Unknown to most Americans, clean and safe fusion power is now technically feasible. No, not fusion by magnetic confinement, by laser compression, by particle beams or by exotic means (migma or inverted Tokamak). Fusion by harnessing the energy from underground thermonuclear explosions
¾more or less what used to be known as the Pacer Project, until it was stopped by President Ford in a futile attempt to ingratiate himself with the media-manipulated electorate.The basic idea is to set off hydrogen bombs in a steam-filled cavity deep underground. The high-pressure steam would absorb the fusion energy released by the explosions, and could be piped to the surface to drive conventional steam turbines for generating electric power. In addition, and perhaps even more important, neutrons produced in the reaction could be captured in a thorium blanket to produce uranium 233.
U 233, like U 235, is fissionable and can therefore be used in a fission reactor, but it does not occur in nature in significant amounts and must be bred from thorium, a naturally abundant radioactive element. The energy proportions of the input fuel to the U 233 yield are such that the system would have the effect of a highly efficient breeder.
[A brief digression: Like all fissionable materials, U 233 could also be used for explosive weapons. Unlike plutonium, which can be chemically separated from a mix with other materials, U 233 cannot be chemically separated from a mix with the abundant and unfissionable isotope U 238. This has been used by opponents of plutonium to promote U 233 as "more proliferation-safe." The basis for their argument is valid, but irrelevant: bomb-grade plutonium Pu 239 is for all practical purposes just as effectively made useless as an explosive when mixed with the other plutonium isotopes.]
Unlike the various methods of achieving controlled thermonuclear reactions, which are all in preliminary stages of basic research, the "Pacer, idea is eminently practical in the sense that no basic research of any kind is needed, though several aspects of engineering development and testing would have to be done before realizing such a project commercially. However, though such testing might slightly alter the concept, it would not put it in doubt
¾and if you think these are bold words, look up the reference given below (see end of next item).Example: the "bombs" are theft-proof, for the arming of the explosive charge would be performed in the cavity itself, and the fuel
¾liquid deuterium¾would make the device nontransportable: with a boiling point of-250 degrees C it would stop any thief cold.Nor is there any storage problem: thermal losses from the cavity would be so low that even a year's shutdown would not appreciably lower the steam pressure.
There is, in fact, only one essential obstacle to this type of clean, safe and abundant energy: the public's antinuclear hysteria fanned by the media. That hysteria will be cured with amazing rapidity when electric power runs short
¾presumably in the early 1990s.
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Vol. 11, No. 3
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 11, No. 3 Date: November 29, 2004 11:13 AM Title: The racists recoil
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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