Man made global warming is real.

Started by Diomedes, January 23, 2007, 11:37:52 AM

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Rome

There's a tornado on the ground just west of Warminster.  Holy shtein take cover up there.

General_Failure

We had tornado and flood watches all over out here on the border of Chester and Lancaster.. The roads are a mess. Saw a line of trees that were just shredded on my way home.

The man. The myth. The legend.

PhillyPhreak54

When tornado alley meets the northeast

Saw some pics and it reminds me of Kansas

Rome

That's still Ida ravaging areas 1,500 miles away from La.

Unreal.  We are so farged.

Diomedes

Tornado in Annapolis.  Couldn't happen to a better town.
There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." - Yosemite Park Ranger

PhillyPhreak54

We are likely about to get another one of those hundred year flood events this week.

TS Nick is about to pay a visit. Up to 20" of rain predicted.

Problem with these hundred year events? If this eclipses 15-20"+ it's out third hundred year event (2015, 2016, 2021) in the last few. And that's not counting the five hundred year event (Harvey) that pissed 57" on us.

Munson

The good news is the hospitals are clear and ready to take in anyone hurt or injured in the storm and flood waters.
Quote from: ice grillin you on April 01, 2008, 05:10:48 PM
perhaps you could explain sd's reasons for "disliking" it as well since you seem to be so in tune with other peoples minds

PhillyPhreak54

Absolutely!

Wide open and beds available. Courtesy of Gregg Abbott.

Rome

He was nice enough to tweet the good news about catching 5 "illegals" at the border today.  Not humans, mind you.  ILLEGALS. 

What a maggot.

PhillyPhreak54

He's awful. Neck and neck with DeSantis for worst in the country

This storm has shifted east. Sad I'll have to work tomorrow

Geowhizzer


Munson

Quote from: ice grillin you on April 01, 2008, 05:10:48 PM
perhaps you could explain sd's reasons for "disliking" it as well since you seem to be so in tune with other peoples minds

Diomedes

It's well known that scientists are educated, and education has a liberal bias, so obviously their studies confirm the hoax.
There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." - Yosemite Park Ranger

ice grillin you

What you need to know about the U.S. fusion energy breakthrough
By Shannon Osaka

On Tuesday, the Energy Department announced a long-awaited milestone in the development of nuclear fusion energy: net energy gain. The news could galvanize the fusion community, which has long hyped the technology as a possible clean energy tool to combat climate change.

But how big of a deal is the "net energy gain" anyway — and what does it mean for the fusion power plants of the future? Here's what you need to know.

What is fusion energy?


Existing nuclear power plants work through fission — splitting apart heavy atoms to create energy. In fission, a neutron collides with a heavy uranium atom, splitting it into lighter atoms and releasing a lot of heat and energy at the same time.

Fusion, on the other hand, works in the opposite way — it involves smushing two atoms (often two hydrogen atoms) together to create a new element (often helium), in the same way that stars creates energy. In that process, the two hydrogen atoms lose a small amount of mass, which is converted to energy according to Einstein's famous equation, E=mc². Because the speed of light is very, very fast — 300,000,000 meters per second — even a tiny amount of mass lost can result in a ton of energy.

What is 'net energy gain,' and how did the researchers achieve it?

Up to this point, researchers have been able to fuse two hydrogen atoms together successfully, but it has always taken more energy to do the reaction than they get back. Net energy gain — where they get more energy back than they put in to create the reaction — has been the elusive holy grail of fusion research.

On Tuesday, researchers at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced that they attained net energy gain by shooting lasers at hydrogen atoms. The lasers delivered 2.05 megajoules of energy and created 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy, a gain of about 1.5 times. The 192 laser beams compressed the hydrogen atoms down to about 100 times the density of lead and heated them to approximately 100 million degrees Celsius. The high density and temperature caused the atoms to merge into helium.

Other methods being researched involve using magnets to confine superhot plasma.

"It's like the Kitty Hawk moment for the Wright brothers," said Melanie Windridge, a plasma physicist and the CEO of Fusion Energy Insights. "It's like the plane taking off."

Does this mean fusion energy is ready for prime time?

No. Scientists refer to the current breakthrough as "scientific net energy gain" — meaning that more energy has come out of the reaction than was inputted by the laser. That's a huge milestone that has never before been achieved.

But it's only a net energy gain at the micro level. The lasers used at the Livermore lab are only about 1 percent efficient, according to Troy Carter, a plasma physicist at the University of California at Los Angeles. That means that it takes about 100 times more energy to run the lasers than they are ultimately able to deliver to the hydrogen atoms.

So researchers will still have to reach "engineering net energy gain," or the point at which the entire process takes less energy than is outputted by the reaction. They will also have to figure out how to turn the outputted energy — currently in the form of kinetic energy from the helium nucleus and the neutron — into a form that is usable for electricity. They could do that by converting it to heat, then heating steam to turn a turbine and run a generator. That process also has efficiency limitations.

All that means that the energy gain will probably need to be pushed much, much higher for fusion to actually be commercially viable.

At the moment, researchers can also only do the fusion reaction about once a day. In between, they have to allow the lasers to cool and replace the fusion fuel target. A commercially viable plant would need to be able to do it several times per second, said Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT. "Once you've got scientific viability," he said, "you've got to figure out engineering viability."

What are the benefits of fusion?


Fusion's possibilities are huge. The technology is much, much safer than nuclear fission, since fusion can't create runaway reactions. It also doesn't produce radioactive byproducts that need to be stored, or harmful carbon emissions; it simply produces inert helium and a neutron. And we're not likely to run out of fuel: The fuel for fusion is just heavy hydrogen atoms, which can be found in seawater.

When could fusion actually power our homes?


That's the trillion-dollar question. For decades, scientists have joked that fusion is always 30 or 40 years away. Over the years, researchers have variously predicted that fusion plants will be operational in the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s and the 2020s. Current fusion experts argue that it's not a matter of time, but a matter of will — if governments and private donors finance fusion aggressively, they say, a prototype fusion power plant could be available in the 2030s.

"The timeline is not really a question of time," Carter said. "It's a question of innovating and putting the effort in."
i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous