Monumental

[woodchip]

Trump has reduced the size of 2 national monument and some here will give reasons why it was a bad move. From what I gleaned the bad move was on Obama's part when he directed the National Park Service to administer the land. Problem is the NPS is cash strapped and cannot maintain actual park lands let alone the new monument areas Obama blithely created. This is what happens when a "leader" only looks for the photo op and not at the nuts and bolts of how it all works.

[Tunnelcat]

What a bold move. First Trump praises Navajo Americans for their service during WWII, then he screws over a different tribe by giving some of their sacred land over to white capitalist land-raping interests. What a nice backstabbing man we have running the country. Have you even seen what that land looks, at least before it gets used and abused by corporate interests woody? It's beautiful and should be preserved for ALL, not just a few oil, gas and mineral interests.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/ ... index.html

[Spidey]

The basic problem with that concept is...oil, gas and mineral interests...are you and me, a concept generally ignored when it's time to bash "evil corporations".

The real problem with mineral rights is the lack of a true return for everyone, that should be taken from the profits, and used properly to reclaim land, build infrastructure...etc.

[Tunnelcat]

The basic problem with that concept is...oil, gas and mineral interests...are you and me, a concept generally ignored when it's time to bash "evil corporations".

The real problem with mineral rights is the lack of a true return for everyone, that should be taken from the profits, and used properly to reclaim land, build infrastructure...etc.

Yea, sure. We've seen how that works out. These profiteers go out and dig up their loot, move around, dump and store tons of waste getting at their spoils, usually poisoning the local watershed during the process. Then they invariably shirk their responsibility and abandon the site for a variety of reasons, usually bankruptcy. Guess who gets stuck with the results and the mess? The taxpayer and the locals affected, both in the cleanup costs and the wasted and poisoned landscape left behind that's no longer beautiful, useful or fit for human habitation.

Uranium is one of the minerals that Trump wants to open up for mining. Below is the usual result of that mining and the people it affects. So I ask you, is the destruction and lasting damage worth it in the long run? I don't know about you, but I'm tired of paying the freight for cleaning up the mess these profiteers usually leave behind. Privatized profit, public risk.

http://culturechange.org/cms/content/view/336/65/

[Spidey]

I agree...but I still see you are in denial on just who is the end user of these minerals.

[woodchip]

Well uranium is used for the new green energy source...nuclear And don't forget about lithium that goes into the batteries for electric cars:

https://u.osu.edu/2367group3/environmen ... g-lithium/

[callmeslick]

rare earths are worth a fortune, but in the recent cases, there as a huge giveaway to large scale cattle interests tossed in, and loggerss, as well.

[Tunnelcat]

Personally, I'd like to see the land left alone and untouched, cattle, lumber, lithium, uranium and natural gas be damned. There's such a thing as "go without" more "stuff". You can't replace pristine land once you destroy it, nor can you clean it up for future generations.

But this fight is a perfect example of the hypocrisy of the tree hugging environmentalists. I say that even though I lean liberal, but sometimes their priorities just don't make sense. They all want everyone to start driving electric cars because they're cleaner, but then they forget that we need to mine the lithium to make those batteries by tearing up the land and poisoning the water. Same with solar cells. Where do they think the metals and other materials come from to make those panels and the wire that connects them to each other and the house? Then there's the manufacturing process that uses energy and is a source of waste and toxins. They also say to recycle, forgetting THAT takes energy and releases toxins and unwanted residue during the reclamation process, waste that has to be disposed of somewhere. China even got sick of us sending them our plastic and e-waste and put a moratorium on it. The only time I will believe that environmentalists are serious about saving the planet is when they embrace some sort of population control or reduction. Then I'll know they're serious about saving the planet.

Woodchip, nuclear energy is not and had never been clean. No viable solution has ever been created to safely deal with the waste. It stays toxic for far too long. Sometimes these reactors aren't bulletproof during operation either and can blow up due to outside natural factors (earthquakes or tsunamis) and plain old human error. Now, if the engineers ever come up with a safe and reliable fusion reactor, then things will change.

[Spidey]

Fusion is a pipe dream, that only makes lab coats wealthy.

[Krom]

The inherent problem with Fusion is that the process produces gamma rays which gradually destroy the generator from the inside out at the molecular level.

[Spidey]

No, the dirty little secret science isn’t telling people is…even the sun has to expend more energy to produce fusion then it gets out of the process.

And if nature can’t produce free energy…nether can we.

You need enormous pressure and temperature to fuse two atomic nuclei together, and all you get as a reward is one lousy photon.

The simple fact of the matter is…fusion will always require more energy to produce then it provides, because fusion is a process of energy consolidation.

[woodchip]

Woodchip, nuclear energy is not and had never been clean. No viable solution has ever been created to safely deal with the waste. It stays toxic for far too long. Sometimes these reactors aren't bulletproof during operation either and can blow up due to outside natural factors (earthquakes or tsunamis) and plain old human error. Now, if the engineers ever come up with a safe and reliable fusion reactor, then things will change.

You happen to notice the winky? I said people are thinking nuclear is clean compered to dirty coal and oil. I'm old enough to remember the eco types were protesting nuclear and shutting down reactor projects. One of the reasons we're behind the world in using nuclear power.

[Top Gun]

No, the dirty little secret science isn’t telling people is…even the sun has to expend more energy to produce fusion then it gets out of the process.

And if nature can’t produce free energy…nether can we.

You need enormous pressure and temperature to fuse two atomic nuclei together, and all you get as a reward is one lousy photon.

The simple fact of the matter is…fusion will always require more energy to produce then it provides, because fusion is a process of energy consolidation.

That's...not really true at all. The sun doesn't need to actively expend energy to generate fusion; if it did, we'd literally all be ice cubes. The sun's core has such huge temperatures and pressures because it's made up of a huge amount of matter being gravitationally attracted together. All that squeezing generates enormous pressure, enough to allow fusion processes to happen. Fusion is a consolidation of matter that produces energy due to mass conversion.

Creating fusion in a reactor wouldn't be "free" either; you'd need energy to kick-start the process, either via a tokamak's magnetic confinement or concentrated lasers. Provided the design is right, there's no theoretical reason why you couldn't produce enough energy to sustain the reaction and have extra for power generation. The trick is solving the huge engineering problems to reach that break-even point.

[callmeslick]

the veer-off into fusion is a fascinating learning experience. Thanks TG and others.

[callmeslick]

kinda ironic, though, that Donnie Smallhands wants to remove Natural Monuments yet preserve monuments to Jim Crow. Shows where the heart lies, and it sure as ★■◆● isn't with the public interest.

[vision]

The simple fact of the matter is…fusion will always require more energy to produce then it provides, because fusion is a process of energy consolidation.

I think you're a little confused about why fusion is a worthwhile area of research. It's not "free energy" in the sense of thermodynamics, it's free as in "the output generates more value than the input".

[Spidey]

I wasn’t speaking in terms of thermodynamics, just in simpler terms of energy in vs. energy out.

When you burn a log you get free energy…so to speak, but only because something else stored up the energy for you.

Same with fission, we get the energy out that was stored in the material eons ago by exploding stars.

Not so with Fusion, you can create it here on earth but it will NEVER give more than it takes.

[Spidey]

No, the dirty little secret science isn’t telling people is…even the sun has to expend more energy to produce fusion then it gets out of the process.

And if nature can’t produce free energy…nether can we.

You need enormous pressure and temperature to fuse two atomic nuclei together, and all you get as a reward is one lousy photon.

The simple fact of the matter is…fusion will always require more energy to produce then it provides, because fusion is a process of energy consolidation.

That's...not really true at all. The sun doesn't need to actively expend energy to generate fusion; if it did, we'd literally all be ice cubes. The sun's core has such huge temperatures and pressures because it's made up of a huge amount of matter being gravitationally attracted together. All that squeezing generates enormous pressure, enough to allow fusion processes to happen. Fusion is a consolidation of matter that produces energy due to mass conversion.

Creating fusion in a reactor wouldn't be "free" either; you'd need energy to kick-start the process, either via a tokamak's magnetic confinement or concentrated lasers. Provided the design is right, there's no theoretical reason why you couldn't produce enough energy to sustain the reaction and have extra for power generation. The trick is solving the huge engineering problems to reach that break-even point.

No, wrong on both accounts…

One, the sun has the advantage of gravity working for it, and that is literally the energy we can’t make up for here on earth.

Second, sure there are engineering issues with Fusion, but the real problem is not engineering, but the laws of physics themselves.

And don’t give me that “theoretical” BS because nobody up to this point has come up with a scientific theory or formula to get more energy out of a Fusion reaction, then is needed to sustain it…that damn term “theoretical” is so nebulous it has no meaning.

“theoretically” world peace could break out tomorrow.

...........

Oh yea, and what about the 10 thousand years the sun gets to convert gamma rays into some kind of usable energy like infrared light?

Engineers going to solve that problem too?

[vision]

When you burn a log you get free energy…so to speak, but only because something else stored up the energy for you.

The idea is to start a sustained fission reaction and feed it fuel, like starting a campfire. There is no mysterious free energy and fusion is perfectly in line with the realities of our universe. Not sure what's so hard to understand about this. We want to start a reaction that changes a state of matter so we can harness the energy released.

[Spidey]

Except fission is not fusion...

Fission has a tremendous amount of stored energy to burn...so to speak...fusion does not.

Oh, and by the way, fusion does not change the “state” of matter…that’s an easy task.

[Krom]

I don't know what rock you have been living under, but researchers have been getting net positive energy out of fusion reactions for years now.

[Spidey]

Yes, minus a large containment field.

[Top Gun]

I wasn’t speaking in terms of thermodynamics, just in simpler terms of energy in vs. energy out.

When you burn a log you get free energy…so to speak, but only because something else stored up the energy for you.

Same with fission, we get the energy out that was stored in the material eons ago by exploding stars.

Not so with Fusion, you can create it here on earth but it will NEVER give more than it takes.

...fusion ABSOLUTELY gives more energy than it takes. If it didn't, stars would literally not be able to exist as they do. When two hydrogen nuclei work their way through the fusion process, the end products combined have less mass than the starting products, so via Einstein's famous mass-energy equivalence equation, that tiny mass loss translates to a lot of energy, more than was required to bring the nuclei together in the first place. Your bit about fission and fusion being fundamentally different is dead wrong: fission doesn't "stored energy" any more than fusion does. In both cases a nuclear reaction occurs with a decrease in mass and corresponding conversion to energy. The only major difference is that fission is far easier to accomplish: many large nuclei are inherently unstable, so chuck a few spare neutrons at them and they split apart. To make fusion happen, you need to overcome the strong electrostatic repulsion between positively-charged hydrogen nuclei until the strong nuclear force takes over and forms a new nuclei. The sun manages it by being super-huge, and we manage it by using things like magnetic confinement of super-dense plasma, or firing lasers to shove atoms really close together.

And you're using the crappy everyday-language definition of "theory" instead of the actual scientific one. The mechanisms behind nuclear fusion are a theory in that they are an extremely well-tested explanation for what we see happening in nature. We've been creating artificial nuclear fusion for several decades (see: thermonuclear warheads), we've had a good idea of how the sun operates for even longer, and there have been all sorts of potential designs for viable fusion reactors. This is very well-understood science; the main concerns at this point are practical, not theoretical. We've already seen test technologies that exhibit a net gain in energy. The huge ITER project being constructed in France should be able to get some pretty impressive results.

I'm sorry, but it honestly seems like you don't understand the basic science behind nuclear reactions, and it would help if you did some more reading on the subject.

[woodchip]

Perhaps TG you should not be so quick to critize someones knowledge when it appears yours is lacking:

Research into fusion reactors began in the 1940s, but as of 2017, no design has produced more fusion energy than the energy needed to initiate the reaction, meaning all existing designs have a negative energy balance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

The fundamental challenge is to achieve a rate of heat emitted by a fusion plasma that exceeds the rate of energy injected into the plasma.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/informatio ... power.aspx

[vision]

Oh dear, woodchip doesn't know how to read! Tsk, tsk. The wikipedia article citation was pulled from the WNA page in Nov 2015. The page has been updated since, most recently last month, and makes no mention of negative energy balances. In fact, it goes on at length to talk about all the different types of reactors and how the challenge now is simply how to make it commercially viable. The wikipedia page is out of date. I've read papers about positive balance experiments. I think the one at Lawrence Livermore passed peer review. Try reading more!!!

[woodchip]

Oh dear, vision forgot to notice I posted a second link that is not wikipedia...and surprise surprise, the second link was updated Nov of this year. Perhaps you are confused with ongoing research to change this conundrum but I see nothing where energy in = more energy out. Perhaps you would be kind enough to link your information.

[Top Gun]

The second link is the exact source that vision is referring to. What you quoted is the exact engineering challenge I've been talking about the entire time. It's acknowledged by everyone working in the field but is generaly viewed as surmountable given design refinements. Whatever you're trying to argue here, it's failing spectacularly.

[woodchip]

Surmountable does not mean there is a working theory on the problem. As the link states:

At present, two main experimental approaches are being studied: magnetic confinement and inertial confinement.

At this point in time there is research to see if something can be made to handle fusion reactions but I see nothing in the link that says there is a working prototype. So unless you can show us where there is a working containment field beyond the theory stage, I respectfully submitt you stop beating a dead horse.

[Krom]

You might want to read down the page on that second link you posted, where there is a laundry list of experimental/prototype reactors that are actually in operation containment and all.

[woodchip]

I read and didn't see where a workable unit was developed. Some units are producing enough heat but they are still not a working unit that has run the full process. The paragraph on top of all those examples sums it up pretty much:

A long-standing quip about fusion points out that, since the 1970s, commercial deployment of fusion power has always been about 40 years away. While there is some truth in this, many breakthroughs have been made, particularly in recent years, and there are a number of major projects under development that may bring research to the point where fusion power can be commercialised.

It may help your case if you can actually point out the veracity of what you are posting.

[Top Gun]

I'm now firmly convinced that you have some sort of disorder in comprehending basic written English. From your own link, IMMEDIATELY UNDER THE LINE YOU JUST QUOTED:

Several tokamaks have been built, including the Joint European Torus (JET) and the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) in the UK and the tokamak fusion test reactor (TFTR) at Princeton in the USA. The ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project currently under construction in Cadarache, France will be the largest tokamak when it operates in the 2020s. The Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) is a tokamak which is reported to be larger than ITER, and due for completion in 2030. Meanwhile it is running its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST).

Much research has also been carried out on stellarators. A large one of these, the Large Helical Device at Japan's National Institute of Fusion Research, began operating in 1998. It is being used to study the best magnetic configuration for plasma confinement. At the Garching site of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany, research carried out at the Wendelstein 7-AS between 1988 and 2002 is being progressed at the Wendelstein 7-X, which was built over 19 years at Max Planck Institute's Greifswald site and started up at the end of 2015. Another stellarator, TJII, is in operation in Madrid, Spain. In the USA, at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, where the first stellarators were built in 1951, construction on the NCSX stellerator was abandoned in 2008 due to cost overruns and lack of funding2.

There have also been significant developments in research into inertial confinement fusion. Construction of the $7 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, was completed in March 2009. The Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) in France’s Bordeaux region started operation in October 2014. Both are designed to deliver, in a few billionths of a second, nearly two million joules of light energy to targets measuring a few millimeters in size. The main purpose of both NIF and LMJ is for research to support both countries' respective nuclear weapons programs.

The entire rest of the page goes on to give more details to each of those listed projects, including the fact that several of them have achieved sustained fusion with corresponding thermal output. You are either not comprehending what this summary is saying, or you're not reading it in the first place. NO ONE has claimed that there is currently a viable commercial design for a fusion reactor. There are many promising research prototypes producing concrete results, and with any luck one or more of them will lead to feasible commercial designs in the next few decades. That is all anyone has claimed in here. Stop inventing straw men.

[woodchip]

NO ONE has claimed that there is currently a viable commercial design for a fusion reactor. There are many promising research prototypes producing concrete results, and with any luck one or more of them will lead to feasible commercial designs in the next few decades. That is all anyone has claimed in here. Stop inventing straw men.

Sure sounded like you did the way some of you been quick to shoot my posts down. Your quote is exactly what I and Spidey been saying. Thanks for finally agreeing with us.

[Top Gun]

Spidey's posts were flat-out factually wrong, and you were just starting ★■◆● for the sake of doing so (and relying on outdated information to boot). Spare me.

[vision]

Try reading more!!!

And you immediately failed...

[Tunnelcat]

I see Zinke still appreciates those monuments and parks that are lcated in HIS state, Montana. For every other state, screw 'em, let profits, relaxed regulations and pollution rule the day.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/zinke ... -monuments

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/us/p ... tions.html