{"id":28939,"date":"2024-05-19T05:00:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-19T09:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=28939"},"modified":"2024-05-18T13:31:54","modified_gmt":"2024-05-18T17:31:54","slug":"sunnyside-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/19\/sunnyside-saturday\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunnyside Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Saturday and that\u2019s the happiest day of the work week (in my opinion).\u00a0 And so today can\u2019t be doom and gloom day.\u00a0 No end of the world stuff or triumphant deep state conspiracy theories for me today.<\/p>\n

I was just watching a YouTube video about why commercial nuclear fusion is fifty years away and always will be (ha ha).\u00a0 And of course there were no surprises there.\u00a0 The sheer magnitude of the temperatures, pressures, magnetic flux and energy consumption needed to make this process work is beyond daunting.\u00a0 It\u2019s technical lunacy.\u00a0 When you look at where nuclear fusion does exist (a star), what you realize is that this is an environment where gravity can compete against the electromagnetic force head-to-head.\u00a0 That is not going to happen in our labs and factories.\u00a0 So, we have to pay for magnetic containment and we pay by the gigawatt-hour.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a good trade-off.<\/p>\n

When I try to imagine what practical controlled nuclear fusion would look like I conjure up a tiny gun shooting tritium nuclei, one at a time, into a target of heavy water and boiling the heavy water to make steam.\u00a0 It\u2019s my version of the \u201cBack to the Future,\u201d Mr. Fusion engine that runs Doc Brown\u2019s time machine at the end of the movie.\u00a0 The breakthrough is that I\u2019m able (by magic) to keep the energy expenditure for the tritium gun down to the level of what I can extract from a USB cable on my MP3 player.\u00a0 Of course, where I get the radioactive tritium from and how I keep myself from being irradiated while riding in my fusion powered car are at this point undetermined.<\/p>\n

Now, don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 Given a thousand years I think we\u2019ll make real progress on commercial nuclear fusion or find out it\u2019s not feasible.\u00a0 And I think research on it is a very good idea, if for no other reason than that it will spawn innumerable amazing technological byproducts that may be even more beneficial than the primary problem.\u00a0 But I think we should all put aside any dreams of living in a world powered by nuclear fusion (unless some wise guy figures out that cold fusion is an actual thing).<\/p>\n

But all of this is just the intro to my main thought.\u00a0 And that is what would life on Earth be like if energy really were essentially free.\u00a0 Now I don\u2019t mean free, free.\u00a0 The infrastructure for breeder reactors and handling their waste products will be an incredibly complicated and expensive industry that will employ a good chunk of the technically minded part of the population.\u00a0 And maintaining a power grid and the other allied industries that will grow up around very cheap electricity (e.g., syn-fuel) has always been a big piece of modern life.<\/p>\n

But imagine if you can what kinds of problems would be solvable if essentially limitless power were available<\/a>.\u00a0 For instance, what if desalination of sea water could be accomplished at a scale to be able to farm the Sahara Desert?\u00a0 Think of the engineering projects that become feasible if power is no longer a problem.<\/p>\n

And all chemical synthesis is available if the power to provide the potential to run the reaction in your direction is provided.\u00a0 We could even start making cars out of metal again.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always dreamed of having a car that was immune to road salt corrosion.\u00a0 Hastelloy C, Tantalum, or boring old titanium?<\/p>\n

But the best part of all is imagining that my electric bill for my home heating and cooling and lighting is zippity doo dah all the way up to some pretty impressive electrical usage.\u00a0 Hell, even I would give up my oil heat and use resistance heating just for the sake of getting rid of that damn furnace that\u2019s always breaking down.\u00a0 And I want them to throw in free fuel for my car up to let\u2019s say a couple of thousand miles worth a week.\u00a0 Ah, what a wonderful world it could be without technophobes.<\/p>\n

Alright, all optimism for the week officially used up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Saturday and that\u2019s the happiest day of the work week (in my opinion).\u00a0 And so today can\u2019t be doom and gloom day.\u00a0 No end<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1263,3545],"tags":[3370,165,146],"class_list":["post-28939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-science","tag-energy-policy","tag-science","tag-technology"],"yoast_head":"\nSunnyside Saturday - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/19\/sunnyside-saturday\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sunnyside Saturday - 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