[ExI] Lockheed skunkworks announcement about fusion

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] 
...

>>...The machine was designed by Dr. Thomas McGuire who did his PhD thesis
on fusors at MIT. Chase said that "the fuel (two isotopes of hydrogen) has
six orders [1.000.000] of magnitude higher energy density than oil. You
can't make a bomb from it, and it has no meltdown risk. It's very different
from nuclear fission reactors.
------------- BillK
_______________________________________________


>...Hmmm, did he mean 100 MW for one second, then an hour to soak up and
convert that resultant heat?  Is he suggesting some form of direct charging
of capacitors using an electromagnetic pulse?  I just don't see it BillK.
It occurred to me why it might be tempting to believe this, since nuclear
aircraft carriers have compact power plants on this order.  But they also
have a convenient heat sink right there: they dump the waste heat directly
into the sea... spike




Could it be a misunderstanding by a news copy editor?  Perhaps what Dr.
McGuire really meant is that this is analogous to a reactor core which he
thinks can be operated to emit heat at 100MW, and that reactor can be hauled
around on a truck.  To use it, you need to immerse that core in water inside
a sturdy pressure vessel and use the resultant steam to run turbines and
reject the heat with one of those proletariat-terrifying hourglass-shaped
cooling towers at a traditional power plant like the one Mr. Burns owns on
the Simpsons.  That I suppose is vaguely believable, and I hope that is what
he meant.  Perhaps the news guy wrote the article to make it sound like a
truck can roll up with enormous plug-ins with enough capacity to power a
typical American city of about 20k population.  

spike