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

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.
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>

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

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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