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From: Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: New fusion power system test creates 300,000 degrees C plasma
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2024 19:05:11 +0100
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On 11/30/24 18:10, john larkin wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:47:25 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
> <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 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?
>>>
>>
>> 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?
> 
> They do when the water cooling system fails.
> 
>>
>> 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.
> 
> By "confine" I meant no heat loss. Half-life is 88 years, and there
> will be additional heat from decay products.
> 
> 560 watts for 100 years is about 2e12 joules. That gets it up to 55
> billion K, if my math is right.
> 
> (US billions)
> 
> 

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale 
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Jeroen Belleman (Wearing his Twain coat)