(October 15, 2014 at 3:14 pm)LastPoet Wrote: I will remain unbelieving that too. Funny how we do fusion bombs, yet, unable to harness that energy. I hate to sound political about this, but blowing people up is more worthy for some invisible hand, than inproving said people's lives. How ironic that what drove scientific development the most, was war. Science stands amoral, it should be time for religion to be so humble.
Fusion bombs are essentially triggered by a fission reaction that is triggered by a chemical explosive charge.
There is a formula, the temperature you can heat deuterium to simultaneous to the pressure you achieve when multiplied has to be over a certain number. The sun actually fuses at a fairly low temp and an extremely high pressure. Hydrogen bombs can only instantaneously make the high temp and high pressure required. A power plant has to either do it continuously (not even attempted ever) or in bursts repeated very rapidly. I can assure you, it is an extremely difficult thing to do. Instantaneously heating deuterium makes it expand, and that defeats what you want in regards to pressure.
One old proposal was to detonate a fusion bomb deep underground, and then utilize the (tremendous) residual heat to boil water for a steam turbine. If the bomb is big enough and deep enough, you might get to break even, but this isn't viewed as an 'elegant' way of doing it.
Hydrogen bombs are technically very interesting. Some derive most of their energy from fusion. The 'big' US test back in the '50s actually was only 25% fusion, the rest of it's power was fission. The fusion reaction triggered an addition fission reaction in an extremely large mass of U.
The 'big' test had a chemical explosive triggered fission, fission triggered fusion (which was simultaneously boosted with more fission), and all of that triggered an enormous final fission reaction.
