Cold Fusion.

[Tom]

Found this on Wiki. Very interesting.

Thought some of you might appreciate it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion#_note-0

[DaveKillens]

Interesting topic, but as we speculate as to the validity of "cold fusion", an international consortium has begun construction of a real working fusion reactor in the south of France. It's so realistic that well over 3 billion will be spent on it's design and commission.
http://www.iter.org/index.htm

[Tom]

Oh no. I'm being 'investigated' by the folk at the IT technicains base at school for looking at cold-fusion. I could get in a lot of trouble apparently.
Perhaps I have uncovered a government conspiracy .

[vyselegend]

It is based around a hydrogen plasma torus operating at over 100 million °C, and will produce 500 MW of fusion power.

Explain me what exactly is COLD in this fusion process?!

[Tp]

cold fusion or low-temperature fusion, nuclear fusion of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, at or relatively near room temperature.

[vyselegend]

I'm not sure I get it totally, but I presume it means that hydrogen plasma torus is not part of the fusion itself, and is just providing intense heat to set the necessary conditions for the nuclear fusion to operate. Anyway thanks for the precision.

[DaveKillens]

I'm one of those sceptical about the reality and validity of "cold fusion". I was just commenting generally on the nuclear fusion process itself, pointing out that there is a very serious effort to try to make fusion a souirce of power. But the ITER process is definitely not room temperature, it's got nothing to do with "cold fusion" apart from the word "fusion".

[Ciro Pabón]

I agree with Dave. I have been waiting for the tokamak design to work my whole life. When Sakharov was released by Soviets, some people expected that this would give the last push to a workable design.

Twenty years later we are still waiting and there are huge engineering problems and levels of radioactive wastes comparable to those of a conventional nuclear reactor. This is going to be a though one.

On the contrary, cold fusion at this stage seem inocuous. I, as many, discarded the whole concept as bad science. But after watching the best explanation we have about Cooper pairs for superconductivity, I would say this (for me) new idea, of atoms being influenced somehow by the catalizer lattice to fuse, could not be so farfetched. A very interesting article, Tom, thanks.

[Tom]

Glad you like it. I found it a while back and realised you guys would be the only people who would give a rats..., I haven't read the whole article but (with my limited knowledge of chemistry) vaguelly understand whats going on.

I believe there is something in it and would love to see it made to work.
Can't think of any effects it could have on F1 really though.

[DaveKillens]

Can't think of any effects it could have on F1 really though.

You never know what the future will bring. Trickle down technology sometimes shows up in unexpected applications. When Kennedy put the US in a race to the moon, they never forecast it would lead to the rapid implimentation of integrated circuits, and such things as digital watches, or the powerful personal computers so common now.

[Tom]

True. But did man ever land on the moon?

Just kidding. I'll post a topic on that another day.

Also who was it that was interested in PanAm and PM'd me a while ago.
(signature had a picture of a plane on it. Canadian or American I think)
Found some stuff on Wiki about that which should interest you.

[NickT]

I saw something on this using a gas plasma held in a microwave field at atmospheric pressure, but I can't find the information any where

The orginal development was the generation of a gas plasma at atmospheric pressure using a microwave source. I saw some of the early prototypes and they were modified microwave ovens They were developing it for industrial exhaust gas treatment of VOCs and other nasties. This was 5 or 6 years ago, but I lost touch with it when I changed jobs