gardendance What radioactive materials? I haven't read the article, but fusion and fission are different things. The sun fuses non-radioactive hydrogen, and just uses an enormous amount to create the fusing pressure.. Our fusion bombs on the other hand, from what I remember from high school, use 2 uranium or a bunch of plutonium bombs, to fuse hydrogen.
What radioactive materials? I haven't read the article, but fusion and fission are different things. The sun fuses non-radioactive hydrogen, and just uses an enormous amount to create the fusing pressure.. Our fusion bombs on the other hand, from what I remember from high school, use 2 uranium or a bunch of plutonium bombs, to fuse hydrogen.
Patrick, Fusion still creates radioactive waste. It has a short lived lifespan, but none the less, that lifespan is still measured in a peroid of years. So the material would need to be secured, for fear of it being used for purposes that could be detrimental to the public. That's what I was referring to.
Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time....
That's not to say that we might not run into it in the future, along with any number of other emerging technologies.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Erik is right, and there is a little more about shielding.Fission nuclear reactions leave radioactive "fission products" behind- the ash of the process. These are long-lived and dangerous - mustbe contained for long years.The neutrons Erik mentions are gone instantly, leaving behind theirenergy to heat steam. Reactor designers are careful to avoid certainelements that might become long-lived radioactive when hit byneutrons.Maybe the Lockheed guys are on to something but my own experiencehelping build *large* fusion machines makes me pretty skeptical abouttheir claims.Incidently there is an article on the nuclear locomotive from the diskarchive Trains July 1955. "Atomic Locomotive Quiz: An expert asks andanswers questions""... there is a possibility that radioactive material could bescattered about " <> "... it would not represent an unsolvableproblem."John
In the newer projects, such as the Lockheed and Greifswald ones, radioactivity does not appear to be a factor. Damage to lattice structure of materials used for the containment of the process by the plasma seems to be the real obstacle.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Maybe what's needed is some marketing, ala rebranding? Would there be as big of a negative connotation in the public's eye, if the word nuclear was not used in conjunction with the word fusion? Perhaps all you need is a catchy name. For example, Rich, Corinthian Fusion.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Problem with neutrons is that they will activate a lot of nearby materials, i.e. the fusion reactor "vessel" will be intensely radioactive after it has been in operation.
On the plus side, any shielding that will reduce neutron dose rate to acceptable levels will also keep activation on the outside of the shield to acceptable levels. If the fusion reactor is licensed to the same standards as a fission reactor, "acceptable levels" is 5 milli-REM per year or less than a micro-REM per hour, probably looking at at least 8 feet of borated polyethylene to get the neutron dose rate down to that level - and this has to be on all sides of the reactor.
- Erik
Even if the Skonk Works comes up with a fusion reactor the size of a footlocker that produces electricity directly from the magnetic bottle and somehow converts heat to more electricity in some as-yet-undeveloped solid state device, the NIMBYs and the technologically challenged media/politicians will go into uncontrollable, "Run in circles, scream and shout," mode as soon as someone makes a move to put one in a locomotive.
For the record, people who live in Vail, CO, and other equally high altitude places get more radiation daily (from cosmic rays) than the citizens of Three Mile Island got on the worst single day of their, "Disaster," that really wasn't. You will get about the same TOTAL dose by flying from New York to Hong Kong.
As far as electrifying U.S.rails, we already have. We just use distributed power right on the train ("Look, Ma, no wires.")
Chuck (Former nuclear-incident trained disaster control technician)
Murphy Siding Maybe what's needed is some marketing, ala rebranding? Would there be as big of a negative connotation in the public's eye, if the word nuclear was not used in conjunction with the word fusion? Perhaps all you need is a catchy name. For example, Rich, Corinthian Fusion.
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/bulletin/1947-1995/1947/00091947.pdf
Nuclear Energy, Please!!
Constant association of one word with another will eventually create in the mind of any individual a relationship that is difficult to disregard.
In order to impress upon people the beneficent aims of the research work to be done at Brookhaven, it is necessary first to create the proper word picture in their minds regarding the energy to be derived from the atom. To this end we are endeavoring to have newspaper releases mention nuclear energy rather than atomic energy, and to speak of the beneficial uses of nuclear energy, rather than of the peacetime uses. The latter phrase all too frequently brings to mind the opposite of peace.
Brookhaven National Laboratory personnel can assist in this campaign by speaking of nuclear energy and of the beneficial uses of nuclear energy when discussing the Laboratory with relatives or friends.
The chain reaction that may result from our combined efforts in this will focus the public’s attention on the good that may be derived from the use of a force that has been used heretofore mainly for destructive purposes.
Here's that guy who designed the atomic locomotive. It's interesting they called a nuclear reactor an atomic pile in those days.
"Atomic Pile" was Enrico Fermi's doing and he used that with the American idiom for "pile" in mind. Similarly the unit for nuclear cross-sections is the "barn", with one barn equal to 10E-24 sq cm, and it came from the expression "can't hit the broad side of a barn". The symbol for Plutonium, Pu, was chosen knowing the American idiom as well.
Borst called his locomotive X-12. It seems Oak Ridge was X-10. I guess Brookhaven was his X-11. Here's his obituary in The Chicago Maroon, student newspaper of the University of Chicago, Aug. 16, 2002:
Physicist Borst dies at 89, by Whet Moser
Alumnus Lyle Borst, a former member of the Manhattan Project and the founder of the Federation of Atomic Scientists, died July 30 at the age of 89.
Borst, a Chicago native, completed his undergraduate education and his master’s at the University of Illinois, and earned his Ph.D at the University of Chicago in 1941. One year later, Borst worked in a metallurgy lab at the University under Enrico Fermi. The experience Borst gained in helping to create the first sustained nuclear reaction led to his being named supervisor of research for the creation of the X-10, the world’s second nuclear reactor, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which was completed in 1943.
His quick rise to the heights of American physics continued when, at the age of 33, he was hired to direct the construction of a nuclear reactor at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. At the time it was the country’s most powerful reactor and the first intended only for research. Only nine months after it reached critical mass, the Brookhaven reactor began to produce a type of radioactive iodide that would become vital to the treatment of thyroid cancer. Soon after his departure from the lab in 1951 for the University of Utah, Borst used his research at Brookhaven to show that beryllium 7, an isotope of beryllium not found naturally but created at Brookhaven, is fused in the collapse that marks supernovas.
The creation of the reactor at Brookhaven established Borst as a physicist with a passion for the responsible use of nuclear energy. In 1945, at the end of World War II, Borst founded the Federation of Atomic Scientists, for the purpose of maintaining nuclear energy and research under civilian control. The Washington, D.C.-based organization expanded to become an important think tank now called the Federation of American Scientists, involved in all aspects of the use of nuclear energy.
After his work in Utah, where he directed construction of the school’s reactor, Borst moved on to New York University and the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he taught for 19 years. At NYU, Borst was responsible for the development of the “Pickle Barrel,” the first reactor built for the purpose of instructing undergraduate and graduate students.
Uncontrolled nuclear fusion could make the whole planet blow up and turn into the sun and or create a mini black hole that will eventualy get bigger and suck everything into it. This is of course after the New World Order will have downloaded there consciusness into a mainframe computer satilite and blasted off into space
Railroad Locomotives - My Blog
Will DavisFolks, take it from someone actually in the nuclear field. Fusion power is not something near at all, and there's no guarantee it ever will be. More importantly, a moving land based nuclear power plant locomotive will NEVER get licensed. NEVER.
Not to contradict a working nuclear physicist, but what do you call all those U. S. Navy ships whose type designator ends in N?
Seems to me that the Fleet has proved that mobile devices powered by reactors can be operated safely and efficiently. If the process is left in the hands of engineers and scientists, land-based mobile reactor-powered (or fusion, or mass converter powered) units WILL be developed, rigorously tested, certified safe and placed in commercial service. Never is a long time, and scientific development doesn't stand still.
Of course, if control is yielded to journalism students and lawyers who can win popularity contests, we'll all be speaking Chinese before it happens.
Chuck
A couple of things... Ships have more room to put shielding, with the surrounding sea water acting as part of the final shielding itself. The surrounding sea water is also useful in the case of an accident, as it can be used to flood the reactor compartment to keep the core coverd with water (TMI and Fukushima both became real messes when their respective cores went dry).
Note to Schlimm below - the surrounding sea water would be even more of a benefit for shielding a fusion reactor than a fission reactor. Of course decay heat wouldn't be as much of an issue for a fusion reactor as for a fission reactor, though the components of the fusion reactor would be intensely radioactive.
This post is about experimental fusion-generated power. AFAIK, you are mostly referring to fission.
Chuck,
I actually was qualified Reactor Operator on two different US Navy submarine nuclear power plants. So actually yeah, I've heard of those. Nice snarky reply but that really is just that - snark, without fact.
Somebody here want to tell me what power cycle this fusion plant will work on? Anyone? Heat transfer medium? Anyone? Practical experience with your given power cycle?
We already "did" this with fission. And for all the talk that foamers (yes, nuclear energy has foamers too, and they know less than railfan foamers) make about nuclear planes, trains and cars, there really was almost no investment made on trains at all in comparison to that made on conventional nuclear plants for commercial power and for military uses. (Or commercial ships powered by nuclear energy.) It never really was "just around the corner." Not even close. Not one single prototype design for nuclear locomotives was ever submitted to, and accepted by, the AEC for analysis and licensing.
None... NONE of the things you have available for military shipboard nuclear power is available to railroads. NOTHING. You have no nationally funded nuclear laboratories to design plants, no prototype sites, no decades-long training program, no maintenance support, nothing. All of that investment would need to be made to get any sort of chance of having any system in any way comparable to the Navy's (and remember, that comparison was made by the previous poster I'm replying to.) Nuclear plants at sea also have something you would not have on land as a nuclear locomotive moves around - billions of gallons of available water. Think about that.
The plain fact of the matter is that there's zero chance of getting any sort of railborne nuclear power unit licensed by the NRC. Folks can like that, not like it, believe it or not believe it but that's just the way it is. Heck, we are right now in the midst of preparing for tsunamis at US nuclear plants that will never see one. (Deliberate oversimplification, yes, but point made.) Can you imagine trying to prove safety on a nuclear locomotive, given the railroads' record of derailment, collision and accident with diesel and electric trains? If you must have nuclear powered trains, then do what France did - build magnificent, load following nuclear plants that contribute well over half the nation's power and electrify the railroads. Much else is just fantasy.
tomikawaTT Will Davis Folks, take it from someone actually in the nuclear field. Fusion power is not something near at all, and there's no guarantee it ever will be. More importantly, a moving land based nuclear power plant locomotive will NEVER get licensed. NEVER. Not to contradict a working nuclear physicist, but what do you call all those U. S. Navy ships whose type designator ends in N? Seems to me that the Fleet has proved that mobile devices powered by reactors can be operated safely and efficiently. If the process is left in the hands of engineers and scientists, land-based mobile reactor-powered (or fusion, or mass converter powered) units WILL be developed, rigorously tested, certified safe and placed in commercial service. Never is a long time, and scientific development doesn't stand still. Of course, if control is yielded to journalism students and lawyers who can win popularity contests, we'll all be speaking Chinese before it happens. Chuck
Will Davis Folks, take it from someone actually in the nuclear field. Fusion power is not something near at all, and there's no guarantee it ever will be. More importantly, a moving land based nuclear power plant locomotive will NEVER get licensed. NEVER.
Folks, I've said this before and I'll say it again. When a US Navy nuclear fleet veteran tells you something about nuclear propulsion you'd better believe him, or her, for that matter.
Take it from an old Marine, the toughest school in the US armed forces is Navy nuke school. Tougher than flight school, tougher than SEAL school, tougher than anything you can imagine. Make it through nuke school and you're something special. It's the reason the Navys safety record with nuclear propulsion is second to none. And don't try to be smart by mentioning the "Thresher" and the "Scorpion", the loss of those boats had nothing to do with the "kettles" back in the en-gyne spaces.
Just my two cents. Semper Fi Mister Davis, and "keep a level bubble"!
Have fun with your trains
Will, my apologies. I thought you were an ivory-tower academic. I didn't realize you were a hands-in-the-machinery type.
The seagoing boilers I had hands-on experience with burned oil. Of course, the only nuke boat in commission at the time was SSN-571.
I think you should go back and re-read what I actually wrote. I work with a LONG time scale. Who knows now what will be developed in a few decades or centuries? I agree that right now the technology to use E=mC2 devices to power a locomotive isn't even a smoke puff on the horizon. That doesn't mean that it will NEVER happen. While people are doing insignificant things with multi-billion dollar devices some entity well below the radar might just tinker a way to convert cat litter to clean energy with insignificant heat, no detectable radiation and zero emissions. When? Good question. (Holdeth not thy breath!)
Chuck [MSgt(Ret), USAF, occasional science fiction author]
I am thinking that having small nuclear generaotor and stringing up wire in remote stratigic high capasity corridors would be a better choice.
Pardon me if these observations have been mentioned earlier in the thread.
A relative of mine was a career electrical/chemical/mechanical engineer at General Electric. The kind of guy where GE had to hire three people to replace him when he retired. He died about 10 years ago.
One thing he told me was that there would not be a civilian nuclear power industry without the military. Not economically feasible on its own. (And civilian nuclear power generation made a nuclear military politically palatable).
Also, he became ecstatic when fusion was finally achieved for an instant. He said that having achieved that, it'd only be a matter of time until usable fusion would be accomplished.
Gomez would be happy.
In this great single super-economy the railroads of eastern New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, southern New England, and northern New Jersey may easily share. In fact it is definitely planned that they shall share in it. The list of feasible users of this concentrated power includes the Fitchburg division of the Boston and Maine, all the way from Boston to Rotterdam Junction, New York (oddly enough the western half of this division, from Greenfield to Rotterdam, through the Hoosac tunnel, 104 miles, has for some time since been marked for electrification by the road’s own engineers); the connecting Delaware and Hudson from Mechanicsville, New York, to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; the New York, New Haven, and Hartford from the present terminal of the electric zone at New Haven through to Boston, both by the Shore line and the Springfield line (this predicates of course the electrical operation of the Boston and Albany all the way east[Pg 155] of Springfield—and why not west of that point also is not easily discovered); the main line of the Erie, from Jersey City to Susquehanna, Pennsylvania; the Lackawanna, from Hoboken to Elmira; the Lehigh Valley from New York to Wilkes-Barre; the Central Railroad of New Jersey-Reading-Baltimore and Ohio group to Washington, to Hagerstown, Maryland, and to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; the Pennsylvania, from New York to a point just beyond Harrisburg—all of these main lines and a host of their branches. Such is the railroad portion of this embracing scheme. The only important road in its territory that is omitted from the electric program is the New York Central, which has such low grades and hence such economical use of power that the economy of electricity is least necessary to it. If ever it should desire to coöperate in the plan, it probably can gain the power for its main line—west of Albany, at least—from Niagara Falls, and for its network of busy lines in northern New York from the abundant water-powers of the Adirondack preserve or the huge St. Lawrence River international power project.
This all seems most logical. In the case of New England it so happens that the super-power plan—which is now seemingly certain of eventual execution—embraces just that section of the territory where there is the least surplus of water-power. The rough, wild rivers of the north of Maine, of New Hampshire, and of Vermont can and yet will operate almost all of the mileage of the railroads of those States; the distant mines in the Pennsylvania and the West Virginia hills will run the lines in the rest of New England. Power—power to move railroads—will cease to move across the most congested strip of North Atlantic seaboard in noisy and overcrowded and inefficient car-loads of coal. Power will come on the copper wire and will move the silent trains around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—and many of them—some of them with big and efficient locomotives and others by sturdy small individual motors set within the car-trucks. The steam [Pg 156]locomotive in this northeastern territory is nearly doomed. I think that eventually it will be doomed everywhere within the United States (our disappearing coal supply will be the chief factor in this), but first and foremost of all in the great congested areas which, having no coal of their own, live in constant and deadly fear that an overworked and overgrown railroad structure may yet fail to bring to them all that they need for their imminent necessities.
Our Railroads To-Morrow
By Edward Hungerford
Copyright 1922, by the Century Company, New York
We have not run of coal. If fossil fuels remain readily available and cheaper, fusion may languish as a replacement.
But isn't that the same Hungerford who would give us William Wiggins and the One Big Railroad of 1961 a bit later? ;-}
Seriously ... the answer to this, you all know. Dieselization with diesel-electrics was "good enough" without the massive stranded costs of the electrifications per se. (Imagine the fun involved in, say, electrifying that Lehigh Valley route to Wilkes-Barre and then having to watch the anthracite market shrivel up and die...). A far better project, extension of the electrification westward from Harrisburg with its roughly 9400' tunnel (IIRC) under Horse Shoe, and GG2s (and probably HH's) to run on it, was left undone by the combination of dieselization and falling-off of profit...
(In case anyone does not know, Hungerford was among the people who knew the most about his contemporary railroad world. He was -- as many such people turn out to be -- far less adroit as a prophet...)
Mr. Hungerford may not have been much of a prophet, but didn't he write beautifully?
You just don't see that kind of prose anymore. What a pity.
Victrola1 We have not run of coal. If fossil fuels remain readily available and cheaper, fusion may languish as a replacement.
If (and its a big if) controlled nuclear fusion can be commercialized for power generation it will bury fossil fuels (pun intended) on a cost basis. That's why there has been so much R&D on the technology for the last 50 years.
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
carnej1What do you mean by "Mass converter power"?
Not to paraphrase, but this is an old SF trope: a device accomplishing total conversion of mass to energy. By methods somewhat carefully unspecified if the author in question is wise ... but I usually delight in a good application of 'verisimilitudinous pseudophysics' -- the F in SF does mean 'fiction', after all.
[Don't start with the 'there's mass conversion in lots of reactions', or "come back, missing four ounces..." -- that's infinitesimally small compared to what a 'mass converter' would be doing]
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