western USA. Just doesn't sound terribly
practical to me.

> Both fusion and fission generate neutrons.

Not all fusion reactions produce neutrons. The fusion reaction between non
radioactive deuterium (Hydrogen 2) and non radioactive Helium 3 produces
non radioactive Helium 4, an easily controlled proton, 18.3 mev of energy,
and most important of all, no neutrons.

Unfortunately you need a higher temperature to achieve it than the
deuterium tritium reaction most are talking about. Also, there is not much
Helium 3 on the Earth, although there is probably a lot of it that could be
mined on comets and on the ice moons of the outer planets. Obviously this
is not exactly a short term solution; if regular fusion is always 30 years
away then Helium 3 will happen 30 years after that.

> neutrons can be silently diverted into making Pu 239.

That is true, in fact you don't even need to do any secret diverting, all
nuclear power reactors produce Plutonium, it can't be prevented. However
as we've already made thousands of tons of the stuff and you only need
about 10 pounds to make a bomb the cat is already out of the bag; I'm
not sure a little more Plutonium in the world will make things substantially
more dangerous than it already is.

 John K Clark