In all fairness I only checked what’s going on with fusion once in a while as my background is Physics (as in, I started a degree in it and then ended up going to EE because in my home country there really only are jobs for theoretical physicists, not the more hands-on kind) and hence only know it at a superficial level (of somebody with the background to understand Particle Physics but not a domain expert).
Yeah, I do know about the embrittlement of the container walls due to neutron emission from the fusion reaction (no idea how bad or not that is compared to the rest), but last I checked plasma containment was still a bit of a problem as was the plasma cooling through photon emission (mind you, that might not be as much of a problem for the kind of temperature of the plasma the previous poster was mentioning, which - I assume - are less that what’s need to induce fusion).
That said, all in all it just sounds strange to use fission to generate a plasma - I mean, bloody fire generates a plasma (the flame is a plasma) - so I don’t quite see the point of generating plasma with the whole overhead of a nuclear reaction rather than, say, high powered lasers, high-voltage currents (yeah, lighting is plasma) or just plain old chemical reactions.
That whole thing sounded a bit too much like “fancy sciency words thrown around to deceive the ignorant” so common in scams.
That’s one problem. Neutron embrittlement is another.
Yeah, I was just addressing the previous post.
In all fairness I only checked what’s going on with fusion once in a while as my background is Physics (as in, I started a degree in it and then ended up going to EE because in my home country there really only are jobs for theoretical physicists, not the more hands-on kind) and hence only know it at a superficial level (of somebody with the background to understand Particle Physics but not a domain expert).
Yeah, I do know about the embrittlement of the container walls due to neutron emission from the fusion reaction (no idea how bad or not that is compared to the rest), but last I checked plasma containment was still a bit of a problem as was the plasma cooling through photon emission (mind you, that might not be as much of a problem for the kind of temperature of the plasma the previous poster was mentioning, which - I assume - are less that what’s need to induce fusion).
That said, all in all it just sounds strange to use fission to generate a plasma - I mean, bloody fire generates a plasma (the flame is a plasma) - so I don’t quite see the point of generating plasma with the whole overhead of a nuclear reaction rather than, say, high powered lasers, high-voltage currents (yeah, lighting is plasma) or just plain old chemical reactions.
That whole thing sounded a bit too much like “fancy sciency words thrown around to deceive the ignorant” so common in scams.