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'cold fusion' style nuclear power is looking more promising these days, apparently simply pushing current through a non acidic (basic, KoH or similar) solution in distileld water, out of a copper cathode into a nickel anode, will seperate oxygen and hydrogen from the aqueous solution, combusting the hydrogen within the new oxygen bubble, outputting up 10x more power than input. there are a few more factors, resistance of the anode / water (specific temperature range) etc, but still a nuclear reaction giving off power without radioactivity or severely toxic waste products, infact using non-standard model reactions similar, such as the keshe reaction, it is possible to atmospheric Co2 as a simultaneous reaction to the primary energy generation.

there is also great improvements in general fusion technology, due to our atmosphere, a reaction quite like the sun is impossible (not enough pressure) so to achieve true fusion one needs to heat the plasma solution to 150,000,000 (sun 10,000,000 degrees, but with out the pressure more heat is required) , as well as magnetising the plasma in such a way that it is suspended without touching the reactor walls, as when the plasma touches the sides it instantly cools. in the 60s a russian team designed a donut-like magnetic field to suspend the plasma in, but only managed to heat it to a factor of 20 the heat required, in the 90s another group got to within a factor of 8. now, there is the ITER test reactor in france that looks to get even closer, if not eventually theorize how to genuinely achieve fusion ( a joint program between many EU countries aswell as, for the first time, china, south korea etc).

fission power is much like petrol cars, the big heads of the companies all sat around and decided to slander electric car or what have you technology so they could keep selling their inferior product, uranium has to be mined and so mroe efficient / safe nuclear methods have been slandered, to the point of cold fusion being dubbed 'impossible' at one point'. the incedents at chernobyl and fukushima etc are not indicative of all 'nuclear' power and it is a shame through these events and the technologies weaponization that the term 'nuclear' has become emotive.

cold fusion reaction:

 

D-D fusion reaction:

 

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'cold fusion' style nuclear power is looking more promising these days

 

Can you provide a link to any peer-reviewed research that shows this?

apparently simply pushing current through a non acidic (basic, KoH or similar) solution in distileld water, out of a copper cathode into a nickel anode, will seperate oxygen and hydrogen from the aqueous solution, combusting the hydrogen within the new oxygen bubble, outputting up 10x more power than input. there are a few more factors, resistance of the anode / water (specific temperature range) etc, but still a nuclear reaction giving off power without radioactivity or severely toxic waste products

 

The reaction you describe is a chemical one, not a nuclear one. Nuclear reactions involve the formation of new elements from old ones, relying on the creation or destruction of nuclear bonds between nucleons. An example of this is when a uranium-238 particle emits an alpha-particle, decaying into a thorium-234 particle. Chemical reactions involve the breaking of interatomic bonds. An example of this is the one you provided, where the covalent bonds between hydrogen and oxygen in the water are broken or formed.

'cold fusion' style nuclear power is looking more promising these days, apparently simply pushing current through a non acidic (basic, KoH or similar) solution in distileld water, out of a copper cathode into a nickel anode, will seperate oxygen and hydrogen from the aqueous solution, combusting the hydrogen within the new oxygen bubble, outputting up 10x more power than input.

 

The problem with this is that the energy comes from the potential energy of the bonds in the chemicals. If you increase the potential energy of a system of particles by, for example, adding energy to split it into its constituent elements, then that energy, and only that energy, is released when the process is reversed by recombining the elements, such as when you burn hydrogen in oxygen to produce water. If you are going to claim that 10x more energy (I'm assuming you meant energy) is released by the reaction than was required to produce the fuel, you need to explain the mechanism or at least state where this energy comes from, or provide extremely solid evidence that this is the case using peer-reviewed research. If, in fact, this was the case, it would be an extremely active area of research around the world and there would be thousands of papers proposing mechanisms for this effect, which seemingly defies the known laws of physics.

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http://dspace.mit.ed...le/1721.1/71632 (A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR); research: a response to Shanahan) , i have no access to university libraries or anything, this is the best scholarly article i have read on 'cold fusion' (note my inverted commas, i use this term as it is recognisable what i mean, correctly i speak of 'Low Energy Nuclear Reactions' or LENR) . this article essentialy states that the original reaction is, despite criticism and lack of understanding to do with variables, reproductable with a measurable result that can not be entirely put down to testing error. this is far more encouraging than the 'cold fusion is impossible' antics of the past.

the process i describe is just the basic parts, i am no nuclear physicist (or physicist at all) so i don't exactly understand the more complicated version of events, although by my logic the KoH solution is heated by current, which eventualy starts to give off hydrogen at the same time the water temperature reaches hot enough, then when you increase voltage the neutrons are forced off via the intersecting magnetic fields of tha cathode / anode, attracting electrons from the solution, creating a charged plasma, putting pressure onto the created hydrogen to give off helium-3, which bubbles out / discipates, renewing the cycle. the nuclear reaction occurs in-situ to the chemical reaction.

like i said though, i am no physicist, it just seems to me like people who ARE in the field seem to be making advances that in high-school i was taught to be impossible.

edit: added title of linked paper

edit 2:

here is a reactor built by italian university of bologna, demonstrating stability with higher output of energy than required to run the reactor. linked to is a series of papers, somewhat suspiciously also from university of bologna residencies. apparently they have allowed third parties to take their own measurements, although i haven't seen any of these papers. ( http://pesn.com/2011...apers_released/ )

this suggests that the reaction occurring may not be that of fusion, due to the lack of measurable radioactivity, and instead a reaction unknown to current physics models or against current physics models is could be implicated.

then there is this guy, Keshe (http://www.keshefoundation.org/en/). surely not very credible, an iranian nuclear physicist that has spent the last 30 years odd developing an alternate model for nuclear physics that he claims explains this non-nuclear plasma reaction, hes got some brief videos and stuff that short of shows what he is talking about, but he seems to have multi meters plugged in wrong and other things that subtract from his message. so, there is research being done at least to try and explain, outside of what we 'know', how this reaction happens.

Edited by dionysus

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who was it who pointed out that the nearest naturally occurring nuclear reactor to earth is nearly 150 million km away from us ie the sun & the fact that life exists at this proximity from it is telling us something pretty obvious? I can't remember.. but I think it's a good point. i dont have a problem with nuclear energy, just that if we do it, we should first develop the technology to do it in space & far beyond the gravity well of earth. sooner or later things fuck up.. it's just the way it goes..

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The sun is a fusion reactor. Fission reactors are different and have different by-products. The Earth would be more aptly described as a fission reactor than the sun. A lot of the Earth's heat (just over half) is generated via the decay of uranium and thorium, so geothermal power essentially works, largely, using the same processes as fission plants. The difference is that it's one huge reactor spread out through most of the volume of the earth, and it's controlled by low concentration rather than by the addition of carbon to absorb neutrons, so there is zero chance of the Earth going into meltdown, and just like the fissile material, the waste products are much more diluted.

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thanks ballzac you seem to explain it in a way that i can understand i wish i had you as my physics teacher

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could some one help me, i understand fission and binary events (sort of) but when three fragments are produced is that ternary fission

and what causes it to produce 3 instead of 2

edit fixed layout

Edited by bigred82

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Not exactly. The three products have to contain protons for it to be termed ternary. It's far from my area of expertise, but I think it would be fairly safe to assume that there's no causal reason for 3 charged fragments to be produced instead of two. The analysis would require looking at the wave function of the system, which would give a probability of ending up with three charged fragments. This would correspond exactly to the percentage of the resultant elements in a large ensemble of fission events. But there is probably no way of predicting, with any certainty, whether there will be two charged fragments or three from initial conditions in a single fission event. The probability of this occurring is would be higher for some initial conditions than for others. That is, some fissile materials will be more likely to result in ternary fission than others, but the exact probabilities would require an in depth analysis of the wave function.

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I worry about total extinction of all life on this planet if something really fucks up - so far we've been " lucky " : 3 Mile Island , Chernobyl , and the recent Japanese disaster , etc , could all have been much worse . I believe that we ought be searching for more sustainable and safer alternatives , even if they cost us more . Nothing , imo , is worth taking the risk of possible extinction of all life on Earth .

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There is almost zero danger of the total extinction of life on Earth from uncontrolled nuclear reactions. The only danger is to an environment that us humans find comfortable, inviting and easily hospitable. And most - if not all of us will die.

But Earth - and life, will live on - just without us. If you look into the oceans, you'll find the abundance of fish has been replaced with that of jellyfish and starfish - both things that we don't find particularly palatable. But the "net amount" of life is approximately the same. Similarly Chernobyl has had its wildlife recover to a level unseen since well before the town was erected. From memory the number of mutations is also anomalously low (now) - but this could be entirely incorrect.

So my reason to shift towards sustainability is to ensure that we have a planet that is comfortable and inviting to us, as we enjoy the plants and animals that are living now. We won't enjoy it so much when the biodiversity is so low that the major mammals are rats, cats and dogs, and everything else is an insect.

Edited by CβL
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i understand a event horizon i think but how much is a solar mass i kind of under stand overcoming nuetron and electron degeneracy pressure but would just like

if you could point me in the right direction

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i understand it as this we will be leaving earth one day and doing lots of space travel nuclear energy would be ideal when setting up colonies on Uranus or mars

so we first must use energy that is in abundance before we waste our precious reserves i love nuclear energy as long as it is safe they should have bigger reactors in Australia but it should not be Australia's main source as we have so much geo,solar,wind,tide available to us and it has alot to do with the reactor as well thorium is a great option one i can see a future for

 

As far as i know Australia currently produces zero (watevers) of lecky from nuclear power. The one powerplant still in opperation (that i know of) is only a research facility and ZERO power is fed from it to the grid.

As always happy to be wrong

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just wondering to make a fuel rod what leftovers are there could Australia export fuel rods so we could know how much they are using

would this help proliferation i know my questions may seem a bit of topic but i want to get a proper understanding

its a amazing subject

peace big red

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i understand a event horizon i think but how much is a solar mass i kind of under stand overcoming nuetron and electron degeneracy pressure but would just like

if you could point me in the right direction

 

I'm not sure I understand your question

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its ok worked it out was wondering how a star turns into a black hole sorry the question didnt make sence

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