• New fusion power system test creates 300,000 degrees C plasma

    From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 29 13:00:27 2024
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Sat Nov 30 01:15:15 2024
    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    You really can't read, can you. It's got its plasma to 300,000 degrees
    K, and ITER have got theirs to 150,000,000 degrees K, about 500 times
    hotter. It maybe some kind of milestone for OpenStar, but they've got
    lot of milestones to go before they'll have a product that they can sell.

    And they are still trying to fuse hydrogen or deuterium, which produces
    a lot of neutrons.

    https://hb11.energy/

    is trying to fuse hydrogen and boron, which doesn't produce neutrons -
    if the machine ever works it will last a whole lot longer than hydrogen
    fusion machines, which will be damaged by the stray neutrons they
    produce, if they ever work.

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to bill.sloman@ieee.org on Fri Nov 29 15:27:12 2024
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    You really can't read, can you. It's got its plasma to 300,000 degrees
    K, and ITER have got theirs to 150,000,000 degrees K, about 500 times
    hotter. It maybe some kind of milestone for OpenStar, but they've got
    lot of milestones to go before they'll have a product that they can sell.

    And they are still trying to fuse hydrogen or deuterium, which produces
    a lot of neutrons.

    https://hb11.energy/

    Looks a bit like that thing Larking was making stuff for, laser ignition
    Not much coming from that at all.
    Just playing stuff for kids/ training stuff for aspiring nuclear fishisicks.. That was discussed here last year or so.

    is trying to fuse hydrogen and boron, which doesn't produce neutrons -
    if the machine ever works it will last a whole lot longer than hydrogen >fusion machines, which will be damaged by the stray neutrons they
    produce, if they ever work.

    Would be nice to have small portable power sources, for in the home and cars etc etc.

    Plutonium is dangerous, but the Viking spacecraft are still working after many decades.

    Anyways after WW3 all will radiate, so who cares.

    As to ITER, it is a political job creation project of and for Albert E parrots. The only thing that will come of it is that they find to make it work they will need an ever bigger one...


    I like the Farnsworth fusor, fusion any kid can do.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 29 08:03:20 2024
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 13:00:27 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
    wrote:

    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    There is a fusion breakthrough about every week lately.

    That's a lifestyle: announce a nanotech or web thing or goofy windmill
    or AI or some such breakthrough, raise a lot of money, buy a private
    jet, declare bankrupcy, repeat.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Liz Tuddenham@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Fri Nov 29 18:33:31 2024
    Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:

    [...]
    Plutonium is dangerous, but the Viking spacecraft are still working after
    many decades.

    They don't have to worry about upsetting the neighbours.

    --
    ~ Liz Tuddenham ~
    (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
    www.poppyrecords.co.uk

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Fri Nov 29 20:51:22 2024
    On 11/29/24 16:27, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    You really can't read, can you. It's got its plasma to 300,000 degrees
    K, and ITER have got theirs to 150,000,000 degrees K, about 500 times
    hotter. It maybe some kind of milestone for OpenStar, but they've got
    lot of milestones to go before they'll have a product that they can sell.

    And they are still trying to fuse hydrogen or deuterium, which produces
    a lot of neutrons.

    https://hb11.energy/

    Looks a bit like that thing Larking was making stuff for, laser ignition
    Not much coming from that at all.
    Just playing stuff for kids/ training stuff for aspiring nuclear fishisicks.. That was discussed here last year or so.

    is trying to fuse hydrogen and boron, which doesn't produce neutrons -
    if the machine ever works it will last a whole lot longer than hydrogen
    fusion machines, which will be damaged by the stray neutrons they
    produce, if they ever work.

    Would be nice to have small portable power sources, for in the home and cars etc etc.

    Plutonium is dangerous, but the Viking spacecraft are still working after many decades.
    [...]

    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    238Pu and its decay daughters are predominantly alpha emitters,
    which is easy to contain. An important problem would be to make
    it fool-proof: Not an easy task. I wouldn't want it in a car,
    for example.

    Jeroen Belleman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Fri Nov 29 11:52:38 2024
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 20:51:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 16:27, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    You really can't read, can you. It's got its plasma to 300,000 degrees
    K, and ITER have got theirs to 150,000,000 degrees K, about 500 times
    hotter. It maybe some kind of milestone for OpenStar, but they've got
    lot of milestones to go before they'll have a product that they can sell. >>>
    And they are still trying to fuse hydrogen or deuterium, which produces
    a lot of neutrons.

    https://hb11.energy/

    Looks a bit like that thing Larking was making stuff for, laser ignition
    Not much coming from that at all.
    Just playing stuff for kids/ training stuff for aspiring nuclear fishisicks..
    That was discussed here last year or so.

    is trying to fuse hydrogen and boron, which doesn't produce neutrons -
    if the machine ever works it will last a whole lot longer than hydrogen
    fusion machines, which will be damaged by the stray neutrons they
    produce, if they ever work.

    Would be nice to have small portable power sources, for in the home and cars etc etc.

    Plutonium is dangerous, but the Viking spacecraft are still working after many decades.
    [...]

    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    That woud warm up the planet nicely. You can't turn it off.


    238Pu and its decay daughters are predominantly alpha emitters,
    which is easy to contain. An important problem would be to make
    it fool-proof: Not an easy task. I wouldn't want it in a car,
    for example.

    Sounds like the "universal solvent", hard to contain.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Liz Tuddenham@21:1/5 to Jeroen Belleman on Fri Nov 29 20:04:50 2024
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.


    --
    ~ Liz Tuddenham ~
    (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
    www.poppyrecords.co.uk

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to Liz Tuddenham on Fri Nov 29 22:11:57 2024
    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
    it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    It can be made safe enough, I'm sure. As energy is concerned, there
    is no such thing as /perfectly/ safe.

    Jeroen Belleman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to john larkin on Fri Nov 29 21:39:38 2024
    On 11/29/24 20:52, john larkin wrote:
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 20:51:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 16:27, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman >>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    You really can't read, can you. It's got its plasma to 300,000 degrees >>>> K, and ITER have got theirs to 150,000,000 degrees K, about 500 times
    hotter. It maybe some kind of milestone for OpenStar, but they've got
    lot of milestones to go before they'll have a product that they can sell. >>>>
    And they are still trying to fuse hydrogen or deuterium, which produces >>>> a lot of neutrons.

    https://hb11.energy/

    Looks a bit like that thing Larking was making stuff for, laser ignition >>> Not much coming from that at all.
    Just playing stuff for kids/ training stuff for aspiring nuclear fishisicks..
    That was discussed here last year or so.

    is trying to fuse hydrogen and boron, which doesn't produce neutrons - >>>> if the machine ever works it will last a whole lot longer than hydrogen >>>> fusion machines, which will be damaged by the stray neutrons they
    produce, if they ever work.

    Would be nice to have small portable power sources, for in the home and cars etc etc.

    Plutonium is dangerous, but the Viking spacecraft are still working after many decades.
    [...]

    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    That woud warm up the planet nicely. You can't turn it off.


    Pretty negligible, I think. Assuming about 3e9 homes on this earth,
    it would add about 0.1% to the heat budget of the whole earth.
    As a side effect, it would reduce CO2 emissions by a whole lot,
    so the overall result may well be a drop in global average
    temperature.


    238Pu and its decay daughters are predominantly alpha emitters,
    which is easy to contain. An important problem would be to make
    it fool-proof: Not an easy task. I wouldn't want it in a car,
    for example.

    Sounds like the "universal solvent", hard to contain.

    It's *easy* to contain. It's the fools that are a problem. We
    have no shortage of those, unfortunately.

    That is not to say it would solve all problems. Producing
    enough 238Pu cheaply enough would be a problem. There would be
    lots of red tape too. There would be hard-to-predict economic
    effects. I think the technical problem of designing a compact
    package producing 15kW or so of electricity and enough heat
    for hot water and space heating would be comparatively minor.

    Jeroen Belleman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Liz Tuddenham@21:1/5 to Jeroen Belleman on Fri Nov 29 22:03:51 2024
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
    it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.


    --
    ~ Liz Tuddenham ~
    (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
    www.poppyrecords.co.uk

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to Liz Tuddenham on Fri Nov 29 23:30:22 2024
    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
    it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.



    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    Jeroen Belleman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Fri Nov 29 14:52:15 2024
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 21:39:38 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 20:52, john larkin wrote:
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 20:51:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 16:27, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman >>>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    You really can't read, can you. It's got its plasma to 300,000 degrees >>>>> K, and ITER have got theirs to 150,000,000 degrees K, about 500 times >>>>> hotter. It maybe some kind of milestone for OpenStar, but they've got >>>>> lot of milestones to go before they'll have a product that they can sell. >>>>>
    And they are still trying to fuse hydrogen or deuterium, which produces >>>>> a lot of neutrons.

    https://hb11.energy/

    Looks a bit like that thing Larking was making stuff for, laser ignition >>>> Not much coming from that at all.
    Just playing stuff for kids/ training stuff for aspiring nuclear fishisicks..
    That was discussed here last year or so.

    is trying to fuse hydrogen and boron, which doesn't produce neutrons - >>>>> if the machine ever works it will last a whole lot longer than hydrogen >>>>> fusion machines, which will be damaged by the stray neutrons they
    produce, if they ever work.

    Would be nice to have small portable power sources, for in the home and cars etc etc.

    Plutonium is dangerous, but the Viking spacecraft are still working after many decades.
    [...]

    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    That woud warm up the planet nicely. You can't turn it off.


    Pretty negligible, I think. Assuming about 3e9 homes on this earth,
    it would add about 0.1% to the heat budget of the whole earth.
    As a side effect, it would reduce CO2 emissions by a whole lot,
    so the overall result may well be a drop in global average
    temperature.


    238Pu and its decay daughters are predominantly alpha emitters,
    which is easy to contain. An important problem would be to make
    it fool-proof: Not an easy task. I wouldn't want it in a car,
    for example.

    Sounds like the "universal solvent", hard to contain.

    It's *easy* to contain. It's the fools that are a problem. We
    have no shortage of those, unfortunately.

    That is not to say it would solve all problems. Producing
    enough 238Pu cheaply enough would be a problem. There would be
    lots of red tape too. There would be hard-to-predict economic
    effects. I think the technical problem of designing a compact
    package producing 15kW or so of electricity and enough heat
    for hot water and space heating would be comparatively minor.

    Jeroen Belleman


    That's too big a temptation for kids and terrorists.

    Why not have local power plants make electricity and hot water,
    whatever way works best?

    I don't understand rooftop solar cells either. Or backyard windmills.
    Let the utilities do what they are best at.

    Remember when Mao wanted people to make steel in their backyards?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Fri Nov 29 18:23:11 2024
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 23:30:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
    it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
    explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist
    knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.



    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    Jeroen Belleman

    If it lost cooling, it would melt through anything. Then you'd have
    plutonium slag and vapor all over your garage. The neighbors might
    complain.

    That's interesting: if you could confine some mass of 238, what would
    its ultimate temperature be?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Sat Nov 30 14:12:42 2024
    On 30/11/2024 2:27 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    You really can't read, can you. It's got its plasma to 300,000 degrees
    K, and ITER have got theirs to 150,000,000 degrees K, about 500 times
    hotter. It maybe some kind of milestone for OpenStar, but they've got
    lot of milestones to go before they'll have a product that they can sell.

    And they are still trying to fuse hydrogen or deuterium, which produces
    a lot of neutrons.

    https://hb11.energy/

    Looks a bit like that thing Larking was making stuff for, laser ignition
    Not much coming from that at all.

    The US national ignition facitility was mainly intended to work out
    whether nuclear bombs would go off. The nuclear fusion stuff is just
    done to keep the scientists happy.

    Just playing stuff for kids/ training stuff for aspiring nuclear fishisicks.. That was discussed here last year or so.

    is trying to fuse hydrogen and boron, which doesn't produce neutrons -
    if the machine ever works it will last a whole lot longer than hydrogen
    fusion machines, which will be damaged by the stray neutrons they
    produce, if they ever work.

    Would be nice to have small portable power sources, for in the home and cars etc etc.

    Of course it would.

    Plutonium is dangerous, but the Viking spacecraft are still working after many decades.

    Terrorist can't get at them to take them apart and use the Pu-239 to
    make an atomic bomb.

    Anyways after WW3 all will radiate, so who cares.

    With any luck, there won't be a WW3.

    As to ITER, it is a political job creation project of and for Albert E parrots.

    All big science projects make work for scientists and engineers. That
    doesn't make them worthless.

    The only thing that will come of it is that they find to make it work they will need an ever bigger one...

    In your ever-so-expert opinion.

    I like the Farnsworth fusor, fusion any kid can do.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

    Of course you do. It's much too small to generate more energy than you
    have put into it to get the fusion to take place at all.

    Being big isn't a virtue. Being big enough to do something useful is.

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to bill.sloman@ieee.org on Sat Nov 30 06:37:33 2024
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:12:42 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vidvrl$1d62d$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 2:27 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    You really can't read, can you. It's got its plasma to 300,000 degrees
    K, and ITER have got theirs to 150,000,000 degrees K, about 500 times
    hotter. It maybe some kind of milestone for OpenStar, but they've got
    lot of milestones to go before they'll have a product that they can sell. >>>
    And they are still trying to fuse hydrogen or deuterium, which produces
    a lot of neutrons.

    https://hb11.energy/

    Looks a bit like that thing Larking was making stuff for, laser ignition
    Not much coming from that at all.

    The US national ignition facitility was mainly intended to work out
    whether nuclear bombs would go off. The nuclear fusion stuff is just
    done to keep the scientists happy.

    Just playing stuff for kids/ training stuff for aspiring nuclear fishisicks..
    That was discussed here last year or so.

    is trying to fuse hydrogen and boron, which doesn't produce neutrons -
    if the machine ever works it will last a whole lot longer than hydrogen
    fusion machines, which will be damaged by the stray neutrons they
    produce, if they ever work.

    Would be nice to have small portable power sources, for in the home and cars etc etc.

    Of course it would.

    Plutonium is dangerous, but the Viking spacecraft are still working after many decades.

    Terrorist can't get at them to take them apart and use the Pu-239 to
    make an atomic bomb.

    Anyways after WW3 all will radiate, so who cares.

    With any luck, there won't be a WW3.

    As to ITER, it is a political job creation project of and for Albert E parrots.

    All big science projects make work for scientists and engineers. That
    doesn't make them worthless.

    The only thing that will come of it is that they find to make it work they will need an ever bigger one...

    In your ever-so-expert opinion.

    I like the Farnsworth fusor, fusion any kid can do.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

    Of course you do. It's much too small to generate more energy than you
    have put into it to get the fusion to take place at all.

    Being big isn't a virtue. Being big enough to do something useful is.

    I have posted many times:
    'If you cannot do it with those small particles on the table top,
    then you cannot do it in a macnine the size of the universe.'

    As to that Farnsworth Fusor, they complain the grid gets too hot
    Nice, why not use thermocouples as grid, convert voltage up,
    get break even or better?

    I'd like to try, need a good lab and a good mechanical man, funding of course :-)
    It is nice several projects are now looking for fusion, who knows?
    Someone may hack it!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Sat Nov 30 07:12:35 2024
    On a sunny day (Fri, 29 Nov 2024 20:51:22 +0100) it happened Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote in <vid5og$17b08$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 11/29/24 16:27, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    A nuclear fusion startup just reached a milestone
    in its bid to commercialize unlimited clean energy :
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-openstar/index.html

    ITER inside out :-)

    You really can't read, can you. It's got its plasma to 300,000 degrees
    K, and ITER have got theirs to 150,000,000 degrees K, about 500 times
    hotter. It maybe some kind of milestone for OpenStar, but they've got
    lot of milestones to go before they'll have a product that they can sell. >>>
    And they are still trying to fuse hydrogen or deuterium, which produces
    a lot of neutrons.

    https://hb11.energy/

    Looks a bit like that thing Larking was making stuff for, laser ignition
    Not much coming from that at all.
    Just playing stuff for kids/ training stuff for aspiring nuclear fishisicks..
    That was discussed here last year or so.

    is trying to fuse hydrogen and boron, which doesn't produce neutrons -
    if the machine ever works it will last a whole lot longer than hydrogen
    fusion machines, which will be damaged by the stray neutrons they
    produce, if they ever work.

    Would be nice to have small portable power sources, for in the home and cars etc etc.

    Plutonium is dangerous, but the Viking spacecraft are still working after many decades.
    [...]

    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    238Pu and its decay daughters are predominantly alpha emitters,
    which is easy to contain. An important problem would be to make
    it fool-proof: Not an easy task. I wouldn't want it in a car,
    for example.

    Yep, some tinkerer would drill holes in the thing, maybe to fix it to the wall or something
    There was a nice program on a German TV info channel, what was it called? 'This is Uranium"?
    where they go back in time and show 'Pechblende' stored outside mines as 'worthless' (Pech in German means 'bad luck' in English)
    because they were mining for something else... to Marie Curie and many scientists involved in understaning Uranium to the nuclear bombs on Japan.
    It also made me wonder why Iran does not have the bomb yet, if the recent earthquakes there were nuclear bomb tests.
    I mean they had ultra centrifuges for years, Siemes PLCs controlled that were then hacked to stop them .
    Sure possible, but I worked with Siemens PLC guys for years,,, just wonder.
    An other US game?
    Or will is-a-hell be nuked into oblivion shortly ?
    Trump seems to be anti-Iran?
    US CIA now starting new wargames in Syria...
    radiation is interesting, was reading that gamma spectrometer group many years ago,
    https://groups.io/g/GammaSpectrometryGroup
    building my own, playing with stuff:
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/pic/sc_pic/
    WOW! time flies! Was 2010 or earlier.

    I still have my gamma spectrometer and GM counter next to me on the table...
    https://panteltje.nl/pub/gamma_spectrometer_plus_probe_plus_geiger_counter_2_IMG_4185.JPG

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Liz Tuddenham@21:1/5 to Jeroen Belleman on Sat Nov 30 09:34:07 2024
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
    it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.



    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to
    open it.


    --
    ~ Liz Tuddenham ~
    (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
    www.poppyrecords.co.uk

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Sat Nov 30 21:02:25 2024
    On 30/11/2024 5:37 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:12:42 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vidvrl$1d62d$1@dont-email.me>:
    On 30/11/2024 2:27 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman >>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    <snip>

    Being big isn't a virtue. Being big enough to do something useful is.

    I have posted many times:
    'If you cannot do it with those small particles on the table top,
    then you cannot do it in a machine the size of the universe.'

    The fact that you post the same assertion repeatedly doesn't change the
    fact that it is wrong.

    Stars are a lot smaller that the universe, and they manage to fuse
    nuclei on a very large scale. We would be here if they didn't.

    As to that Farnsworth Fusor, they complain the grid gets too hot
    Nice, why not use thermocouples as grid, convert voltage up,
    get break even or better?

    Thermocouples don't convert much of the heat energy available into heat.

    I'd like to try, need a good lab and a good mechanical man, funding of course :-)

    Even a venture capitalist would have enough sense to avoid investing in you.

    It is nice several projects are now looking for fusion, who knows?
    Someone may hack it!

    Perhaps they will.

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to bill.sloman@ieee.org on Sat Nov 30 11:11:18 2024
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:02:25 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vienrs$1l2a8$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 5:37 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:12:42 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vidvrl$1d62d$1@dont-email.me>:
    On 30/11/2024 2:27 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman >>>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    <snip>

    Being big isn't a virtue. Being big enough to do something useful is.

    I have posted many times:
    'If you cannot do it with those small particles on the table top,
    then you cannot do it in a machine the size of the universe.'

    The fact that you post the same assertion repeatedly doesn't change the
    fact that it is wrong.

    No it is right ;-)
    But think about it for a moment, anyways Farnsworth fusor shows it is true.




    Stars are a lot smaller that the universe, and they manage to fuse
    nuclei on a very large scale. We would be here if they didn't.

    That has nothing to do with it.


    As to that Farnsworth Fusor, they complain the grid gets too hot
    Nice, why not use thermocouples as grid, convert voltage up,
    get break even or better?

    Thermocouples don't convert much of the heat energy available into heat.

    I'd like to try, need a good lab and a good mechanical man, funding of course :-)

    Even a venture capitalist would have enough sense to avoid investing in you.

    That is why there still is no break even small fusion home power box.



    It is nice several projects are now looking for fusion, who knows?
    Someone may hack it!

    Perhaps they will.

    Well, we have glowball warming in case humans fail.
    Or we can dig deep enough into the ground for some heat.
    But the question remains if you CAN make break even - get positive energy out
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
    endless babble about Albert E...

    But, my solar panels work great!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to Liz Tuddenham on Sat Nov 30 11:57:50 2024
    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
    it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of >>> diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set >>> fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
    explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist
    knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.



    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to
    open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to john larkin on Sat Nov 30 11:47:25 2024
    On 11/30/24 03:23, john larkin wrote:
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 23:30:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
    if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
    whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
    it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of >>> diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set >>> fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
    explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist
    knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.



    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    Jeroen Belleman

    If it lost cooling, it would melt through anything. Then you'd have
    plutonium slag and vapor all over your garage. The neighbors might
    complain.

    That's interesting: if you could confine some mass of 238, what would
    its ultimate temperature be?


    This isn't a nuclear reactor! It'd be only a few tens of kilowatts,
    about the power level of a car engine. Those don't melt down, do
    they?

    As for the ultimate temperature of a quantity of 238Pu, make up the
    balance of heat in over heat out. A fresh load releases about 560W/kg.

    Jeroen Belleman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Sun Dec 1 00:12:31 2024
    On 30/11/2024 10:11 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:02:25 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vienrs$1l2a8$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 5:37 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:12:42 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman >>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vidvrl$1d62d$1@dont-email.me>:
    On 30/11/2024 2:27 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman >>>>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    <snip>

    Being big isn't a virtue. Being big enough to do something useful is.

    I have posted many times:
    'If you cannot do it with those small particles on the table top,
    then you cannot do it in a machine the size of the universe.'

    The fact that you post the same assertion repeatedly doesn't change the
    fact that it is wrong.

    No it is right ;-)
    But think about it for a moment, anyways Farnsworth fusor shows it is true.

    Stars are a lot smaller that the universe, and they manage to fuse
    nuclei on a very large scale. We would be here if they didn't.

    That has nothing to do with it.

    It has everything to do with it, but you are too dumb to see the connection.

    As to that Farnsworth Fusor, they complain the grid gets too hot
    Nice, why not use thermocouples as grid, convert voltage up,
    get break even or better?

    Thermocouples don't convert much of the heat energy available into heat.

    I'd like to try, need a good lab and a good mechanical man, funding of course :-)

    Even a venture capitalist would have enough sense to avoid investing in you.

    That is why there still is no break even small fusion home power box.

    That's the explanation you like. There are others.

    It is nice several projects are now looking for fusion, who knows?
    Someone may hack it!

    Perhaps they will.

    Well, we have global warming in case humans fail.

    It's anthropogenic global warming. If we stop digging up fossil carbon
    and burning it, that extra warmth will go away eventually - but it is
    likely to take a few centuries.

    Or we can dig deep enough into the ground for some heat.
    But the question remains if you CAN make break even - get positive energy out
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
    endless babble about Albert E...

    But, my solar panels work great!

    But they rely on that big fusion reactor hanging there in the middle of
    the solar system. It's been there for about 4.5 billion years. Nobody
    realised that it was nuclear fusion reactor until quite recently, and
    the message still doesn't seem to have got through to you.

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to bill.sloman@ieee.org on Sat Nov 30 13:45:12 2024
    On a sunny day (Sun, 1 Dec 2024 00:12:31 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vif30a$1o4ji$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 10:11 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:02:25 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vienrs$1l2a8$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 5:37 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:12:42 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman >>>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vidvrl$1d62d$1@dont-email.me>:
    On 30/11/2024 2:27 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    <snip>

    Being big isn't a virtue. Being big enough to do something useful is. >>>>
    I have posted many times:
    'If you cannot do it with those small particles on the table top,
    then you cannot do it in a machine the size of the universe.'

    The fact that you post the same assertion repeatedly doesn't change the
    fact that it is wrong.

    No it is right ;-)
    But think about it for a moment, anyways Farnsworth fusor shows it is true. >>
    Stars are a lot smaller that the universe, and they manage to fuse
    nuclei on a very large scale. We would be here if they didn't.

    That has nothing to do with it.

    It has everything to do with it, but you are too dumb to see the connection.

    As to that Farnsworth Fusor, they complain the grid gets too hot
    Nice, why not use thermocouples as grid, convert voltage up,
    get break even or better?

    Thermocouples don't convert much of the heat energy available into heat. >>>
    I'd like to try, need a good lab and a good mechanical man, funding of course :-)

    Even a venture capitalist would have enough sense to avoid investing in you.

    That is why there still is no break even small fusion home power box.

    That's the explanation you like. There are others.

    It is nice several projects are now looking for fusion, who knows?
    Someone may hack it!

    Perhaps they will.

    Well, we have global warming in case humans fail.

    It's anthropogenic global warming. If we stop digging up fossil carbon
    and burning it, that extra warmth will go away eventually - but it is
    likely to take a few centuries.

    Or we can dig deep enough into the ground for some heat.
    But the question remains if you CAN make break even - get positive energy out
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
    endless babble about Albert E...

    But, my solar panels work great!

    But they rely on that big fusion reactor hanging there in the middle of
    the solar system. It's been there for about 4.5 billion years. Nobody >realised that it was nuclear fusion reactor until quite recently, and
    the message still doesn't seem to have got through to you.

    Oh well, and the sun will burn up eventually or so I'v read.
    Not so much is known about the inner nuclear workings of the sun.
    Is the fusion part caused by enormous pressures from the rest of the sun?
    It does not have to be break even or positve at all.
    I will not even mention Le Sage (oops) and possible other theories
    dark matter, what not.

    Would be nice if we could look ahead a few thousand years to see the theories then.
    If humanity still exists, Dinos ?

    We are just like ants, a few neurons wanting - looking for - a theory of everything.

    And yet, everything is connected...
    There is nothing you can know that is not known:
    https://www.thebeatles.com/all-you-need-love-0

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Sat Nov 30 09:10:06 2024
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:47:25 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 03:23, john larkin wrote:
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 23:30:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
    it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of >>>> diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set >>>> fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was >>>> injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built >>>> on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air >>>> explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist
    knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.



    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    Jeroen Belleman

    If it lost cooling, it would melt through anything. Then you'd have
    plutonium slag and vapor all over your garage. The neighbors might
    complain.

    That's interesting: if you could confine some mass of 238, what would
    its ultimate temperature be?


    This isn't a nuclear reactor! It'd be only a few tens of kilowatts,
    about the power level of a car engine. Those don't melt down, do
    they?

    They do when the water cooling system fails.


    As for the ultimate temperature of a quantity of 238Pu, make up the
    balance of heat in over heat out. A fresh load releases about 560W/kg.

    By "confine" I meant no heat loss. Half-life is 88 years, and there
    will be additional heat from decay products.

    560 watts for 100 years is about 2e12 joules. That gets it up to 55
    billion K, if my math is right.

    (US billions)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Sat Nov 30 09:19:42 2024
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
    it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of >>>> diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set >>>> fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was >>>> injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built >>>> on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air >>>> explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist
    knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.



    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to
    open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to john larkin on Sat Nov 30 19:05:11 2024
    On 11/30/24 18:10, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:47:25 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 03:23, john larkin wrote:
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 23:30:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of >>>>> diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set >>>>> fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was >>>>> injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built >>>>> on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air >>>>> explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.



    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    Jeroen Belleman

    If it lost cooling, it would melt through anything. Then you'd have
    plutonium slag and vapor all over your garage. The neighbors might
    complain.

    That's interesting: if you could confine some mass of 238, what would
    its ultimate temperature be?


    This isn't a nuclear reactor! It'd be only a few tens of kilowatts,
    about the power level of a car engine. Those don't melt down, do
    they?

    They do when the water cooling system fails.


    As for the ultimate temperature of a quantity of 238Pu, make up the
    balance of heat in over heat out. A fresh load releases about 560W/kg.

    By "confine" I meant no heat loss. Half-life is 88 years, and there
    will be additional heat from decay products.

    560 watts for 100 years is about 2e12 joules. That gets it up to 55
    billion K, if my math is right.

    (US billions)



    There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
    returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

    Jeroen Belleman (Wearing his Twain coat)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to john larkin on Sat Nov 30 21:12:23 2024
    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
    that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of >>>>> diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set >>>>> fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was >>>>> injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built >>>>> on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air >>>>> explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.



    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to >>> open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor
    plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed,
    there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities
    we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's
    *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable
    explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his
    hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Sat Nov 30 11:33:04 2024
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 19:05:11 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:10, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:47:25 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 03:23, john larkin wrote:
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 23:30:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of >>>>>> diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set >>>>>> fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was >>>>>> injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built >>>>>> on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air >>>>>> explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister? >>>>>
    Jeroen Belleman

    If it lost cooling, it would melt through anything. Then you'd have
    plutonium slag and vapor all over your garage. The neighbors might
    complain.

    That's interesting: if you could confine some mass of 238, what would
    its ultimate temperature be?


    This isn't a nuclear reactor! It'd be only a few tens of kilowatts,
    about the power level of a car engine. Those don't melt down, do
    they?

    They do when the water cooling system fails.


    As for the ultimate temperature of a quantity of 238Pu, make up the
    balance of heat in over heat out. A fresh load releases about 560W/kg.

    By "confine" I meant no heat loss. Half-life is 88 years, and there
    will be additional heat from decay products.

    560 watts for 100 years is about 2e12 joules. That gets it up to 55
    billion K, if my math is right.

    (US billions)



    There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
    returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

    Jeroen Belleman (Wearing his Twain coat)

    It's like electronic design. Splatter your brain all over the solution
    space and invent things.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Sat Nov 30 13:59:07 2024
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of >>>>>> diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set >>>>>> fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was >>>>>> injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built >>>>>> on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air >>>>>> explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?

    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to >>>> open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for
    centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor
    plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed,
    there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities
    we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's
    *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable >explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his
    hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Wiki claims

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

    10 Kg critical mass. Are they wrong?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to john larkin on Sat Nov 30 23:54:54 2024
    On 11/30/24 22:59, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was >>>>>>> injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built >>>>>>> on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air >>>>>>> explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister? >>>>>
    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to >>>>> open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for
    centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor
    plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed,
    there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities
    we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's
    *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable
    explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his
    hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Wiki claims

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

    10 Kg critical mass. Are they wrong?


    I think so.

    Jeroen Belleman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to john larkin on Sun Dec 1 13:44:01 2024
    On 1/12/2024 6:33 am, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 19:05:11 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:10, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:47:25 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 03:23, john larkin wrote:
    On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 23:30:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    <snip>

    560 watts for 100 years is about 2e12 joules. That gets it up to 55
    billion K, if my math is right.

    (US billions)



    There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
    returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

    Jeroen Belleman (Wearing his Twain coat)

    It's like electronic design. Splatter your brain all over the solution
    space and invent things.

    John Larkin hasn't invented anything - based on his patent count - and
    it shows.

    The process doesn't involve splattering your brain across the solution
    space but rather tracking down initially implausible trains of thought.

    You are exploring the solution space, as opposed to sampling it at random.

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Sat Nov 30 18:57:58 2024
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 23:54:54 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 22:59, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out. >>>>>>>>>>


    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>>>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
    explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister? >>>>>>
    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to >>>>>> open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for
    centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor
    plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed,
    there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities
    we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's
    *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable
    explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his
    hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Wiki claims

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

    10 Kg critical mass. Are they wrong?


    I think so.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Googling has many references and some papers, all around 10 Kg
    unshielded, half that with a good neutron reflector.

    I suppose something that doesn't normally emit neutrons can still
    fission, from a cosmic ray or something.

    All 5 plutonium isotopes have a critical mass, at which point I assume
    that Something Bad happens.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to john larkin on Sun Dec 1 13:56:19 2024
    On 1/12/2024 8:59 am, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.



    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was >>>>>>> injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built >>>>>>> on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air >>>>>>> explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister? >>>>>
    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to >>>>> open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for
    centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor
    plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed,
    there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities
    we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's
    *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable
    explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his
    hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Wiki claims

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

    10 Kg critical mass. Are they wrong?

    Perhaps. It's a calculated critical mass. Nobody seems to have assembled
    a marginally sub-critical mass and done experiments on it, probably
    because it would be very radioactive and quite hot. The wikipedia page
    does say that it is unsuited to making nuclear weapons. They don't spell
    out why.

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Sun Dec 1 14:13:55 2024
    On 1/12/2024 12:45 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sun, 1 Dec 2024 00:12:31 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vif30a$1o4ji$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 10:11 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:02:25 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman >>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vienrs$1l2a8$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 5:37 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:12:42 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman >>>>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vidvrl$1d62d$1@dont-email.me>:
    On 30/11/2024 2:27 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    <snip>

    Well, we have global warming in case humans fail.

    It's anthropogenic global warming. If we stop digging up fossil carbon
    and burning it, that extra warmth will go away eventually - but it is
    likely to take a few centuries.

    Or we can dig deep enough into the ground for some heat.
    But the question remains if you CAN make break even - get positive energy out
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
    endless babble about Albert E...

    But, my solar panels work great!

    But they rely on that big fusion reactor hanging there in the middle of
    the solar system. It's been there for about 4.5 billion years. Nobody
    realised that it was nuclear fusion reactor until quite recently, and
    the message still doesn't seem to have got through to you.

    Oh well, and the sun will burn up eventually or so I'v read.
    Not so much is known about the inner nuclear workings of the sun.

    Quite a lot is known, if not by you.

    Is the fusion part caused by enormous pressures from the rest of the sun?

    It's temperature rather than pressure that makes the difference.

    It does not have to be break even or positive at all.

    Of course it has to. Gravitational compression created the pressure and
    the heat that eventually started the nuclear reaction. It takes about
    100,000 years for a photon from the reacting core of the sum to make it
    out to emerge as sunlight.

    I will not even mention Le Sage (oops) and possible other theories
    dark matter, what not.

    That's a relief. You mostly ventilate your idiocies non-stop.

    Would be nice if we could look ahead a few thousand years to see the theories then.

    Not really. We wouldn't understand them.

    If humanity still exists, Dinos ?

    Most species last about 10 million years. We might completely wreck the
    earth and kill ourselves off in the process, but we've survived several
    ice-age to interglacial transitions.

    We are just like ants, a few neurons wanting - looking for - a theory of everything.

    Just a bit bigger than ants, with rather more technology.

    And yet, everything is connected...

    Another one of your mindless assertions.

    There is nothing you can know that is not known:
    https://www.thebeatles.com/all-you-need-love-0

    There is plenty you can "know" that isn't known to other people.

    You produce more nonsense than most, and most of what you think you know strikes other people as largely unoriginal nonsense.

    "It does not have to be break even or positive at all."

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to bill.sloman@ieee.org on Sun Dec 1 07:00:55 2024
    On a sunny day (Sun, 1 Dec 2024 14:13:55 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vigk9v$22pt7$3@dont-email.me>:

    On 1/12/2024 12:45 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sun, 1 Dec 2024 00:12:31 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vif30a$1o4ji$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 10:11 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:02:25 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman >>>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vienrs$1l2a8$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 5:37 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:12:42 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman >>>>>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vidvrl$1d62d$1@dont-email.me>:
    On 30/11/2024 2:27 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>: >>>>>>>>
    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    <snip>

    Well, we have global warming in case humans fail.

    It's anthropogenic global warming. If we stop digging up fossil carbon
    and burning it, that extra warmth will go away eventually - but it is
    likely to take a few centuries.

    Or we can dig deep enough into the ground for some heat.
    But the question remains if you CAN make break even - get positive energy out
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
    endless babble about Albert E...

    But, my solar panels work great!

    But they rely on that big fusion reactor hanging there in the middle of
    the solar system. It's been there for about 4.5 billion years. Nobody
    realised that it was nuclear fusion reactor until quite recently, and
    the message still doesn't seem to have got through to you.

    Oh well, and the sun will burn up eventually or so I'v read.
    Not so much is known about the inner nuclear workings of the sun.

    Quite a lot is known, if not by you.

    Is the fusion part caused by enormous pressures from the rest of the sun?

    It's temperature rather than pressure that makes the difference.

    It does not have to be break even or positive at all.

    Of course it has to. Gravitational compression created the pressure and
    the heat that eventually started the nuclear reaction. It takes about
    100,000 years for a photon from the reacting core of the sum to make it
    out to emerge as sunlight.

    I will not even mention Le Sage (oops) and possible other theories
    dark matter, what not.

    That's a relief. You mostly ventilate your idiocies non-stop.

    Would be nice if we could look ahead a few thousand years to see the theories then.

    Not really. We wouldn't understand them.

    If humanity still exists, Dinos ?

    Most species last about 10 million years. We might completely wreck the
    earth and kill ourselves off in the process, but we've survived several >ice-age to interglacial transitions.

    We are just like ants, a few neurons wanting - looking for - a theory of everything.

    Just a bit bigger than ants, with rather more technology.

    And yet, everything is connected...

    Another one of your mindless assertions.

    There is nothing you can know that is not known:
    https://www.thebeatles.com/all-you-need-love-0

    There is plenty you can "know" that isn't known to other people.

    You produce more nonsense than most, and most of what you think you know >strikes other people as largely unoriginal nonsense.

    "It does not have to be break even or positive at all."

    Well since you have not designed build and published even a picture of something as simple as a flashlight here
    logic suggest possible jealousy or 'grootheidswaanzin'

    But then so did einstein, he never did an experiment in his life and his only design was a bad frigde.
    Him being youwish made him their hero, god almost, as he wrote that letter to suggest committing genocide on Japanese civilians with nukes.
    His squared lightbulb masses are the biggest obstacle to science advancing as are glowball worming witch hunts.

    Look at fusion like a spring
    A srping can be compressed and drive a clock or a toy car
    But it never will power anything by itself.
    There will always be a net loss between comprssion and using it to do something.
    Table top will confirm that (Farnsworth Fusor).
    ITER has confirmed that, but misguided politicians keep falling for the einstein brainwashed,
    pooring in ever more money for no result at all.. EVER.
    ITER will always ask for bigger and more.
    Sure some suppliers of magnets and what not now make a living from your tax money there..
    At the same time US agents like Germany's murkel killed the real power generating nuclear plants.

    Humming species... decline, dark ages repeating itself, dummies produced by the millions
    zero understanding mamaticians doing a divide by zero, multiple uni-verses (do they sing there).

    What a world
    I liked this piece of music:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA9WCZP4dTQ

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to john larkin on Sun Dec 1 21:02:31 2024
    On 1/12/2024 1:57 pm, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 23:54:54 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 22:59, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:


    Googling has many references and some papers, all around 10 Kg
    unshielded, half that with a good neutron reflector.

    I suppose something that doesn't normally emit neutrons can still
    fission, from a cosmic ray or something.

    All 5 plutonium isotopes have a critical mass, at which point I assume
    that Something Bad happens.

    You don't have to assume anything. Critical mass is the point where some neutron showing up anywhere in the critical mass is likely to hit
    another atom and produce enough neutron that one of them will hit
    another atom somewhere in the mass before it escapes.

    If the atom it hits immediately produces a batch of prompt neutrons, you
    may get a lot of energy released before the critical mass melts and
    dribble away.

    Nuclear reactors are controllable because U-235 doesn't seem to emit all
    it's neutrons all at once and the ones that show up late give you time
    to push in the control rods before the process runs away.

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Sun Dec 1 21:31:44 2024
    On 1/12/2024 6:00 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sun, 1 Dec 2024 14:13:55 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vigk9v$22pt7$3@dont-email.me>:

    On 1/12/2024 12:45 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sun, 1 Dec 2024 00:12:31 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vif30a$1o4ji$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 10:11 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:02:25 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman >>>>> <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vienrs$1l2a8$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 30/11/2024 5:37 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:12:42 +1100) it happened Bill Sloman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vidvrl$1d62d$1@dont-email.me>: >>>>>>>> On 30/11/2024 2:27 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:15:15 +1100) it happened Bill Slowman
    <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in <vici9s$13umg$1@dont-email.me>: >>>>>>>>>
    On 30/11/2024 12:00 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    <snip>

    Well, we have global warming in case humans fail.

    It's anthropogenic global warming. If we stop digging up fossil carbon >>>> and burning it, that extra warmth will go away eventually - but it is
    likely to take a few centuries.

    Or we can dig deep enough into the ground for some heat.
    But the question remains if you CAN make break even - get positive energy out
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
    endless babble about Albert E...

    But, my solar panels work great!

    But they rely on that big fusion reactor hanging there in the middle of >>>> the solar system. It's been there for about 4.5 billion years. Nobody
    realised that it was nuclear fusion reactor until quite recently, and
    the message still doesn't seem to have got through to you.

    Oh well, and the sun will burn up eventually or so I'v read.
    Not so much is known about the inner nuclear workings of the sun.

    Quite a lot is known, if not by you.

    Is the fusion part caused by enormous pressures from the rest of the sun? >>
    It's temperature rather than pressure that makes the difference.

    It does not have to be break even or positive at all.

    Of course it has to. Gravitational compression created the pressure and
    the heat that eventually started the nuclear reaction. It takes about
    100,000 years for a photon from the reacting core of the sum to make it
    out to emerge as sunlight.

    I will not even mention Le Sage (oops) and possible other theories
    dark matter, what not.

    That's a relief. You mostly ventilate your idiocies non-stop.

    Would be nice if we could look ahead a few thousand years to see the theories then.

    Not really. We wouldn't understand them.

    If humanity still exists, Dinos ?

    Most species last about 10 million years. We might completely wreck the
    earth and kill ourselves off in the process, but we've survived several
    ice-age to interglacial transitions.

    We are just like ants, a few neurons wanting - looking for - a theory of everything.

    Just a bit bigger than ants, with rather more technology.

    And yet, everything is connected...

    Another one of your mindless assertions.

    There is nothing you can know that is not known:
    https://www.thebeatles.com/all-you-need-love-0

    There is plenty you can "know" that isn't known to other people.

    You produce more nonsense than most, and most of what you think you know
    strikes other people as largely unoriginal nonsense.

    "It does not have to be break even or positive at all."

    Well since you have not designed build and published even a picture of something as simple as a flashlight here
    logic suggest possible jealousy or 'grootheidswaanzin'

    You haven't been paying attention, or perhaps you can't plug the text
    version of an LTSpice .asc file into LTSpice.

    But then so did Einstein, he never did an experiment in his life and his only design was a bad Fridge.

    It was a perfectly okay fridge, for some unusual applications.
    Theoreticians don't do experiments, and the Pauli Effect suggests that
    they stop experiments from working. Wolfgang Pauli and Pqul Dirac didn't
    do any experiments either, and that didn't stop them from being almost
    as famous as Einstein.

    Him being youwish made him their hero, god almost, as he wrote that letter to suggest committing genocide on Japanese civilians with nukes.


    Don't be silly. His letter - with Leo Silzard - to Roosevelt didn't have anything to say about using the atom bomb. It just pointed out that such
    a bomb was possible, and that Germany might be working on it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_letter

    His squared lightbulb masses are the biggest obstacle to science advancing as are global warming witch hunts.

    In your demented opinion.

    Look at fusion like a spring
    A srping can be compressed and drive a clock or a toy car
    But it never will power anything by itself.
    There will always be a net loss between compression and using it to do something.
    Table top will confirm that (Farnsworth Fusor).

    Looking up during the day confirms something rather different.

    ITER has confirmed that, but misguided politicians keep falling for the einstein brainwashed,
    pooring in ever more money for no result at all.. EVER.

    ITER hasn't done anything yet. The Joint European Torus in England
    worked well enough to demonstrate that ITER was worth doing.

    ITER will always ask for bigger and more.

    It seems the most likely outcome. We wouldn't have invested in it if it
    wasn't. Of course if they found a reason why a bigger torus won't
    actually deliver the goods, they would report that too. That's why
    people do scientific experiments.

    Sure some suppliers of magnets and what not now make a living from your tax money there..

    Not my tax money. I live in Australia and pay my taxes to the Australian government

    At the same time US agents like Germany's Merkel killed the real power generating nuclear plants.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident

    Human species... decline, dark ages repeating itself, dummies produced by the millions
    zero understanding mamaticians doing a divide by zero, multiple uni-verses (do they sing there).

    Evolution does produce a lot more duds than successes. You seem to be
    one of them.

    <snip>

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joe Gwinn@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Sun Dec 1 12:46:26 2024
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 23:54:54 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 22:59, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out. >>>>>>>>>>


    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite >>>>>>>>> is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
    explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
    anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister? >>>>>>
    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to >>>>>> open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for
    centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor
    plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed,
    there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities
    we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's
    *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable
    explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his
    hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Wiki claims

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

    10 Kg critical mass. Are they wrong?


    I think so.

    Jeroen Belleman

    More sophisticated bomb design likely requires less plutonium.

    Joe Gwinn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeroen Belleman@21:1/5 to Joe Gwinn on Sun Dec 1 19:49:12 2024
    On 12/1/24 18:46, Joe Gwinn wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 23:54:54 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 22:59, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out. >>>>>>>>>>>


    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
    explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>>>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect >>>>>>>> anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister? >>>>>>>
    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to
    open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for >>>>> centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor
    plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed,
    there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities >>>> we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's >>>> *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable
    explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his
    hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Wiki claims

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

    10 Kg critical mass. Are they wrong?


    I think so.

    Jeroen Belleman

    More sophisticated bomb design likely requires less plutonium.

    Joe Gwinn

    Making bombs with plutonium is complicated. Anyway, that was not
    our interest. The subject was using 238Pu to generate heat to
    provide enough energy for a single, or a small number of households.

    Some sources claim that 238Pu has a critical mass of about 10kg,
    which is odd, because it's not listed as fissile. It's predominantly
    an alpha emitter.

    As a rule, only isotopes with odd mass numbers are fissile. Of course
    Pu has an exception: 240Pu fissions even without being provoked. Oh
    well. Incidentally, that's what makes Pu difficult to use for bombs.

    Anyway, it's relatively straight-forward to get isotopically pure
    238Pu, that is, if anything can be called straight-forward in this
    area. Even if it could be provoked to fission, it shouldn't be
    too hard to distribute it such that that doesn't get supercritical.
    Alloy it with 50% of Al and shape it into long rods, dope it with
    boron, or something else yet, I haven't really looked into that
    much detail.

    So, in summary, the problem is producing enough 238Pu cheaply,
    containing it safely for widespread use, and combining it with a
    compact device to produce electricity and domestic heating.

    I don't truly believe this has any chance of happening, except
    maybe for a few special cases, like lighthouses in remote Siberia,
    or deep space probes, or something.

    Jeroen Belleman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to All on Sun Dec 1 10:54:49 2024
    On Sun, 01 Dec 2024 12:46:26 -0500, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
    wrote:

    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 23:54:54 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 22:59, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out. >>>>>>>>>>>


    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
    explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist >>>>>>>>> knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect >>>>>>>> anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister? >>>>>>>
    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to
    open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for >>>>> centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor
    plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed,
    there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities >>>> we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's >>>> *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable
    explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his
    hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Wiki claims

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

    10 Kg critical mass. Are they wrong?


    I think so.

    Jeroen Belleman

    More sophisticated bomb design likely requires less plutonium.

    Reflectors and tampers reduce critical mass, as does explosive supercompression.

    A bit of tritium in the pit helps too. I think the minimal nuke used
    about 1 Kg of p239.



    Joe Gwinn

    p238 would be a terrible bomb material. Might work, though, in an
    implosion bomb with a neutron injector to kick-start things.

    p238 isn't "fissile", namely doesn't capture slow neutrons well.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joe Gwinn@21:1/5 to john larkin on Sun Dec 1 15:05:18 2024
    On Sun, 01 Dec 2024 10:54:49 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

    On Sun, 01 Dec 2024 12:46:26 -0500, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
    wrote:

    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 23:54:54 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 22:59, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out. >>>>>>>>>>>>


    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
    explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist
    knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect >>>>>>>>> anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister? >>>>>>>>
    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to
    open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for >>>>>> centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor >>>>> plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed, >>>>> there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities >>>>> we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's >>>>> *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable
    explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his >>>>> hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Wiki claims

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

    10 Kg critical mass. Are they wrong?


    I think so.

    Jeroen Belleman

    More sophisticated bomb design likely requires less plutonium.

    Reflectors and tampers reduce critical mass, as does explosive >supercompression.

    A bit of tritium in the pit helps too.

    That is my understanding as well.


    I think the minimal nuke used
    about 1 Kg of p239.

    The US Many B61 warheads are small and/or have adjustable yield.

    .<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb>


    There was an 8-inch nuclear artillery shell that would be fired from a
    big gun.

    .<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W33_(nuclear_warhead)>


    p238 would be a terrible bomb material. Might work, though, in an
    implosion bomb with a neutron injector to kick-start things.

    p238 isn't "fissile", namely doesn't capture slow neutrons well.


    Yes.

    Joe Gwinn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joe Gwinn@21:1/5 to jeroen@nospam.please on Sun Dec 1 15:07:27 2024
    On Sun, 1 Dec 2024 19:49:12 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 12/1/24 18:46, Joe Gwinn wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 23:54:54 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 22:59, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:12:23 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 18:19, john larkin wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:57:50 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
    <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/30/24 10:34, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
    Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

    [...]
    It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement, >>>>>>>>>>>>> if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the >>>>>>>>>>>>> whole house and then some.

    ...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out. >>>>>>>>>>>>


    If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.

    I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked, >>>>>>>>>>> it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc >>>>>>>>>>> that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
    is about 1MJ.

    I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
    diesel far bigger than that. It burned slowly and steadily until it set
    fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down. Nobody was
    injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
    on the site.

    It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
    explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist
    knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination. >>>>>>>>>>


    OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect >>>>>>>>> anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister? >>>>>>>>
    There's always an idiot (or a terrorist) who would challenge themself to
    open it.



    Yes, probably. There have been similar incidents in the past.
    I'm convinced it can be made safe enough for widespread normal
    use, but there will always be some fool somewhere. If we let
    that stop us, no technology is safe enough.

    Jeroen Belleman

    A kilogram, properly distributed, would make a city uninhabitable for >>>>>> centuries. Imagine such an active alpha emitter in a water supply.

    There are myriad ways to create havoc, if we wanted to. I have castor >>>>> plants in the garden. They are very decorative. Properly distributed, >>>>> there is enough ricin in them to kill tens of thousands of people.
    Nobody cares. Weaponizing noxious substances isn't so easy.


    It would make some cool glow-in-the-dark gadgets.

    Critical mass is around 10 Kg. Kids could make nukes.


    238Pu doesn't sustain a chain reaction, at least not in the quantities >>>>> we talk about. Nukes use 239Pu, the fissionable isotope. That's the
    isotope that has a critical mass in the 10kg ballpark. Even then, it's >>>>> *very* hard to keep it together for long enough to create a sizable
    explosion. No kid is going to pull that off, even if he could get his >>>>> hands on 239Pu in sufficient amounts.

    Jeroen Belleman

    Wiki claims

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

    10 Kg critical mass. Are they wrong?


    I think so.

    Jeroen Belleman

    More sophisticated bomb design likely requires less plutonium.

    Joe Gwinn

    Making bombs with plutonium is complicated. Anyway, that was not
    our interest. The subject was using 238Pu to generate heat to
    provide enough energy for a single, or a small number of households.

    Some sources claim that 238Pu has a critical mass of about 10kg,
    which is odd, because it's not listed as fissile. It's predominantly
    an alpha emitter.

    I think people are mixing Pu238 and Pu239 up.


    As a rule, only isotopes with odd mass numbers are fissile. Of course
    Pu has an exception: 240Pu fissions even without being provoked. Oh
    well. Incidentally, that's what makes Pu difficult to use for bombs.

    Anyway, it's relatively straight-forward to get isotopically pure
    238Pu, that is, if anything can be called straight-forward in this
    area. Even if it could be provoked to fission, it shouldn't be
    too hard to distribute it such that that doesn't get supercritical.
    Alloy it with 50% of Al and shape it into long rods, dope it with
    boron, or something else yet, I haven't really looked into that
    much detail.

    So, in summary, the problem is producing enough 238Pu cheaply,
    containing it safely for widespread use, and combining it with a
    compact device to produce electricity and domestic heating.

    I don't truly believe this has any chance of happening, except
    maybe for a few special cases, like lighthouses in remote Siberia,
    or deep space probes, or something.

    Yes.

    It's the same problem as using Thorium in a nuclear power reactor: It
    needs a very strong neutron source to keep the Thorium fissioning, and
    it's hard to make enough neutrons cheaply enough absent a real nuclear
    reactor to make the neutrons.

    In hydrogen bombs, the purpose of the hydrogen part is to make enough
    neutrons fast enough to make the U238 blanket fission wildly all at
    once.

    Joe Gwinn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)