Ferrari Mailing List: Re: New Physics is not going to save us

[Martin Stark (MStark]

I certainly agree, and would enjoy eating irradiated, mold free 
strawberries if not for the blissful ignorance of the common folk.  
FWIW, my son has his buddies down to our Provincetown place this 
weekend.  One of their dads is a nuclear engineer who works for the NRC 
and reviews and approves license extensions for existing nucs.

~Marty (who is experiencing F-car withdrawl pending major transmission 
repair.)

georgedodson [at] comcast.net wrote:

> All,
>
> Sorry, I am a day or two behind in my reading. If anyone on the list is waiting for some "new physics" to come along and provide a new energy source, they need to take a cold shower. Physics research is at least 50 to 100 years ahead of applicable technology.   Quarks and lattice quantum chromodynamics are not going to hellp. The most advanced energy sources now  and on the horizon are the breeder reactor and plasma fusion. both from the 1950's. If you think that wind and solar are going to save you, then you need to wake up and look a the power density numbers. Solar is ~ 1kw/meter square at noon at the equator. Multiply that tines ~3% efficiency and you cover Rhode Island with solar cells to equal one nuke. A wind tower has about as much power as an inline six cylinder. Greenpeace will sue you if you try to put one on a scenic mountain and Ted Kennedy will oppose you putting one up where he likes to sail his $1-2M  racing yachts. So, what are you going to do? Plasma fusion is still 30 years away from an operable power reactor, even with ITER, and where is this mountain of Tritium that you are planng to burn? the only answer is a Li blanket around a reactor, so why nor run reactors.  Power reactors have Avogadro's number of atoms in less than a thimble and produce 200 MeV/fission. Plasma fusion runs in what most people would see as a pretty good vacuum and D-T produces only ~20 Mev/fusion. It has the energy density of, you guessed it, an inline 6 cylinder. Then there is the small problem of containing the Sun 3 meters from something that you can fabricate in the lab. The French are 80% nuclear, they have a breeder program and reprocess all the nuchear fuel rods in Europe. There isn't even enough Uranium on the planet for the electricity that we need. We need breeder reactors and we need them now.  
>
> Regards,
>
> George
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