Question Plug me in!

Something on the news the other day got me wondering about power sources in the Gen2 era: is the WU by this time still relying on the current methods coal, oil, ect) or is there a Mr. Fusion or some other gadget power source in every car and home?

'Mr. Fusion'? No.

But there are currently several fusion formats slugging it out for acceptance. And the Oil Industry is fighting them like the Tobacco companies fighting Cancer lawsuits. It may be a while.

What about current trends in our society -- hybrid/plug-in electric cars, ride sharing, car sharing, bike sharing, solar power, wind power, coal losing to natural gas -- is the Whateley scene just "like that, only moreso" or are there significant differences?

Let me give you an hypothetical scenario with far-reaching consequences:
1. Big Coal sees rather early that the more immediate menace to their business model is cheap natural gas.
2. Accordingly, they lobby to strongly regulate fracking. Gas prices don't fall as much, so this gives coal some extended life.
3. However, as a consequence U.S. domestic production of oil doesn't increase significantly, which results in oil prices not dropping as much as in our universes.
4. Net gains in short term for oil-producing countries.
5. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have a lessened cash flow problem -- which means Saudi reformists don't get traction, and the Venezuelan regime takes longer to become financially bankrupt.
6. Large pre-salt oil reserves in the Brazilian coastline and other expensive sources become economically competitive.
7. Oil prices settling on a higher level make hybrid and non-gasoline cars (ethanol, hydrogen, plug-in electrics) more attractive.

Further logical consequences of this scenario:

Certain coal billionaires who shall remain nameless get an even bigger influence (or control) over American political parties, weaving a vast web of legislation and investment and jobs that locks the USA in coal fired power for decades to come.

It is uncertain but likely that China and India follow in these footsteps out of economic necessity.

Without initial subsidies solar power and wind turbines are slow to take off.

Warnings about global warming have been kept off the official news and media much more effectively and remain portrayed as fringe scare mongering, even with the world already locked into catastrophic climate change and an extinction event starting to become evident.

Severe and extreme weather are already noticeably more common but there are laws against reporting these studies, calling them fear mongering and even eco terrorism in the most radical states. People still increasingly feel the devastating effects of course but are less informed about the actual causes and increasingly busy just to survive day to day to get too involved in politics.

Ruthless politicians looking for a way to escape accountability are beginning to make noises about mutants being to blame for 'incidents' like the first cat 6 hurricane, the sharp increase of birth defects and still births (and not the high lead and mercury content of the drinking water), or the massive draught and brush and forest fires at both sides of the Rockies. News about how much worse things are getting outside the USA are mostly ignored on television and are only available to those who make a deliberate effort to look for it on the internet.

Well, people asked how the MCO could make a resurgence in the USA?

I don't really see the 'coal future' scenario as feasible; coal hasn't really been economically viable for decades, at least not in the US, for purely technical reasons. It has held on as far as it has mainly due to the costs of infrastructure changes.

Mind you, just because something isn't economically viable on its own doesn't mean it won't get a lot of political backing. Fission power, for example, was never economically viable - even with the reduction of refining costs to ~9 SWUs per kilogram of reactor-grade fuel with the introduction of centrifugal-diffusion separation, the cost of preparing the fuel and operating the plants far outweighed the profitability of the resulting energy output (in part because it was so efficient that it increased the volume supplied above the grid's carrying capacity, while also driving prices down and causing plant income to hover just around or even below the fixed costs of the process - chew on that for a bit). The only reason nuclear power was pushed so hard in those countries where fuel processing was done was because it was easy to treat it as a side benefit of refining weapons-grade material - and when weapons production tapered off in the early 1970s in both the US and USSR, so did plans for new nuclear plants. The USSR had more political will on the topic, because they saw it as a showcase technology to 'prove' that socialism was superior, but even there it lost momentum.

Note that none of this was attached to the ecological issues. By the time those came to the public attention in the US, the power companies were already reconsidering their intentions to continue building plants; things like Three Mile Island and the changes in public sentiment were just a handy excuse to do so.

So, politics is relevant in keeping systems in place. This has in fact happened with coal, but most of it is not from the coal mining corporations; it is partly from the plant operators not wanting to invest in change-over, but it is mostly from state legislatures in coal-mining regions not wanting to deal with an immediate unemployment crisis, preferring to implement one form of welfare state (an artificially maintained economy) over a more explicit sort that is contrary to the source of one's general sense of self-worth for many Americans.

Just how politicians world-wide will cope with the effects of additive manufacturing on employment will be interesting to see, but ultimately irrelevant, as the main effect of it will be to cause a general decentralization, as the long-distance trade that is the primary force that led to the creation of large nation-states ceases to flow to any real degree. This isn't unprecedented; there have been several such cycles of centralization and decentralization, almost all of which were driven by changes in technology (in the general sense of what people know how to do and how they understand the physical and psychological milieus). After all, the real main reason the Western Roman Empire collapsed was the introduction of the heavy iron moldboard plow and an improved horse collar, ending northwestern Europe's dependence on Egypt, Sicily, and southern Italy for its grain supply and undercutting the real reason the Empire existed in the first place. The interplay between technology, physical economics, and social structures is subtle, but for the most part mechanical and inexorable (and those parts which aren't are mathematically chaotic/perturbable - meaning that either way, agency and intent play little role).

"Resists typing something non-PC to most of the forum"

I as an electrician for the last 30 years and a guy who has seen the issues from the inside---all I can say is

Please figure out what you all want soon..because "renewable' is not going to 'cut it' (looks at the 'solar' plant in cali...laughs...god the hidden cost over runs and the fact that blowing sand and shinny glass mirrors don't exactly mix?)...you all don't want oil or coal or nuke...but want a place to plug in that computer and 'I' pad/phone thingy...with your hair dryer?

lighttech wrote: "renewable' is not going to 'cut it'

I don't disagree. The problem is, the only things that even theoretically could be adequate for the long term are the ones which don't work at all so far (fusion and SPS), and probably never will.

(In principle the tech for the latter does exist, but it would require a massive commitment of resources and engineering, as even the ISS would be tiny in comparison to even the smallest feasible SPS - we're talking, at minimum, a circular array 1 kilometer in diameter. Just lofting that much material to GEO would bankrupt the world, so the only realistic way to build one would be to have a fully operational mining and industrial colony on Luna first, something that would take a decades-long bootstrapping operation to avoid the same problem with lofting masses. And that's before tackling the more serious engineering issue, namely orbit-to-surface transmission.)

I suppose one could argue that deep geothermal might be adequate for several centuries as well, but, gee, we don't really have that working at beyond a pilot scale, either. If it works at scale it will probably be important, especially if the recent third generation high-temperature superconductors (the ones based on graphene which were discovered this past year - while current testing is under cryogenic conditions, the evidence indicates that derivatives of them now in development could be usable above room temperature) prove to be a feasible medium for long-distance transmission, but both of those are big ifs.

(Also, here I mean 'works' in the most basic sense of 'practical and economically sustainable', without considering the side effects - we can't afford to be fussy about environmental effects, even for subsistence power requirements never mind the current excessive use, and in any case the sheer number of humans will cause plenty of those no matter what.)

Though the social changes due to changes in manufacturing which I already mentioned will probably mean all of this is moot. I said things would change; I never said it would be for the better. At this scale, 'better' and 'worse' are relative, with some benefiting and others harmed, so all we can say is that it will be different.

lighttech wrote: "Resists typing something non-PC to most of the forum"

I as an electrician for the last 30 years and a guy who has seen the issues from the inside---all I can say is

Please figure out what you all want soon..because "renewable' is not going to 'cut it' (looks at the 'solar' plant in cali...laughs...god the hidden cost over runs and the fact that blowing sand and shinny glass mirrors don't exactly mix?)...you all don't want oil or coal or nuke...but want a place to plug in that computer and 'I' pad/phone thingy...with your hair dryer?

Solar? Can we get a cloud free day? Oh also what happens when the sun goes away...
Electric cars? If we don't beef up the grid they are really as much of a nonstarter as they were 100 years ago.
Resists with you more political incorrectness. Physics rules the world. Right now we have nothing in the offing that is as energy dense as coal. That is a fact. You can cry about that as much as crying about pi not equaling 3 and get about the same result. If you think coal is really dead, why is India pouring vast resources into coal fired plants? Are they that much easier to build than anything else?
Remember your electric car? What is it's maximum distance traveled on a charge? How long does it take to recharge from dead out of oomph? That is why gasoline and or diesel will stay here for a long time. You can run to dead out and pull into a filling station and be back on the road within a few minutes... (well there can be complications if you run dead out... and they can take more than a few minutes but mostly you don't have to always plan your trip to be less than about 40% of your fuel in order to maintain enough to get to someplace where you can refuel and running down to near empty only takes as long as pumping in more fuel rather than waiting for batteries to recharge [which is why hybrid vehicles make more sense at the moment]) All of which goes to say that people are generally lazy and will take the way that seems to be the easiest to them.
Are there other possibilities? Not immediately. Will they be developed? Maybe, if they promise a good ROI. Will the old guard whine and complain and even try to make any disruptive tech illegal? Ask what is happening to the internet!!

Anne wrote: Physics rules the world. Right now we have nothing in the offing that is as energy dense as coal. That is a fact.

Energy density is not the sole factor here, but even if it were, you'd be mistaken. Uranium is more energy dense than coal, vastly more so in fact, but as I already stated, that very efficiency is part of why it is economically non-viable.

What is true to the best of my knowledge is that in the US and Europe, most of the easily exploited coal reserves have already been depleted, and the remaining reserves are much harder to access, making it less economically feasible. Worse (from the perspective of the majority of those working in coal mining), the techniques needed to access them are less labor-intensive, being mostly automated ones by their nature with most of the work done by explosives and heavy machinery.

It is also true that most coal-fired plants in the US are less efficient at extracting that energy than oil-fired or gas-fired ones, though I will admit that this is mostly due to the fact that a lot of the US power-generating infrastructure is in desperate need of overhaul. The gas-fired plants are more efficient because they use newer and more efficient methods, not because the fuel is better, and new coal plants elsewhere are just as efficient as those are.

(As for environmental effects, I've been led to understand that the heavier load of flue particulates from burning coal actually makes it easier to scrub with the now-current equipment than that from oil or LNG, which mostly emit non-particulate gases. I'm not sure if that is accurate, however. It certainly doesn't apply to many of the existing plants.)

But that doesn't change the problem of mining coal no longer being as practical in the established industrialized nations.

I can't speak for the technology used in India or China, the two main consumers of coal right now, but my impression is that India had been updating their systems, though the older ones are still dirty and inefficient. Conversely, China has focused so much on rapid expansion that they've stuck to less expensive, and less efficient, older designs. Both still have significant, easily accessed coal reserves, so right now it is still a realistic option for them.

lighttech wrote: "Resists typing something non-PC to most of the forum"

I as an electrician for the last 30 years and a guy who has seen the issues from the inside---all I can say is

Please figure out what you all want soon..because "renewable' is not going to 'cut it'

First of all, you should be free to state your opinion, even if it is unpopular. You may have to defend it, or cope with being unfriended if your opinion is that contrary to polite company. But I sure hope this forum can rise above the desire to attack the messenger rather than the message, and stick to mostly civilised discourse

Also, colour me officially confused, because I thought that the common scientific consensus was that renewable energy is in fact not just feasible but capable of supplying the world's energy needs.
It just will not work with the current centralised grid since that is based around giant powerplants that can be switched to higher or lower gear quickly to meet the ever changing demand.

The problem with small and large scale storage has to be solved still, obviously (giant accu packs in every home are not going to cut it, that much is certain) but combining local production with large scale production that on a continental scale can balance out local fluctuations are, so was explained to me, going to be necessary.

The mistake a lot of people make is to confuse renewable energy with free energy. Free energy is not going to happen. Effectively unlimited energy might, but only if we can actually solve hydrogen fusion technology (which technically we did, I guess, even if it is hideously expensive to fire those energy surplus producing millisecond shots).
The point of renewables is to get our energy needs without adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. Coal may be cheap (and not nearly as subject to rapidly diminishing supplies as oil) but it has the dubious benefit of simultaneously choking, poisoning and smothering us in the medium long term. Europe found 80s that it was quickly deforesting itself through its expansive use of coal fired powerplants, and the poison cloud from the chines plants stretched all the way across the pacific ocean into the american west coast). And nuclear power inevitably leaves us for hundres of thousands of years with (thousands of) tons of stuff that is an engineer's nightmare and a terrorist's dream. And the smallest accident has the possiblitiy to make entire countries uninhabitable for a couple of centuries.

With most of the nuclear powerplants in the world located at or near the /current/ coastline things will get really 'interesting' as the sea level continues to rise. These things are not something you can just pick up and relocate fifty miles inland. And you can't leave them partially inundated either.

So neither coal or nuclear looks like a particularly safe (or survivable) approach to energy production. And the point of renewables never was lower cost (that is just a side benefit that at least the production part of it is on par or below the cheapest forms of carbon burning). The real benefit is that renewables allow us to produce large amounts of energy that do not cause (as much) the world becoming unsuitable for human life.

But, that is what I understood from the things I read about the subject. It does apply to my work, but only in sofar as it affects the design of homes and small office buildings and for those PV panels and municipal wind turbines seem capable of taking away 99% of the need for burning carbon.

Total cycle costs are complicated to calculate. For instance, nuclear power has a considerable cost of disposing of waste -- just look at how much the U.S. Navy is having to pay to decommission the Enterprise. That cost was probably not fully considered when the ship was designed. Similarly, coal-fired plants have a significant cost in disposing of the ash. There are societal costs in the form of pollution. And all fossil fuels have a hidden societal cost in CO² emissions -- it's smaller for natural gas because it burns more completely, but it's by no means zero.

Not that renewable are free from hidden, societal costs either. Wind farms are often considered an eyesore, and there are complaints about noise and bird deaths, to name one.

Solar is not as cheap as other forms of energy right now, but it's improving rapidly. There is interesting, promising research in new kinds of solar cells that could bring the price down, including organic-based semiconductors. And before you dismiss organic semiconductors as a pipe dream, look at those big-screen OLED TVs...

The main stumbling block for many of the renewable energy sources, and for electric cars as well, is storage. The current state of the art is the lithium-ion cell, which is almost-but-not-quite "good enough", but is bottlenecked by the lithium supply, keeping prices relatively high. But there are other, potentially better forms of storage in the labs. Nanostructured carbon supercapacitors could have a higher density than lithium, faster charging and longer service life, for instance. There's a lot of big companies investing in nanotech research, eventually someone will crack the problem of producing carbon nanotubes and similar stuff in high volume. But it could take a while. How long? I don't know. I have been hearing that we are "five years away" from fusion power since, what, the Eighties?

Whateley tech is a few years ahead of our world's tech. We know that Gen1 Whateley has a working fusion reactor for its main power supply, for instance. Gen2 might have those improved solar cells and improved electric storage I mentioned above. So it's not unreasonable that solar power and electric cars would be growing exponentially in the Gen2 timeframe.

My biggest thought about the adoption of fusion is that there would be pushback based on the fact that it isn't rooted in engineered tech - especially if it is devisor tech, though you could expect the same for gadget tech if it proves difficult to manufacture at scale for one reason or another (a significant consideration even for strictly engineered tech; and from what we've seen, plenty of gadgeteers are more instinctive than methodical).

(To clarify what I mean, when I speak of 'engineered tech', I am talking less about it not being built using a mutant power, and more about the application of stringent engineering methods. A gadget counts as engineered tech if the gadgeteer applies conventional engineering standards in the development if it - calculating loads and tolerances, performing properly staged trials, etc. - even if the core principle was due to their preternatural insight. Consider the differences between how Tesla worked compared to the far more methodical Steinmetz , or between how, say, most body armor designers develop their products versus how Troy Hurtubise built and tested his creations, and you should see what I mean. The problem becomes documenting the work in a way that shows that it was properly engineered, and you can bet that some would pore over the notes with a very sceptical eye.)

This would be less about anti-mutant prejudice - though that would play a role - than about reliance on a single source for the systems.

I would expect that some major metropolitan regions would fund construction of one-off power plants based on gadgeteer-constructed systems, and individual organizations with a really desperate need (or a recklessly aggressive PR strategy) might sign up devisors for their infrastructure, but most would wait until at least one pilot plant was built based on gadgeteer technical innovations but using conventional engineering in the construction and operation of the plant.

In Gen 2, our baseline is that Fusion is coming, soon, and it's going to put HUGE pressures on some parts of the world (which may or may not have significant impact on our characters and story-line).

However, there is STILL a problem to be dealt with - electric vehicles may be fine in a city, but try crossing Texas in an EV. Even if there are plug-in recharging stops, it'll take DAYS. Petroleum still has a huge advantage in stored chemical energy that is easily available. But then, if power were not an issue, someone surely would have designed some mechanism to turn that power and raw materials (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen) into a room-temperature storable liquid with very high energy density.

On a side note, I just watched Scott Manley's discussion of the book Ignition! , specifically the parts about some experiments involving insanely dangerous chemical rocket fuels - fuels that make dimethyl hydrazine (the infamous 'devil's venom') look like weak tea.

Just hearing him discuss plans - and working prototypes - meant to use things liquid ozone (!) and chlorine trifluoride (!!) as oxidizers, and dimethyl mercury (!!!) as a reaction mass additive makes me wonder if some of these people has a death wish. Even NERVA - hell, even the original Orion nuclear-pulse drive plans from the 1950s - would have involved less risk of toxic accidents.

One thing to consider in Gen2 is the affect of the adoption of Fusion or some other petroleum-alternate on the Commonwealth of Independent States (i.e., Russia). Russia is currently getting by on oil exports. Have they been upgrading their infrastructure? What will happen to their economy when their cash cow is degraded?

And YES, Russia worries me.

While we can and will write fiction that shows things that may never be commercially available we ought to recall that what is written here is fiction. Sure it is our way of helping to deal with a less than friendly world, but it is still fiction. That means no arguing that Dr Fusion has done the impossible by convincing lower Congo or somewhere else to let him build his bleeding edge fusion generators there so that everyone in lower Congo now has all the electricity they can use for free... Of course the real price may be abominable when the people realize that Dr Fusion has a horrid hobby of bar-b-queing his neighbors while they are still alive...!!
Not that other people who gained vast power in Africa (or elsewhere) were not known to practice cannibalism in the Real World ^TM... Does anyone recall Ida Mien?

Bek D Corbin wrote: One thing to consider in Gen2 is the affect of the adoption of Fusion or some other petroleum-alternate on the Commonwealth of Independent States (i.e., Russia). Russia is currently getting by on oil exports. Have they been upgrading their infrastructure? What will happen to their economy when their cash cow is degraded?

And YES, Russia worries me.

My thinking is very little effect in the medium term - initial use of fusion is large power plants (few of which burn oil) and some specialty uses. By far the biggest use of oil is transport and the petrochemical industry. I would see a slow tailoff of oil in transport (it will be slow due to the existing stock, and a slow and steady (in the long term) drop in oil price keeping electric cars marginal.
In the long term, the petrochemical industry isnt going away any time soon.
The gas price fall will occur earlier, more power plants use gas, but its still a slow, long term fall - power plants are hugely expensive, you dont replace them on a whim unless you're an idiot.

That's why solar, wind and electric cars can end up being more disruptive than fusion -- because they can be deployed much faster than the incumbents can adapt. While centralized power plants are huge long-term investments that are custom-made and take years to build, solar cells, wind turbines and electric cars are built in assembly lines.

Astrodragon wrote: In the long term, the petrochemical industry isnt going away any time soon.

That's one of the reasons going back to coal long-term is a non-starter. Petrochemical feedstock is less expensive and easier to work with than volatile coal tar extracts at a multiple of its spot price. To disrupt that technology, you need synthetic methods with better economics for gluing carbon atoms together to make aromatic and polyaromatic hydrocarbons.

One other fuel source no one has mentioned yet that seems to be getting some traction. Train Something to think about.

Ask a simple question...need to wade through pages when you get back to the thread.

Some simple questions inspire intense ideas!
However I don't think your question was all that simple, nor will the answer be a straight forward 'miniaturized fusion was perfected by Dr Zotz who actually failed to hold the world at ransom when he brought his machines on line...

Schol-R-LEA wrote: On a side note, I just watched Scott Manley's discussion of the book Ignition! , specifically the parts about some experiments involving insanely dangerous chemical rocket fuels - fuels that make dimethyl hydrazine (the infamous 'devil's venom') look like weak tea.

Just hearing him discuss plans - and working prototypes - meant to use things liquid ozone (!) and chlorine trifluoride (!!) as oxidizers, and dimethyl mercury (!!!) as a reaction mass additive makes me wonder if some of these people has a death wish. Even NERVA - hell, even the original Orion nuclear-pulse drive plans from the 1950s - would have involved less risk of toxic accidents.

Ahh yes the early days of rockets, we didn't really understand the difference between the theoretical best and what's practical. UDMH is containable, hence why we settled on that for weapons and still use it today for some spacecraft propulsion, and why China and Russia still use it for a few of their rockets.

I didn't expect Mr Fusions to be a thing, it was just the first alt sci fi power source to enter my head.
-slow nod- So, still up the creek, but getting the paddle in the near future,. Which means power frame and suits still have power issues that need to be over come. Nice, I was worried that a devisor could "barrow" the fuel cell out of their family car or soething.

The problem with fusion is the containment 'bottle' for lack of a better word. When or if that is ever solved then 'industrial' fusion will be the energy source for major installations and cities. But until they can get the containment bottle both small enough and light enough to be useful in transportation it is doubtful that such will be available for portable power usage.
Given the nature of the WA universe, it would surprise me quite a bit if one or more devisors has not solved the issue for their personal power armor!

With how many facets there are on the Crystal Hall dome, if they could cover them with photo-receptive film or some form of coating that could capture the solar available, then they could harness that for a lot of power.

I don't even understand the motivation. The whole point of the Crystal Hall is that it's transparent. You can't bask in your sunlight and harness it too; the more you're capturing, the more of a tint you apply to the dome. If you want to supplement Whateley's power supply with solar, why not just put your panels on the roofs of the normal buildings? They've got more combined surface area than the Crystal Hall has anyway.

Kettlekorn has a point, there's plenty of campus roofs to be covered in solar cells.

With that said, however... there's a lot of energy in the non-visible parts of the spectrum. UV ought to be filtered anyway, and it usually only results in converting that energy into heat (i.e., warming the glass -- such as happens when you park your car in the sun). A transparent coating that absorbed only UV and converted it to electricity instead of heat would not only supply a bit of power, but also reduce the power demands of the HVAC in summer. If its absorbancy/opacity could be adjusted, it would be even better.

Anne wrote: The problem with fusion is the containment 'bottle' for lack of a better word. When or if that is ever solved then 'industrial' fusion will be the energy source for major installations and cities. But until they can get the containment bottle both small enough and light enough to be useful in transportation it is doubtful that such will be available for portable power usage.
Given the nature of the WA universe, it would surprise me quite a bit if one or more devisors has not solved the issue for their personal power armor!

I may be way off here, but I do recall reading somewhere that scientists could now create a one shot fusion burst that actually produced a little more energy than it cost to start that reaction. (If you don't count the energy cost of creating those tiny pebbles of pure deuterium). Of course they also needed a couple of jiggawatts worth of lasers to force the reaction and could get back a fraction of a fraction more energy, and needed a couple of days or weeks between shots.
That magnetic bottle does not seem to be the only major problem that needs to get engineered around (probably theorised around too)

Regarding power sources for power armor. Didn't Doc create just that and decided to suppress her invention because she did not want to end up in the history books as the person responsible for effectively giving everybody in the world their own personal equivalent of a nuke?

Erianaiel wrote: That magnetic bottle does not seem to be the only major problem that needs to get engineered around (probably theorised around too)

The amount of engineered unobtanium needed to transform the resulting heat into something useful still looks to be a problem. Ideally, one would also want to recycle the unspent stock back to the next or ongoing reaction instead of venting to atmosphere and having to obtain its replacement, but I'm not sure that that's been worked out either.

Erianaiel wrote: Regarding power sources for power armor. Didn't Doc create just that and decided to suppress her invention because she did not want to end up in the history books as the person responsible for effectively giving everybody in the world their own personal equivalent of a nuke?

Considering how well the prototypes worked when close together, I'm reminded of the wisdom vs. power relationship of tapping ley lines. IRL, "natural" doesn't mean "good for you".

Erianaiel wrote:

Anne wrote: The problem with fusion is the containment 'bottle' for lack of a better word. When or if that is ever solved then 'industrial' fusion will be the energy source for major installations and cities. But until they can get the containment bottle both small enough and light enough to be useful in transportation it is doubtful that such will be available for portable power usage.

I may be way off here, but I do recall reading somewhere that scientists could now create a one shot fusion burst that actually produced a little more energy than it cost to start that reaction. (If you don't count the energy cost of creating those tiny pebbles of pure deuterium). Of course they also needed a couple of jiggawatts worth of lasers to force the reaction and could get back a fraction of a fraction more energy, and needed a couple of days or weeks between shots.
That magnetic bottle does not seem to be the only major problem that needs to get engineered around (probably theorised around too)

They have gotten more energy from an 'ignition event'. The facility that did this (IIRC) uses lasers to compact the fuel pellet as well as raise its temperature high enough to initiate fusion. but there are still problems.
1) the time required to set up a 'shot'
2) maintaining the pressure required at the temperature required to foster fusion
3) recovering the energy. Producing more energy in a broad spectrum is different from harnessing the produced energy (usable energy)
4) finding a way to continually feed 'fuel' into the confinement area for continuous fusion. In a magnetic 'bottle', a path to inject fuel is also a leakage path for pressure and confinement, which disrupts the geometry required to initiate or continue the fusion process.

Still a ways to go in real life. In Whateley with devisors? It's been done, but how successful and how repeatable has yet to be defined. A devisor fusion reactor might operate well, but it is not reproducible, and might be highly unstable.

And even if we had working fusion, there is still a fundamental problem to resolve - which is transportation. In a ship, it might be possible to incorporate a fusion reactor, but there's a size issue. Too small a ship and it's not practical. Land transportation - it MIGHT be practical for trains, but semis, cars, cabs, etc? Likely not. And then you hit the same issues - if you assume rechargable battery systems where the electricity comes from fusion reactors, you run into endurance and recharge issues. Whether we're talking fusion, fission, battery, hybrid, or chemical fuel, a one-size-fits-all solution does not exist because the performance requirements vary significantly based on usage. Even in the Whateley universe, it's not possible to get a one-size-fits-all solution.

However, in the Whateley universe, it IS possible to assume technology allows synthesis of hydrocarbon fuels from non-petro feedstocks, and it IS possible to assume that hydrogen storage systems are better and safer than current real-world examples. That opens up hydrogen as a legitimate fuel, and synthetic petroleum products to replace current petroleum sources.

elrodw wrote:
However, in the Whateley universe, it IS possible to assume technology allows synthesis of hydrocarbon fuels from non-petro feedstocks, and it IS possible to assume that hydrogen storage systems are better and safer than current real-world examples. That opens up hydrogen as a legitimate fuel, and synthetic petroleum products to replace current petroleum sources.

This already exists.

There's a process called "Vacuum Pyrolysis", which puts feedstock in a graduated series of vacuum chambers with increasing heat levels, so you get outgassing of the volatiles, but as you are heating the feedstock in an oxygen reduced atmosphere, you get the hydrocarbons without the combustion

There's a variation of the process using microwaves that are tuned to the resonant frequencies of hydrogen and carbon, instead of water, which gives a greater increase in efficiency in outgassing.

For making fuel, it's not very energy-efficient, as the energy required to heat the chambers is way more than the amount of energy that you get out as fuel, but this is only true if you are just considering the process from the point-of-view of it being a fuel-manufacturing process.

If you are powering it through the use of renewable energy, your energy inputs are (relatively) no-cost, and as long as your feedstock is using organic sources, ie.plant bio-mass, then it becomes a way of creating fuel, without incurring any costs in the form of CO2.

In this way the liquid-hydrocarbon stage of the process, is considered a form of energy storage, rather than an end-point, in and of itself.

This is known in tech circles as the "Circular Economy" for carbon.

---

This would be an interesting approach for Shine to consider, as he would be able to make carbon-neutral fuel supplies. I would guess that fact that he's only working on drinking alcohols, is one of the reasons that he has not appeared on Big Oil's radar.

If he tried to make an industrial fuel-making process, he would become a BIG target for them, and would have to get extra protection from being messily murdered.

(No joke. I know of a couple of people who were working in this sort of field that had really suspicious "accidents", which is why the local Gadgeteer's meet-up always recommends to new members, that you either become allied with one of the large combines, or you choose to work in a different field.)

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One of the main problems with Hydrogen, is that the atoms are the smallest form of matter, so they tend to slip between the atoms that any containment vessel is made from.

It's why they are so damn leaky. Remember the Hindenberg?

This is also a problem that crops up with laser tubes. We bought one spare tube for our lasercutter, but when we went to use it nearly a year later, we were not getting the full amount of power from the tube. Running a spectrograph over it, and we found that the gasses inside the tube had been contaminated, due to the osmotic effect.

It's why they have a chew-by date.