The Government of Canada has made a new C$49.3-million investment in General Fusion, a clean technology company seeking to transform the world’s energy supply with safe, sustainable and economical fusion energy.
The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, together with the Honourable Harjit Singh Sajjan, Minister of National Defence, announced the investment.
The funding will help General Fusion create technology leading to 400 new jobs and support its project to develop a first-of-its-kind large-scale prototype plant that will demonstrate a practical approach to commercializing affordable, abundant, safe and emission-free electricity from fusion energy. General Fusion’s technology has the potential to revolutionize how sustainable energy is generated and position British Columbia—and Canada—as a global leader in fusion technology.
Thanks in part to this federal investment through the Strategic Innovation Fund, General Fusion will expand its collaboration with post-secondary institutions and employ inclusive hiring practices as the company grows its workforce. As a result of this project, Canadians will see more intellectual property developed and retained in Canada.
Quotes from Canadian Government on General Fusion
“General Fusion is working at the forefront of clean technology. It has the real potential to transform how the world generates abundant clean energy. This will help us reduce our environmental impacts. Our government is proud to invest in this innovative project to help create hundreds of middle-class jobs and position Canada as a world leader in fusion energy technology.”
– The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development
“Innovative companies such as General Fusion are a key part of our government’s plan to grow the economy and create well-paying middle-class jobs for British Columbians. As a leader in the development of safe, affordable and emission-free electricity, General Fusion is a testament to the kind of quality work that this region is capable of—and the quality talent that is right here in British Columbia.”
– The Honourable Harjit Singh Sajjan, Minister of National Defence
“General Fusion’s ground-breaking technology holds incredible promise in addressing climate change and revolutionizing global clean energy markets. Our government continues to support B.C. tech and innovation, and we are proud to have a world-leading company like General Fusion creating jobs in our strong and sustainable economy, because good jobs in B.C. mean a better life for people and their families.”
– The Honourable Bruce Ralston, B.C. Minister of Jobs, Trade and Technology
“This investment by Canada in General Fusion’s transformative clean energy technology is evidence of its commitment to meeting the country’s climate change goals while fostering truly sustainable growth—sustainable growth that will be powered by the disruptively competitive economics and environmentally responsible benefits of fusion energy. This Strategic Innovation Fund investment and Canada’s expectation for a financial return on this investment are a vote of confidence in General Fusion’s ability to successfully commercialize its technology and in our ability to deliver new jobs and new opportunities throughout British Columbia and across Canada. We are grateful to Canada for its long-standing support of the company, support that has helped General Fusion become the world’s most advanced private fusion technology venture.”
– Christofer Mowry, CEO, General Fusion
Quick Facts
* Fusion energy has been proven in laboratories, where closely contained fusion reactions release energy from superheated hydrogen gas, energy which can be captured and converted to electricity. Fusion results in no carbon dioxide emissions and does not produce high-level nuclear waste.
* According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in case of failure, fusion reactors automatically come to a halt within a few seconds, with no harmful effects being produced.
* General Fusion will invest at least $150 million in Research and Development with the potential for over $250 million in additional investment for the construction of a demonstration plant.
Founded in 2002, General Fusion employs more than 70 people in Burnaby and is the only Canadian company working to commercialize fusion technology.
Clean technologies contributed over $26 billion, or 1.4%, to Canada’s GDP in 2016. Of this, approximately $8 billion is exported. Clean technologies also provide approximately 178,000 well-paying jobs.
This investment supports the Innovation and Skills Plan, the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, as well as Canada’s commitments toward Mission Innovation, a global initiative of 23 countries and the European Union to dramatically accelerate global clean energy innovation.
General Fusion Developing Power Generating Prototype
Nextbigfuture interviewed Christofer Mowry, the CEO of General Fusion. The highlights are that General Fusion is rapidly pushing ahead to achieve commercialization and the next step is to make a 70% scale pilot plant that will prove out the viability of generating electricity from General Fusion’s magnetized target nuclear fusion.
General Fusion does not need to demonstrate fusion containment because they are pulsed power systems like a diesel engine or steampunk fusion.
The pilot system will prove three things:
1. Fusion conditions will be repeatably produced
2. There will be a kill chain from neutrons to electrons
3. Economics will be validated.
Simulations will be used to validate the economics and design specifics to move to a 100% system.
The next system after the 70% scale system will be a full commercial system.
The Demo system will cost several hundred million dollars. General fusion is fundraising now. Several existing funders (Jeff Bezos, Canadian and Malaysian government) are likely participants in the next round. However, the fundraising cannot have actual disclosure until it is completed. As of late 2016, General Fusion had received over $100 million in funding from a global syndicate of investors and the Canadian Government’s Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) fund. They now have another C$49 million from the government of Canada.
All of the individual components have been matured enough to enable integration into a prototype pilot plant.
Over the five years of the demo plant, there will be design, construction and a nominal 18 months of testing.
The plasma injector component built so far is a 2-meter plasma injector. It will be a 3-meter injector for the pilot plant.
Titanium fabrication is with GE Additive as a partner.
The current component for has 14 pistons and was not to achieve plasma compression but to work out other engineering issues.
The demo system will have several hundred pistons. Perhaps around 500.
The next system could have more or fewer pistons depending upon how experiments inform the design and how smoothly the plasma will need to be compressed.
It will be deuterium fusion.
The demo plant will not add tritium. Addition of tritium is a well-understood process and would have a predictable impact.
Tritium will be added in the follow-up commercial system.
General Fusion took its PI2 plasma injector to the 2018 GLOBE Forum in Vancouver.
Chris Mowry
Christofer M. Mowry, Chief Executive Officer & Director
Chris Mowry has 30 years of global experience in the energy and infrastructure sectors, including power, oil & gas, automation, and process industries. Through his leadership he has revitalized businesses in GE and Babcock & Wilcox Company (BWC), founded disruptive energy technology company Generation mPower, and has overseen the transformation of complex international organizations.
Chris was most recently Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of General Synfuels International, Inc. (GSI), a privately held company developing in situ oil shale gasification technology that produces hydrocarbons in an economically competitive and environmentally responsible manner from oil shales. Prior to GSI, Chris was the Founder and CEO of Generation mPower, a company formed in 2011 to design, license, and deliver Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), the next generation of nuclear energy technology.
Previously, Chris was President of B&W Nuclear Energy, a division of The Babcock & Wilcox Company. Before joining B&W, Chris was the President and Chief Operating Officer of WSI, a private equity-backed field services and manufacturing company serving the energy and petrochemical industries.
Chris spent 10 years with GE Energy in various management roles, growing the firm’s automation business by 34% in two years. He began his career with the Philadelphia Electric Company, and holds a Bachelor of Science (Engineer & Astronomy) from Swarthmore College, and a Master’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University.
Dr. Michel Laberge, Founder and Chief Scientist
Dr. Michel Laberge is a physicist with widespread practical experience in plasma physics and modern plasma diagnostic techniques. He has extensive knowledge of the latest technologies related to electronics, computers, materials, lithography, optics and fabrication, and is experienced at designing and constructing test apparatuses to evaluate technical concepts.
Components of the General Fusion system
A magnetized target fusion system has 3 main components: a plasma injector, which supplies the fuel; an array of pistons, to compress the fuel; and a chamber of spinning liquid metal, to hold the fuel and capture the energy.
Guided by advanced computer simulation, General Fusion is developing and optimizing each of these components in preparation to build a demonstration fusion power plant.
General Fusion has built a world-class Magnetized Target Fusion research and development team consisting of over 50 research and development professionals who have demonstrated the ability to quickly and cost-effectively design, simulate, prototype, and test advanced fusion systems.
General Fusion’s science team includes PhD scientists from leading fusion research institutions including L’École Polytechnique in France, the Culham Centre for Fusion Technology in the UK, the Joint Institute for High Temperatures at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Kyushu University in Japan.
Additionally, General Fusion has supplemented its research group with experts in regulatory affairs, project management, government relations, intellectual property, finance, and strategic business development.
Inside a General Fusion plant
By harnessing the same process that powers the sun and the stars, fusion has the potential to be a zero-emission, safe and widely available source of energy.
Fusion runs on hydrogen, and this fuel must be heated to immense temperatures – over 150 million degrees Celsius – to release its energy.
Learn how a General Fusion power plant creates fusion energy with the infographic below, followed by full explanation of how the process works.
The way a General Fusion power plant works could be compared to a diesel engine: the fuel is injected into a chamber, compressed to heat it up, and the resulting burst of energy is then captured.
To get the fusion fuel to the temperatures required for fusion, the hydrogen must first be transformed from a gas to a plasma (a process called “ionization”). In a plasma state, the fuel can be heated to much higher temperatures and can be controlled using magnetic fields.
The plasma is formed at the top of the machine, and a magnetic field then pushes it into the compression chamber. At this point the plasma is around 5 million degrees Celsius – hot, but not hot enough for fusion.
Inside the compression chamber, the plasma is surrounded by a wall of liquid metal, which will capture the energy that comes out of the reaction. On the outside of the chamber are gas-driven pistons, evenly arranged around the surface.
When these pistons push down, they compress the liquid metal wall (and the plasma trapped inside it) from all sides. As the plasma gets compressed it rapidly grows hotter, until it reaches fusion temperatures and the reaction takes place. The energy from the reaction heats up the liquid metal wall, capturing the energy so that it can be used to create electricity.
The process then repeats, with cooler liquid metal cycled back in and a new plasma pulse injected into the chamber.
General Fusion’s approach is designed from the ground up to enable a practical, commercially-viable power plant. The use of pistons provides a cost-effective and well-understood way of heating the plasma, while the pulsed function of the machine avoids needing giant magnets to keep the plasma stable for long periods of time.
The liquid metal wall is another major advantage, making it possible to get the energy out of the system and convert it to electricity. This is a particularly important part, as most fusion power plant designs do not have an effective way of extracting this energy. You can learn more about how electricity is produced from fusion energy in our infographic: Bringing fusion energy to the grid.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
“There will be a kill chain from neutrons to electrons”
What does it means? As far as I understand it converts the heat of the liquid metal to electricity.
Thanks in part to this federal investment through the Strategic Innovation Fund, General Fusion will … employ inclusive hiring practices” So, the government money comes with a demand that they stop hiring on merit? Too bad, hope the new funding is worth the deadwood they’ll have to waste some of it on.
Thanks in part to this federal investment through the Strategic Innovation Fund” General Fusion will … employ inclusive hiring practices””So”” the government money comes with a demand that they stop hiring on merit? Too bad”” hope the new funding is worth the deadwood they’ll have to waste some of it on.”””
I wish them all the luck, although it pains me greatly to see that jaggoff Mowrey’s face here. The gravy slurper has made quite a niche for himself sitting on top of ‘house of cards’ projects like mPower and now General [Con]Fusion (I stole that from another NBF regular). The big funding bump usually comes about a year before it all falls apart… If it all goes according to schedule, they will be winding down the week after the last engineer relocates his family to British Columbia.
Token hires that do nothing. As long as they are dark skinned it dosen’t matter their IQ or their capabilities. Aren’t social justice warriors SJWs wonderful? Now we are letting millions of uneducated low IQ (diet environment and heredity) people into the country so that they can be a drain on society so they can act as a balm for guilt of being white. Welcome to the new world order.
I hope with all my heart this works. But using a mechanical piston technology seems so short sighted in this day and age. In the end it will go the way of the combustion engine with its pistons.
I wish them all the luck although it pains me greatly to see that jaggoff Mowrey’s face here. The gravy slurper has made quite a niche for himself sitting on top of ‘house of cards’ projects like mPower and now General [Con]Fusion (I stole that from another NBF regular). The big funding bump usually comes about a year before it all falls apart… If it all goes according to schedule they will be winding down the week after the last engineer relocates his family to British Columbia.
Token hires that do nothing. As long as they are dark skinned it dosen’t matter their IQ or their capabilities. Aren’t social justice warriors SJWs wonderful? Now we are letting millions of uneducated low IQ (diet environment and heredity) people into the country so that they can be a drain on society so they can act as a balm for guilt of being white. Welcome to the new world order.
I hope with all my heart this works. But using a mechanical piston technology seems so short sighted in this day and age. In the end it will go the way of the combustion engine with its pistons.
GF used to say they would use liquid lead as a working fluid, but it turns out lead has a low cross section of capture for neutrons(that’s why it’s used as a coolant for some fast spectrum fission reactors). This article says “liquid metal”. Unfortunately, the melting point of Barium is sort of high, at 727C about twice that of Lead. Anybody got a good phase diagram for Lead-Barium alloy showing melting point vs percentage Barium?
GF used to say they would use liquid lead as a working fluid but it turns out lead has a low cross section of capture for neutrons(that’s why it’s used as a coolant for some fast spectrum fission reactors). This article says liquid metal””.Unfortunately”” the melting point of Barium is sort of high”” at 727C about twice that of Lead. Anybody got a good phase diagram for Lead-Barium alloy showing melting point vs percentage Barium?”””
What will the operating pressure need to be on the pistions in order for them to move inward? This seems unworkable.
Typical you start off with only hiring WHITE guys which I did not state. I am for equal opportunity but the idea that we are going for equal numbers that represent the population is SJW nonsense. As far as eugenics nope but IQs do not lie and I think that SJWs will lie about and deny about anything to their perfect vision of the world. IQ studies are the ugly secret the sociologist want to keep hidden. And using a straw man of Ellis island to support your argument is pathedic. The Harvard lawsuit is a great example of how it really works. People from Asian countries like Japan and China has IQs that are typically 5-7 points above white average. This does not make much difference in the middle of the IQ range but at the right tail of the bell curve it makes a dramatic difference. Current about 25% of Harvard is Asians which is 5 times their numbers in society. Asian also make about 20% more than the average white guy. According to the lawsuit If Harvard went by SATs and school scores alone then they would have 45% Asians 2% Latino and less than 1 % black. That means Asians would have 9 times their US population numbers in Harvard. So the “oppressed minority” of Asians are no so oppressed and must have what they call Asian Privilege. But they quality for minority status in getting government contracts and other minority privileges. Social justice has devolved into hate the white man, the white man is guilty of all evils, and minorities are pure of heart and should be allowed to eliminate the white man to have a more just society. My brother worked for GE as an engineer and they had a policy of hiring more black engineers equal to the population. The only problem was there are about 1% of the blacks that get engineering degrees and those are from colleges with very low levels of academic achievement. He was actually told by a black supervisor that he would be the first to go if their were layoffs since e was white and she was black and the last
Nonsense, pure and simple. Inclusive hiring simply means not reflexively giving the job to the white guy. Now before you argue that this doesn’t happen, there are well known studies that show that simply changing the name at the top of the resume from a stereotypically “white” name to an equally stereotypical “black” name, while leaving the contents otherwise unaltered results in a drop-off in requests for an interview: datacolada.org /wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bertrand_mullanaithan-1 .pdf I also want to push back against the notion that not being a white guy = “deadwood” implicit in your post and Brett’s post to which you are replying. I’m an engineer (who is a white guy, BTW) and in my career I have had quite a few colleagues who were non-white, non-male, or both and, throughout that career, I have failed to note any correlation between capability and ethnicity or gender. BTW, your calumny concerning the immigrants to this country is neither accurate nor any different from what nativists have always said. Here is a link to an article wherein a eugenicist and psychologist from 100 years ago bemoans the fact that, according to his testing, 40% of Jews, Italians, and Hungarians from his sampling in Ellis Island, in 1913 were “morons”, in it’s technical rather than colloquial sense: npr.org /sections/codeswitch/2014/02/10/267561895/ it-took-a-eugenicist-to-come-up-with-moron It is no more true now than it was then.
Now guys, just because GF’s methods sound nerdy and crude(What, pistons?} doesn’t justify personal and worst attacks! If fact, GF’s methods have a certain old fashion diesel engine charm, providing about 30 to one high compression of plasma by the spinning reformable liquid metal chamber which eliminates a host of hot plasma consumable chamber material issues! 150,000,000K/5,000,000K => about 30 times compression.
What will the operating pressure need to be on the pistions in order for them to move inward? This seems unworkable.
Typical you start off with only hiring WHITE guys which I did not state. I am for equal opportunity but the idea that we are going for equal numbers that represent the population is SJW nonsense. As far as eugenics nope but IQs do not lie and I think that SJWs will lie about and deny about anything to their perfect vision of the world. IQ studies are the ugly secret the sociologist want to keep hidden. And using a straw man of Ellis island to support your argument is pathedic. The Harvard lawsuit is a great example of how it really works. People from Asian countries like Japan and China has IQs that are typically 5-7 points above white average. This does not make much difference in the middle of the IQ range but at the right tail of the bell curve it makes a dramatic difference. Current about 25{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of Harvard is Asians which is 5 times their numbers in society. Asian also make about 20{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} more than the average white guy. According to the lawsuit If Harvard went by SATs and school scores alone then they would have 45{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} Asians 2{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} Latino and less than 1 {22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} black. That means Asians would have 9 times their US population numbers in Harvard. So the oppressed minority”” of Asians are no so oppressed and must have what they call Asian Privilege. But they quality for minority status in getting government contracts and other minority privileges. Social justice has devolved into hate the white man”” the white man is guilty of all evils”” and minorities are pure of heart and should be allowed to eliminate the white man to have a more just society. My brother worked for GE as an engineer and they had a policy of hiring more black engineers”
Nonsense pure and simple. Inclusive hiring simply means not reflexively giving the job to the white guy. Now before you argue that this doesn’t happen there are well known studies that show that simply changing the name at the top of the resume from a stereotypically white”” name to an equally stereotypical “”””black”””” name”””” while leaving the contents otherwise unaltered results in a drop-off in requests for an interview: datacolada.org /wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bertrand_mullanaithan-1 .pdf I also want to push back against the notion that not being a white guy = “”””deadwood”””” implicit in your post and Brett’s post to which you are replying. I’m an engineer (who is a white guy”” BTW) and in my career I have had quite a few colleagues who were non-white non-male or both and throughout that career I have failed to note any correlation between capability and ethnicity or gender. BTW your calumny concerning the immigrants to this country is neither accurate nor any different from what nativists have always said. Here is a link to an article wherein a eugenicist and psychologist from 100 years ago bemoans the fact that according to his testing 40{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of Jews Italians and Hungarians from his sampling in Ellis Island”” in 1913 were “”””morons”””””””” in it’s technical rather than colloquial sense: npr.org /sections/codeswitch/2014/02/10/267561895/ it-took-a-eugenicist-to-come-up-with-moron It is no more true now than it was then.”””
Now guys just because GF’s methods sound nerdy and crude(What pistons?} doesn’t justify personal and worst attacks! If fact GF’s methods have a certain old fashion diesel engine charm providing about 30 to one high compression of plasma by the spinning reformable liquid metal chamber which eliminates a host of hot plasma consumable chamber material issues! 150000000K/5000000K => about 30 times compression.
If they are using deuterium-tritium fusion, that liquid metal will have to be lithium so the neutrons absorbed in the lithium generate tritium to be used in the fusion.
If they are using deuterium-tritium fusion that liquid metal will have to be lithium so the neutrons absorbed in the lithium generate tritium to be used in the fusion.
If you’re going to talk about IQ scores and statistics, you must at least use the basic concepts of stats and psychometrics correctly, or barring that level of accuracy, at bare minimum not terribly incorrectly. In an early post, you said that Asians are 5 to 7 points above “white average.” You then state, that this does not make a big difference at the middle of the curve but at the edges its significant. Part of that is true of course. The difference between 170 and 175 is greater than 100 and 105 since it is a Gaussian distribution BUT what is not TRUE at ALL is that Asian average being 5 to 7 points better than white average implies that Asian-exceptional is also 5 to 7 points better than “white exceptional” or anything else. That simply isn’t how averages work at all.
Just because group A is better on Average than group B does NOT mean that members of group B are uniformly worse than members of group A.
Lets take two two groups of basketball players in a hypothetical game
players in group A, score 10,20,30 in the game their average is of course 20.
in group B the players score 10,10,35 their average is of course lower at at 18.333 but the highest scoring player of all is in group B. Averages because they factor in the extreme data points in the exact same way can be misleading if data is lumpy. This is why statisticians use the notion of median values, a median just divides a data set in halves and says half the numbers are less than this value, half greater.
It partitions the data to iron out lumps caused by outliers. Now even if you meant to use “median” IQ values an analogous problem persists. Just because group A has a higher median value than group B, it doesn’t imply that the highest values in group A are higher than the highest values in group B, it again says nothing explicit about the extrema.
No, the conclusion you try to draw which is just a blatant misunderstanding of statistics, is that being 5 to 7 points higher on average implies that there are TWO distinct IQ curves, and that they are simply phase shifted by 5 to 7 points. So that a person in the 99th Asian percentile would have an IQ of 145 whereas someone in the same (white) percentile would clock in at 138. Someone in the 95th white percentile would have 120 and Asian 95th would be at 125 or so, and so on. But as we’ve seen.. that’s just NOT how averages, not how statistics, not how numbers work.
To say nothing about the host of other problems with such shallow arguments.
Upon discovering Wittgenstein was interested in the philosophy of language, a man at a party once told LW that he had an astounding fact about language to share. “I must tell you Mr Wittgenstein that I am a French speaker and its astounding how well the french language conforms to the shape of my thoughts.” Wittgenstein replied “THAT is almost as remarkable as my experience with German.”
Right, and there isn’t a piston where the injector is. So, it is going to have an odd shape.. its a gimmick machine.
Sure, that much is obvious.
Well you can’t do a spherical vortex that I am aware of.
In my experience the women engineers have been just fine.
The dark skinned engineers have largely been just fine, though there were a couple of exceptions.
The white male engineers have been mostly fine, though with a couple of exceptions.
Looking at those results, it seems the females have a HIGHER rate of being fine. Probably because no woman goes into engineering unless she actually has a flair or enthusiasm for it. Women in my experience never “default” into engineering, they default into Vet or health sciences or arts.
Of course this means that pushing more women into engineering removes the one advantage that current women engineers have.
I have ALSO worked with engineers (of various colours, but all men so far) who were hired for reasons other than being the best person for the job. They were ALL a complete waste of time and money.
Nice discussion. Isn’t it interesting about the isotopes of Pb being the endpoints of the uranium/thorium chains? I didn’t imagine that there were lead deposits with skewed isotopics though. I see now from a quick wiki read that the isotopics “vary greatly” by sample. All the lead isotopes have low thermal neutron absorption cross sections, and I believe that lead was chosen more for its relatively low melting point. I kinda think it is a dead end, but like you said, there is plenty of experience with Pb.
I hope with all my heart this works.
I agree that you’d be better off just going with fission.
But if you’re going to do fusion, the whole molten lead first wall solves the problem of neutron damage in the first wall, which is a freaking HUGE unsolved problem in fusion reactors.
I’m not suggesting that not being a white guy = deadwood.
I’m suggesting that making “exclusivity” a priority over hiring on merit and just accepting whatever racial/religion/gender/armpit hair color distribution results from merit hiring is pretty much guaranteed to produce a less qualified workforce, because you’re no longer hiring on the basis of qualifications. You’re hiring on the basis of melanin, number of X chromosomes, and all sorts of other things *that aren’t qualifications*.
Steam driven pistons in a reactor that boils water for power production avoids an awful lot in the way of conversion losses, though.
They accelerate through vaccum, and deliver an impulse to the solid wall of the chamber, which propagates into the molten lead. It’s the difference between pushing a nail into a board, and hammering it in.
There are two common isotopes of lithium. 92.5% of naturally occurring lithium has an atomic weight of 7, and a very low neutron absorption cross-section, 0.0454 barns, but the remaining 7.5% – lithium 6 – has the extraordinarily high cross-section of 940 barns. To use lithium in a molten salt fission reactor, you’d have to enrich it to 99.999% lithium 7, or you lose too many neutrons. In bombs, or fusion reactors, on the other hand, you’d want lithium 6, to make tritium. These guys want to use a eutectic mixture of lead and lithium, which has a slightly lower melting point than pure lithium ( 180 C ), and much lower than pure lead ( 327 C ).
Lead actually has four common isotopes. The normal mix of isotopes has a low neutron cross-section of 0.17 barns, but the most common isotope, normally over 50% of it, has the extremely low cross-section of only 0.00048 barns. Lead mined from thorium deposits, where it is formed by the radioactive decay of thorium 232, is almost pure Pb208, and would be as transparent to neutrons as helium, if it weren’t so dense.
Radiogenic lead would be better employed, though, in a fast or thermal neutron fission reactor, which can be guaranteed to produce energy, and uses pretty much the same power hardware as the General conFusion contraption. Except it doesn’t need the hundreds of pistons. Or the plasma injector. Or the thing that centrifuges tons of molten metal, while still allowing enough of it to be piped off to the power plant. Or the tritium collectors ( tritium leaks through hot metal like it wasn’t there ). Plus lead-cooled or lead-bismuth cooled fission reactors have probably hundreds of reactor/years of actual net power production (including propelling the world’s fastest submarines ) versus fusion reactors’ combined total of zero seconds.
If they are using deuterium-tritium fusion, that liquid metal will have to be lithium so the neutrons absorbed in the lithium generate tritium to be used in the fusion.
If they are using deuterium-tritium fusion that liquid metal will have to be lithium so the neutrons absorbed in the lithium generate tritium to be used in the fusion.
Typical you start off with only hiring WHITE guys which I did not state. I am for equal opportunity but the idea that we are going for equal numbers that represent the population is SJW nonsense. As far as eugenics nope but IQs do not lie and I think that SJWs will lie about and deny about anything to their perfect vision of the world. IQ studies are the ugly secret the sociologist want to keep hidden. And using a straw man of Ellis island to support your argument is pathedic. The Harvard lawsuit is a great example of how it really works. People from Asian countries like Japan and China has IQs that are typically 5-7 points above white average. This does not make much difference in the middle of the IQ range but at the right tail of the bell curve it makes a dramatic difference. Current about 25% of Harvard is Asians which is 5 times their numbers in society. Asian also make about 20% more than the average white guy. According to the lawsuit If Harvard went by SATs and school scores alone then they would have 45% Asians 2% Latino and less than 1 % black. That means Asians would have 9 times their US population numbers in Harvard. So the “oppressed minority” of Asians are no so oppressed and must have what they call Asian Privilege. But they quality for minority status in getting government contracts and other minority privileges. Social justice has devolved into hate the white man, the white man is guilty of all evils, and minorities are pure of heart and should be allowed to eliminate the white man to have a more just society. My brother worked for GE as an engineer and they had a policy of hiring more black engineers equal to the population. The only problem was there are about 1% of the blacks that get engineering degrees and those are from colleges with very low levels of academic achievement. He was actually told by a black supervisor that he would be the first to go if their were layoffs since e was white and she was black and the last
Typical you start off with only hiring WHITE guys which I did not state. I am for equal opportunity but the idea that we are going for equal numbers that represent the population is SJW nonsense. As far as eugenics nope but IQs do not lie and I think that SJWs will lie about and deny about anything to their perfect vision of the world. IQ studies are the ugly secret the sociologist want to keep hidden. And using a straw man of Ellis island to support your argument is pathedic. The Harvard lawsuit is a great example of how it really works. People from Asian countries like Japan and China has IQs that are typically 5-7 points above white average. This does not make much difference in the middle of the IQ range but at the right tail of the bell curve it makes a dramatic difference. Current about 25{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of Harvard is Asians which is 5 times their numbers in society. Asian also make about 20{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} more than the average white guy. According to the lawsuit If Harvard went by SATs and school scores alone then they would have 45{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} Asians 2{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} Latino and less than 1 {22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} black. That means Asians would have 9 times their US population numbers in Harvard. So the oppressed minority”” of Asians are no so oppressed and must have what they call Asian Privilege. But they quality for minority status in getting government contracts and other minority privileges. Social justice has devolved into hate the white man”” the white man is guilty of all evils”” and minorities are pure of heart and should be allowed to eliminate the white man to have a more just society. My brother worked for GE as an engineer and they had a policy of hiring more black engineers”
Again with ELLIS ISLAND. It was a stupid test that did not account for the inability to speak English and other severe flaws so stop using that ridiculous example to associate it with scientific approaches used today. Basically you did not explain how the Asian/Jews are scoring higher and getting into Harvard/MIT you just come up with “Well Harvard/MIT are just like any other schools” BS. Piss off with NPR which is a far left news outlet populated with as many non whites as possible and is not a source of scientific facts. Basically they want to erase any differences by forced hiring to justify their existence. Minorities scored lower on the SAT so they rewrote the SATs to make it easier for minorities and they scored even worse. DC public schools controlled by blacks for 60 years have about the highest funding in the country and the lowest SAT scores IE 350 for math and 350 for English. Africa is nothing but failed states and South Africa is about to become another one as they fire whites from their jobs and replace them with incompetent blacks.
Excuse after excuse and the slave issue will be used again and again and again until the end of time. This is as if most Irish were indentured servant and basically slaves in this country. Or the Asians were not treated badly or the Jews and yet were all spectacularly successful by the second/third generations.
BTW the evidence for the Blacks being incompetent was my brothers observations of failures and inability to trouble shoot and fix industrial systems even after months of special training. You can brush it anyway you like but the evidence is there in the general observations and IQ numbers and in the SAT scores. And in the ultimate outcomes. But you like all your SJW worshipers want to shove unqualified people into situations they are not qualified for. Plus your latest mantra is all White men are evil racists and only achieved their positions through privilege. Again I am in favor of successful minorities and hope they get every opportunity to succeed but mandated hiring is a nonstarter.
Nonsense, pure and simple. Inclusive hiring simply means not reflexively giving the job to the white guy. Now before you argue that this doesn’t happen, there are well known studies that show that simply changing the name at the top of the resume from a stereotypically “white” name to an equally stereotypical “black” name, while leaving the contents otherwise unaltered results in a drop-off in requests for an interview: datacolada.org /wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bertrand_mullanaithan-1 .pdf I also want to push back against the notion that not being a white guy = “deadwood” implicit in your post and Brett’s post to which you are replying. I’m an engineer (who is a white guy, BTW) and in my career I have had quite a few colleagues who were non-white, non-male, or both and, throughout that career, I have failed to note any correlation between capability and ethnicity or gender. BTW, your calumny concerning the immigrants to this country is neither accurate nor any different from what nativists have always said. Here is a link to an article wherein a eugenicist and psychologist from 100 years ago bemoans the fact that, according to his testing, 40% of Jews, Italians, and Hungarians from his sampling in Ellis Island, in 1913 were “morons”, in it’s technical rather than colloquial sense: npr.org /sections/codeswitch/2014/02/10/267561895/ it-took-a-eugenicist-to-come-up-with-moron It is no more true now than it was then.
Nonsense pure and simple. Inclusive hiring simply means not reflexively giving the job to the white guy. Now before you argue that this doesn’t happen there are well known studies that show that simply changing the name at the top of the resume from a stereotypically white”” name to an equally stereotypical “”””black”””” name”””” while leaving the contents otherwise unaltered results in a drop-off in requests for an interview: datacolada.org /wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bertrand_mullanaithan-1 .pdf I also want to push back against the notion that not being a white guy = “”””deadwood”””” implicit in your post and Brett’s post to which you are replying. I’m an engineer (who is a white guy”” BTW) and in my career I have had quite a few colleagues who were non-white non-male or both and throughout that career I have failed to note any correlation between capability and ethnicity or gender. BTW your calumny concerning the immigrants to this country is neither accurate nor any different from what nativists have always said. Here is a link to an article wherein a eugenicist and psychologist from 100 years ago bemoans the fact that according to his testing 40{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of Jews Italians and Hungarians from his sampling in Ellis Island”” in 1913 were “”””morons”””””””” in it’s technical rather than colloquial sense: npr.org /sections/codeswitch/2014/02/10/267561895/ it-took-a-eugenicist-to-come-up-with-moron It is no more true now than it was then.”””
Now guys, just because GF’s methods sound nerdy and crude(What, pistons?} doesn’t justify personal and worst attacks! If fact, GF’s methods have a certain old fashion diesel engine charm, providing about 30 to one high compression of plasma by the spinning reformable liquid metal chamber which eliminates a host of hot plasma consumable chamber material issues! 150,000,000K/5,000,000K => about 30 times compression.
Now guys just because GF’s methods sound nerdy and crude(What pistons?} doesn’t justify personal and worst attacks! If fact GF’s methods have a certain old fashion diesel engine charm providing about 30 to one high compression of plasma by the spinning reformable liquid metal chamber which eliminates a host of hot plasma consumable chamber material issues! 150000000K/5000000K => about 30 times compression.
What will the operating pressure need to be on the pistions in order for them to move inward? This seems unworkable.
What will the operating pressure need to be on the pistions in order for them to move inward? This seems unworkable.
The comment about chicks in Engineering might not be PC, but it has indeed been my experience. They are just not interested enough to do a good job. How many women do you see on here debating about technical things? There is one Scandinavian woman named Jennifer that posts on NBF… she has interesting things to say. Other than that, it’s a sausage fest on NBF
Use of the term “SJW” is redolent of attempts to dismiss, rather than refute, what your interlocutor has said and, as such, actively hurts your attempts to persuade those who don’t already agree with you. About “IQs do not lie”, this caused me to recall one of my favorite sayings: “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure”. The history of IQ, particularly in the context of ethnicity, is replete with folks like Henry Goddard in the article I linked to (BTW, Vuukle borked my original post, I’ll try again: datacolada. org /wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bertrand_mullanaithan-1. pdf AND npr. com /sections/codeswitch/2014/02/10/267561895/ it-took-a-eugenicist-to-come-up-with-moron ). For Goddard to assert, for example, that many Jews coming into Ellis Island are “morons” when their descendants are among the best educated, most intellectual, ethnic groups in the US (even case-hardened anti-Semites usually don’t try to dispute that one) suggests how absurd the result is.
Concerning admissions to Harvard, I was once told by a professor that the difference between elite universities and the rest lies not in the coursework, but in who they let in. I verified this in the process of educating a friend with open courseware. We have covered 2 semesters of intro to physics from MIT and history courses from Yale. What I encountered was similar to my own undergraduate work at a solid, but less prestigious, university. Also, let me ask you this, why is the plight of Asian students often brought up in the context of affirmative action and not a far more egregious practice in elite institutions, namely legacy preference? Affirmative action, at least, has a rationale to justify it, that it makes up for historic disadvantages. Agree or not, legacy preference, OTOH, allows in the kids who usually had all the advantages societal position could offer and _still_ couldn’t get grades and scores high enough to get in without it. If you want a more meritocratic Harvard, don’t start talking Affirmative action until legacy preferences are already strictly verboten.
As to your brother, nowhere in your discussion of his situation did you offer any evidence that the (black) engineers you speak of were incapable of their jobs. Your assertion that they come from “colleges with low levels of academic achievement” is: A) unsupported, and B) Even if true, my previous point, that the curriculum is largely the same in elite school or not, makes this less than dispositive.
Finally, to your complaint about “millions of uneducated, low IQ” people coming to the US, I urge you to actually look at the NPR article now that I’ve re-posted it. If you do so, you will find that this complaint that you make is the same one that people have been making for over a century. The thing is, for many of us (myself included), if Goddard had his way, we would not be here and the country would be the worse for it. Why should I believe that it is any different now?
“I agree with most of your points but I don’t think I’ve worked with a handful of female Engineers that were worthy of the title. Women are bad engineers”
I wasn’t with you in your career anymore than you were with me in mine, so I can’t make any kind of definitive account of the discrepancy in our experiences, at best I can hypothesize. I will point this out, subjectivity is inherently human, we cannot escape from it, and that can enter into the picture without any intentionality on our part. Let me give you an example of this: In reading through your comments on nuclear power I have learned some things of which I was hither to unaware. This factor inclines me to respond more deferentially than would perhaps otherwise have been the case. Subtle factors like this enter into our assessments all the time, again without intentionality or, often, even awareness on our part. I would say that generalizing from your experience to conclude, flatly “women are bad engineers” is, I think, more than the evidence will support.
I say this realizing that this can be flipped on me, pointing out that my own experience is no less anecdotal. That I will acknowledge and say that I have some additional, more objective, evidence to bring to the table in the form of a study that shows that in the medical field (which, if anything, might be expected to be more favorable to women since they are now about 50% of medical school graduates), women lag men after you have corrected for publication history, years of experience and NIH grants (source: scientificamerican. com /article/women-lag-men-in-medical-research-funds-and-faculty-posts/ ). Now I will agree that medicine is not engineering, but there are reasons, e.g. the degree of male domination of engineering that I mentioned, for expecting the situation in engineering to be, if anything, worse than in medicine.
In short, I’m not going to attempt to gainsay your observations from your career, as I said, you were there and I wasn’t. But I will part company at the point where you generalize this to assert that women are bad engineers. At the very least, my own anecdotal experience and subjective analysis indicates that there are women who are good engineers, I’ve met enough of them. And, if a single black swan is sufficient to invalidate the assertion that “All swans are white” (which is where the whole “black swan” thing came from in the first place), I think I can lay claim to having done so.
If they are using deuterium-tritium fusion, that liquid metal will have to be lithium so the neutrons absorbed in the lithium generate tritium to be used in the fusion.
GF used to say they would use liquid lead as a working fluid, but it turns out lead has a low cross section of capture for neutrons(that’s why it’s used as a coolant for some fast spectrum fission reactors). This article says “liquid metal”. Unfortunately, the melting point of Barium is sort of high, at 727C about twice that of Lead. Anybody got a good phase diagram for Lead-Barium alloy showing melting point vs percentage Barium?
GF used to say they would use liquid lead as a working fluid but it turns out lead has a low cross section of capture for neutrons(that’s why it’s used as a coolant for some fast spectrum fission reactors). This article says liquid metal””.Unfortunately”” the melting point of Barium is sort of high”” at 727C about twice that of Lead. Anybody got a good phase diagram for Lead-Barium alloy showing melting point vs percentage Barium?”””
I wish them all the luck, although it pains me greatly to see that jaggoff Mowrey’s face here. The gravy slurper has made quite a niche for himself sitting on top of ‘house of cards’ projects like mPower and now General [Con]Fusion (I stole that from another NBF regular). The big funding bump usually comes about a year before it all falls apart… If it all goes according to schedule, they will be winding down the week after the last engineer relocates his family to British Columbia.
I wish them all the luck although it pains me greatly to see that jaggoff Mowrey’s face here. The gravy slurper has made quite a niche for himself sitting on top of ‘house of cards’ projects like mPower and now General [Con]Fusion (I stole that from another NBF regular). The big funding bump usually comes about a year before it all falls apart… If it all goes according to schedule they will be winding down the week after the last engineer relocates his family to British Columbia.
Token hires that do nothing. As long as they are dark skinned it dosen’t matter their IQ or their capabilities. Aren’t social justice warriors SJWs wonderful? Now we are letting millions of uneducated low IQ (diet environment and heredity) people into the country so that they can be a drain on society so they can act as a balm for guilt of being white. Welcome to the new world order.
Token hires that do nothing. As long as they are dark skinned it dosen’t matter their IQ or their capabilities. Aren’t social justice warriors SJWs wonderful? Now we are letting millions of uneducated low IQ (diet environment and heredity) people into the country so that they can be a drain on society so they can act as a balm for guilt of being white. Welcome to the new world order.
Typical you start off with only hiring WHITE guys which I did not state. I am for equal opportunity but the idea that we are going for equal numbers that represent the population is SJW nonsense. As far as eugenics nope but IQs do not lie and I think that SJWs will lie about and deny about anything to their perfect vision of the world. IQ studies are the ugly secret the sociologist want to keep hidden. And using a straw man of Ellis island to support your argument is pathedic.
The Harvard lawsuit is a great example of how it really works. People from Asian countries like Japan and China has IQs that are typically 5-7 points above white average. This does not make much difference in the middle of the IQ range but at the right tail of the bell curve it makes a dramatic difference. Current about 25% of Harvard is Asians which is 5 times their numbers in society. Asian also make about 20% more than the average white guy. According to the lawsuit If Harvard went by SATs and school scores alone then they would have 45% Asians 2% Latino and less than 1 % black. That means Asians would have 9 times their US population numbers in Harvard. So the “oppressed minority” of Asians are no so oppressed and must have what they call Asian Privilege. But they quality for minority status in getting government contracts and other minority privileges. Social justice has devolved into hate the white man, the white man is guilty of all evils, and minorities are pure of heart and should be allowed to eliminate the white man to have a more just society.
My brother worked for GE as an engineer and they had a policy of hiring more black engineers equal to the population. The only problem was there are about 1% of the blacks that get engineering degrees and those are from colleges with very low levels of academic achievement. He was actually told by a black supervisor that he would be the first to go if their were layoffs since e was white and she was black and the last to go.
So mandating equality in every “tribal” social group is destructive and unworkable. But mandating equal opportunity is not. But anyone who disagrees with a social justice warrior is a blasphemer and subject to job loss and to be ostracized by society.
I hope with all my heart this works. But using a mechanical piston technology seems so short sighted in this day and age. In the end it will go the way of the combustion engine with its pistons.
I hope with all my heart this works. But using a mechanical piston technology seems so short sighted in this day and age. In the end it will go the way of the combustion engine with its pistons.
Nonsense, pure and simple. Inclusive hiring simply means not reflexively giving the job to the white guy. Now before you argue that this doesn’t happen, there are well known studies that show that simply changing the name at the top of the resume from a stereotypically “white” name to an equally stereotypical “black” name, while leaving the contents otherwise unaltered results in a drop-off in requests for an interview: datacolada.org /wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bertrand_mullanaithan-1 .pdf
I also want to push back against the notion that not being a white guy = “deadwood” implicit in your post and Brett’s post to which you are replying. I’m an engineer (who is a white guy, BTW) and in my career I have had quite a few colleagues who were non-white, non-male, or both and, throughout that career, I have failed to note any correlation between capability and ethnicity or gender. BTW, your calumny concerning the immigrants to this country is neither accurate nor any different from what nativists have always said. Here is a link to an article wherein a eugenicist and psychologist from 100 years ago bemoans the fact that, according to his testing, 40% of Jews, Italians, and Hungarians from his sampling in Ellis Island, in 1913 were “morons”, in it’s technical rather than colloquial sense: npr.org /sections/codeswitch/2014/02/10/267561895/ it-took-a-eugenicist-to-come-up-with-moron It is no more true now than it was then.
Now guys, just because GF’s methods sound nerdy and crude(What, pistons?} doesn’t justify personal and worst attacks!
If fact, GF’s methods have a certain old fashion diesel engine charm, providing about 30 to one high compression of plasma by the spinning reformable liquid metal chamber which eliminates a host of hot plasma consumable chamber material issues! 150,000,000K/5,000,000K => about 30 times compression.
Thanks in part to this federal investment through the Strategic Innovation Fund, General Fusion will … employ inclusive hiring practices” So, the government money comes with a demand that they stop hiring on merit? Too bad, hope the new funding is worth the deadwood they’ll have to waste some of it on.
Thanks in part to this federal investment through the Strategic Innovation Fund” General Fusion will … employ inclusive hiring practices””So”” the government money comes with a demand that they stop hiring on merit? Too bad”” hope the new funding is worth the deadwood they’ll have to waste some of it on.”””
What will the operating pressure need to be on the pistions in order for them to move inward? This seems unworkable.
GF used to say they would use liquid lead as a working fluid, but it turns out lead has a low cross section of capture for neutrons(that’s why it’s used as a coolant for some fast spectrum fission reactors). This article says “liquid metal”.
Unfortunately, the melting point of Barium is sort of high, at 727C about twice that of Lead. Anybody got a good phase diagram for Lead-Barium alloy showing melting point vs percentage Barium?
I wish them all the luck, although it pains me greatly to see that jaggoff Mowrey’s face here. The gravy slurper has made quite a niche for himself sitting on top of ‘house of cards’ projects like mPower and now General [Con]Fusion (I stole that from another NBF regular). The big funding bump usually comes about a year before it all falls apart… If it all goes according to schedule, they will be winding down the week after the last engineer relocates his family to British Columbia.
Token hires that do nothing. As long as they are dark skinned it dosen’t matter their IQ or their capabilities. Aren’t social justice warriors SJWs wonderful? Now we are letting millions of uneducated low IQ (diet environment and heredity) people into the country so that they can be a drain on society so they can act as a balm for guilt of being white. Welcome to the new world order.
I hope with all my heart this works. But using a mechanical piston technology seems so
short sighted in this day and age. In the end it will go the way of the combustion engine with its pistons.
“Thanks in part to this federal investment through the Strategic Innovation Fund, General Fusion will … employ inclusive hiring practices”
So, the government money comes with a demand that they stop hiring on merit? Too bad, hope the new funding is worth the deadwood they’ll have to waste some of it on.