British Fusion reactor in the works...

[Marc]

So, noknowes still hasn't cited his sources? This guy is sounding more and more like a news reporter all the time... How sad...

You have finally forced me to quote a source against my will.I do not believe in getting allies to prove my point.I am totally confident in my position and the depth and breadth of my knowledge.


"QUESTION:- Are nuclear fusion – and the corresponding ITER reactor – a viable solution ?

If ITER was really everything people tell us we would be in favour. But no ! ITER will never produce electricity (the official ‘goal’ is to try and run a fusion experiment for…. 400 seconds !).

2002 Nobel Prize for Physics winner, Japanese scientist Tadatoshi Koshiba,has denounced ITER as only likely to produce “very large quantities of tritium, radioactive hydrogen that is extremely dangerous to all forms of life” and “50,000 tons of nuclear waste with an average life of more than 1000 years”. And all that without any guarantee
that the fusion process will ever deliver any electricity."


Well what do you have to say to that?

A physics scientist.A nobel prize winner finally puts the final vindication to my assertion.

Have you got your hat ready?

Perhaps you're not aware of the rules of the game - you've provided the quote but you have failed to show where the quote came either citing a published article or a link on the net. For all we know the quote could of come from Uranus.

btw I could find a link from scientists who claim that the Earth is 6000 years old, global climate change is occuring, global climate change isn't happening so just because a scientist give an opinion doesn't mean jackshit unless he's able to backup his argument with evidence to support his claim.

Once again - put up the links to support your argument or shut up.

 

[FordSVT]

Ahh, the unsubstantiated opinion of someone who is is direct competition with ITER. No possible bias there. Maybe find us a source who won't profit from ITER's failure?

I also notice you also neglected to explain your ignorance of Newton's Laws.

All of the people against the ITER are either a) people who believe their system could work better, or b) people who think we shouldn't be wasting time researching future reactor technology because we should all be switching to wind and solar right now.

I'm not in favour of funding the ITER at the expense of all other research, but I can't find anyone without a financial stake in things willing to say flat our that it's impossible.

 

[msbae]

So, noknowes still hasn't cited his sources? This guy is sounding more and more like a news reporter all the time... How sad...

You have finally forced me to quote a source against my will.I do not believe in getting allies to prove my point.I am totally confident in my position and the depth and breadth of my knowledge.


"QUESTION:- Are nuclear fusion – and the corresponding ITER reactor – a viable solution ?

If ITER was really everything people tell us we would be in favour. But no ! ITER will never produce electricity (the official ‘goal’ is to try and run a fusion experiment for…. 400 seconds !).

2002 Nobel Prize for Physics winner, Japanese scientist Tadatoshi Koshiba,has denounced ITER as only likely to produce “very large quantities of tritium, radioactive hydrogen that is extremely dangerous to all forms of life” and “50,000 tons of nuclear waste with an average life of more than 1000 years”. And all that without any guarantee
that the fusion process will ever deliver any electricity."


Well what do you have to say to that?

A physics scientist.A nobel prize winner finally puts the final vindication to my assertion.

Have you got your hat ready?

Perhaps you're not aware of the rules of the game - you've provided the quote but you have failed to show where the quote came either citing a published article or a link on the net. For all we know the quote could of come from Uranus.

btw I could find a link from scientists who claim that the Earth is 6000 years old, global climate change is occuring, global climate change isn't happening so just because a scientist give an opinion doesn't mean jackshit unless he's able to backup his argument with evidence to support his claim.

Once again - put up the links to support your argument or shut up.

TYVM, Marc for explaining it to him in a way far more polite than I normally would.

 

[TheGodBen]

2002 Nobel Prize for Physics winner, Japanese scientist Tadatoshi Koshiba,has denounced ITER as only likely to produce “very large quantities of tritium, radioactive hydrogen that is extremely dangerous to all forms of life” and “50,000 tons of nuclear waste with an average life of more than 1000 years”. And all that without any guarantee
that the fusion process will ever deliver any electricity."


Well what do you have to say to that?

A physics scientist.A nobel prize winner finally puts the final vindication to my assertion.

Have you got your hat ready?

*cough*

Where is your source from? Because according to the Nobel Prize website Masatoshi Koshiba was one of three winners of the prize for physics in 2002 "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos". How are we to trust your source when they can't even get the guy's name right?

 

[Marc]

2002 Nobel Prize for Physics winner, Japanese scientist Tadatoshi Koshiba,has denounced ITER as only likely to produce “very large quantities of tritium, radioactive hydrogen that is extremely dangerous to all forms of life” and “50,000 tons of nuclear waste with an average life of more than 1000 years”. And all that without any guarantee
that the fusion process will ever deliver any electricity."


Well what do you have to say to that?

A physics scientist.A nobel prize winner finally puts the final vindication to my assertion.

Have you got your hat ready?

*cough*

Where is your source from? Because according to the Nobel Prize website Masatoshi Koshiba was one of three winners of the prize for physics in 2002 "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos". How are we to trust your source when they can't even get the guy's name right?

maybe he's got a wide ranging expertise but what does neutrino detection have to do with the attempts to a fusion power source?

 

[chardman]

If you Google "Koshiba ITER "very large quantities of tritium" LINK, it does indeed turn up one, and only one, match: This very TrekBBS thread.

A narrower search produces slightly more results.

noknowes appears to have drawn the name and quote from this bit of propaganda LINK from a French an anti-nuclear organization. Hardly an objective source. And seeing as how it appears to be the ONLY source that claims that Tadatoshi Koshiba is a Nobel Prize winning physicist, when the Nobel Society has no record of his existence, one must conclude that the "facts" presented in this document are highly suspect, and most likely "manufactured".

puts the final vindication to my assertion.

A quote, from an obviously biased site, attributed to a Nobel Prize winning scientist who apparently doesn't exist, giving a mere opinion with no accompanying data of any kind to substantiate it? Proof? If that's your idea of vindication, you have even lower scientific standards than I imagined.

 

[Sovay]

it is theoretically possible to have a car crash at 500 miles per hour and survive.

I gave you the reasons above yet you ignore them and ask me the same question.why?

did you read the reasons i gave here and in the previous post?

yes i do have scientific training and i can assure i know when a group of people get together and pull the wool over peoples eyes.THEY HAVE HAD 50 YEARS OF "IT IS 5 YEARS AWAY",THEN they extended it to 10 then 15 now it is 50 years.

can you not deduce from this that your being hoodwinked.
are people really that gullible nowadays?

i suppose the powerpoint presentation with fancy cgi brainwashes some people so well.

do you know anything about how real world funding works?

ITER and it's ilk are a juggernaut.a colossal failure.no one can comes out and say it is a failure.anyone who did would be black balled by his fellow employees.

just imagine this tube surrounded by super duper delicate magnetic coils how are you going to get any energy out?
how?

the magnetic field coils MUST enclose the torus completely leaving no room for anything else.any chink in that coil or field and poof it fizzles out.

this is assuming it even gets started in the first place as coils of plama kink.no matter how hard you try.

kink.
kink.
kink.

get an elastic band and try to stop it kinking.

ITER is the wrong shape.

what shape is the sun?

I am completely baffled by this post. I think it would serve you well to calm down and put your emotions aside on this subject. You seem to feel strongly enough about it that you are reduced to insulting everyone who does not agree with you.
Like I said, I'm married to a scientist, a PhD, so yes, I have an enormous understanding of how scientific funding works, but I don't see its relevance to the question of fusion.
Also I have to point out your post may have been easier to comprehend with the proper grammar, as it is it just makes no sense, it's a fairly random assortment of disconnected statements.

I did read every post prior to my own, but I did not see any evidence presented to substantiate your claims. Please direct me to the post where you addressed my questions.

 

[TheGodBen]

maybe he's got a wide ranging expertise but what does neutrino detection have to do with the attempts to a fusion power source?

If you wish to trust his Wikipedia page you can see that he is a professor of physics at the University of Tokyo and is a Senior Counsellor of the International Center for Elementary Particle Physics, so he probably has some understanding of fusion reactors but I'm not sure he'd be considered an authority on the subject. He is also a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists which sounds more like what we're getting at until you find out that that magazine seems to be more focused on policy rather than the technical side of things.

I'm not saying the guy doesn't know what he is talking about, he seems like a very smart man and some might say he's a genius, but my ten minutes of research on him hasn't found anything about his work on fusion technology which is odd if we are to consider him a leading expert in the field. It's up to noknowes to provide us with that evidence, and we all know the trouble he has with doing that.

 

[msbae]

Wiki is not a reliable source for anything other than extremely generalized knowledge.

 

[Sovay]

Part of the nature of science is all the competition and fierce disagreement. Every scientist has a valid opinion based on usually valid research and knowledge, but even the great ones can be horrifically wrong about some things, so I don't believe it's wise to trust all opinions of one scientist simply because they've won a nobel prize or published a few good papers. Every new discovery or paper should be treated with the same scrutiny as their first.

 

[Marc]

Part of the nature of science is all the competition and fierce disagreement. Every scientist has a valid opinion based on usually valid research and knowledge, but even the great ones can be horrifically wrong about some things, so I don't believe it's wise to trust all opinions of one scientist simply because they've won a nobel prize or published a few good papers. Every new discovery or paper should be treated with the same scrutiny as their first.

But a good scientist will also provide examples, evidence, facts, etc etc on why they think something is the case.

 

[FordSVT]

Wiki is not a reliable source for anything other than extremely generalized knowledge.

It's as accurate as any other referenced website on the Internet. It's more accurate than most mainstream news articles from places like Yahoo and MSN and CNN (especially about science) and at least you can independently verify the facts presented on the page and look at the editing history if you wish. I doubt there are many people trying to deface this physicist's website with claims he humps camels every Wednesday night.

People need to get over the whole "never trust Wikipedia" nonsense as a way to end discussion. It's a resource tool, no one here is writing an academic paper and using it as a primary source.

There have already been several studies done of Wikipedia that demonstrate it's at least as accurate as many traditional "reference" sources. I put reference source in quotes because, like an encyclopedia, that's all it is. But it's hard to find primary sources for many things on the Internet (much of it is in print or you need a subscription to read online), and given the volume of information out there that is not even available online for easy public access (not an indecipherable 547 page .pdf file) a tool like Wiki is great to have around.

Can you find any information about this physict on Wiki that is incorrect or perhaps a better source of informaiton about him that we could look at online?

 

[Sovay]

But a good scientist will also provide examples, evidence, facts, etc etc on why they think something is the case.

Of course! There are no theories without evidence, but evidence is the difference between a theory and a hypothesis. I think there are perhaps a few hypothesis floating around the thread trying to pass themselves off as something more.

 

[Chaos Descending]

It took some time to get fission up and running as power source and that's not half as difficult as fussion so of course it's going to take a long time. Afterall where would be nuclear power be without the funding the Manhattan Project recieved during WWII?

17 Years from Fermi's first pile in 1934 to the first electrical generation by EBR-I in Idaho in 1951, and then 3 years after that to Russia's first generation of power for the grid by a nuclear power plant.

So no, it didn't take any time at all to get fission "up and running".

However, I share your belief that we need to spend money on fusion like we did on fission to get fusion going.

 

[msbae]

People need to get over the whole "never trust Wikipedia" nonsense as a way to end discussion. It's a resource tool, no one here is writing an academic paper and using it as a primary source.

Who's trying to end the discussion? Even when I'm not writing academic papers, I still don't use sources that are edited by John Q. Public. I might use some of the sources listed in a Wiki article but, only if they appear credible.

 

[iguana_tonante]

If you Google "Koshiba ITER "very large quantities of tritium" LINK, it does indeed turn up one, and only one, match: This very TrekBBS thread.

A narrower search produces slightly more results.

noknowes appears to have drawn the name and quote from this bit of propaganda LINK from a French an anti-nuclear organization. Hardly an objective source. And seeing as how it appears to be the ONLY source that claims that Tadatoshi Koshiba is a Nobel Prize winning physicist, when the Nobel Society has no record of his existence, one must conclude that the "facts" presented in this document are highly suspect, and most likely "manufactured".

puts the final vindication to my assertion.

A quote, from an obviously biased site, attributed to a Nobel Prize winning scientist who apparently doesn't exist, giving a mere opinion with no accompanying data of any kind to substantiate it? Proof? If that's your idea of vindication, you have even lower scientific standards than I imagined.

Utter pwnage. I like it.

 

[Plecostomus]

Do it again do it again make the silly man cry harder!

 

[noknowes]

If you Google "Koshiba ITER "very large quantities of tritium" LINK, it does indeed turn up one, and only one, match: This very TrekBBS thread.

A narrower search produces slightly more results.

noknowes appears to have drawn the name and quote from this bit of propaganda LINK from a French an anti-nuclear organization. Hardly an objective source. And seeing as how it appears to be the ONLY source that claims that Tadatoshi Koshiba is a Nobel Prize winning physicist, when the Nobel Society has no record of his existence, one must conclude that the "facts" presented in this document are highly suspect, and most likely "manufactured".

puts the final vindication to my assertion.

A quote, from an obviously biased site, attributed to a Nobel Prize winning scientist who apparently doesn't exist, giving a mere opinion with no accompanying data of any kind to substantiate it? Proof? If that's your idea of vindication, you have even lower scientific standards than I imagined.

You are the one insisting on a link.When i gave you one,against my will, just as i expected ,(you are very predictable by the way), you claimed it was biased.

You failed to address it in any way.A testament to your bias.

Everyone is biased.

ITER's goal is a fusion reaction lasting just 400 SECONDS!



I predict it will not even last long even 5 seconds before it kabooms due to kinking of the plasma ribbon.

what shape is the sun?

 

[sojourner]

I'll bite. The shape of the sun is a sphere based on the effects of gravity. The nuclear reactions taking place in the sun have no affect on it's shape and therefor should not by implication be taken as the most efficient shape for creating an artifically sustained nuclear fusion process.

 

[chardman]

You are the one insisting on a link.When i gave you one,against my will, just as i expected ,(you are very predictable by the way), you claimed it was biased.

Of course I claimed it was biased. You quoted a freakin Anti-Nuclear site. An obviously biased site, that is going to present non-objective information that supports that bias.

You failed to address it in any way.A testament to your bias.

Address what? Your link? There was no data there to address. Just the unsubstantiated opinion of a scientist who is falsely credited as having won a Nobel Prize, and who is so insignificant (if he's even real) to turn up anything in a Google search except for other Anti-Nuclear site quoting the same unsubstantiated and bogus article that you've referenced.

what shape is the sun?

Spherical, as a result of the forces exerted by it's gravitational mass. Which has precisely what to do with the ITER?