Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial...
by pfdietz on Tuesday March 15, 2022 @08:50AM
(#30684590)
My favorite 3He source would be "Planet X", if it exists and is an Earth (or perhaps even Mars) size planet out far enough that the temperature at the exobase is low enough to retain 3He in its atmosphere. Sure, getting there would be difficult, but this scenario assumes we have D3He fusion, which we can handwave would get the miners out there in a reasonable amount of time.
Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial...
by ncmncm on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @10:17PM
(#30706841)
If it takes long enough to get there and back, folks back home might perfect p-B fusion in the meantime.
Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial...
by pfdietz on Thursday March 17, 2022 @07:23AM
(#30709862)
I don't think p-11B fusion will be possible. The groups attempting it look really sketchy (as in, talking about doing things that clearly don't work.)
Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial...
by ncmncm on Thursday March 17, 2022 @02:16PM
(#30714245)
It will take fundamental advances to get to p-11B fusion. A startup working today is anyway in no position to achieve such fundamental advances; that is more in the line of national laboratories, or would be if they were not fooling with ITER instead. Maybe some of the ITER work will be useful for other things.
For D-3He fusion to be useful, we have to hope that it will be economically viable to synthesize 3He, in the meantime. Arguably, we ought to be making and stockpiling tritium now so there will be enough 3He when we need it; but that might be too optimistic.
That strengthens the point I was trying to get at, which was that there's no reason to go to the moon for He3 when, if we can get net power from He3, we can just make it in a D-D reactor and gain energy in the process.