How synchronized hammer strikes could generate nuclear fusion (gas, oil, energy)

[OpenD]

Research into producing safe, clean, abundant energy from nuclear fusion has been "in the future" for so many decades that I've become a little tone deaf to the oft repeated "but we're getting closer." I've come to regard research into using fusion to produce energy as something akin to Achilles pursuit of Zeno's tortoise... the machines just get bigger and bigger, and more and more expensive... but no matter how close we get, we'll never actually arrive there. Or so it has seemed at times.

In this charming Ted Talk from Vancouver, with a different perspective, Canadian scientist Michael Labarge discusses the various approaches to producing fusion, and shows how the output from these various projects has been steadily increasing in a trend that has been following Moore's Law, then points out that the two biggest and most advanced projects in the world currently were technically feasible many years earlier, but were delayed by politics. And he points out that the amount of financial subsidies devoted to fusion research is merely 1/2 of 1% of the total subsidies devoted to oil and gas and renewable energy.

Then he gets to the fun stuff... a radically different approach using a spinning molten lead bath (absorbs neutrinos!), being struck by carefully synchronized steam powered hammers, to collapse a plasma field in the middle holding a deuterium pellet target, causing fusion, which generates heat, which generates steam to spin a turbine generator, and keeps the lead liquid, and drives the steam hammers to the next strike a second later.

Only time will tell if this somewhat zany-sounding $50 million project will work or not, but the talk is fun, and I was inspired by these comments...

"Most people think that fusion is in the future and will never happen, but as a matter of fact, fusion is getting very close. We're almost there. The big labs have shown that fusion is doable, and now there are small companies that are thinking about that, and they say, it's not that it cannot be done, but it's how to make it cost-effectively."

https://www.ted.com/talks/michel_lab...nuclear_fusion

[Zot]

Originally Posted by OpenD

How synchronized hammer strikes could generate nuclear fusion

Have they tried a sickle? I'm told a hammer and sickle work well together.

[Mack Knife]

Originally Posted by Zot

Have they tried a sickle? I'm told a hammer and sickle work well together.

That was good. I've heard that head smacks can do much the same.

[Zot]

Mack,

I tried to give you a thumbs up, but the computer tells me I'm at my current limit for you. My reaction was mostly motivated by one too many dumb TED talks videos. The quality of TED talks is very uneven, and of late, seems to have increased in quantity and decreased in quality. Glad you enjoyed the humor.

If SNL can ever get their heads out of gutter sniping Republicans for a few minutes, a pseudo TED talks about something really stupid could be very funny as a beginning to the show.