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From: john larkin <JL@gct.com>
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Subject: Re: New fusion power system test creates 300,000 degrees C plasma
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2024 18:23:11 -0800
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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?