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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric who wrote (23950)	10/21/2010 3:50:54 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Respond to of 86356

you said you didn't have a physics degree

To: Eric who wrote (23950)	10/21/2010 5:01:07 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 86356

If your an engineer who's paid even minimal attention to the relevant areas, then you can probably make an argument for your case. But saying "I'm an engineer with a physics degree", even if its true and could be verified, is not an argument for your case. Even if you where a Nobel prize winner in physics with a specialty in nuclear physics, who has in recent years moved in to fission-fusion experiments full time, your status still would not amount to an argument for your case. It would be reason for people to pay attention to your arguments, but you'd have to actually present one. You don't need a fusion reaction with a positive energy balance, and you don't need even need to sustain a fusion reaction, in order to operate the fission-fusion system. Lasers hitting pellets of fuel can start a reaction, which stops, and then continues again with the next pulse. The lasers will take far more energy than we can usefully extract from the fusion reaction, its a negative sum game, but it sparks the fission reaction which produces a lot more power. Usable straight fusion is more difficult and most likely further away, because you do need to have a positive energy balance from the fusion reaction, which we are apparently not close to. (The old "its 20 to 30 years away", for the last 40 or so years.)