From: Charles Cagle <prophet@singtech.com>
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.energy,sci.physics.plasma
Subject: Re: Advance Claimed in Fusion Research
References: <aiuqmq$13h0$1@saturn.cs.uml.edu>
Organization: AT&T Worldnet


In article <aiuqmq$13h0$1@saturn.cs.uml.edu>, sanman
<manofsan@yahoo.com> wrote:

> http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992637

 Peeking at the article we see that it says:

<begin quote>
Fusion reactor breaks duration record


10:50 06 August 02

NewScientist.com news service

A powerful plasma discharge has operated for a world record 210 seconds
in an experimental French fusion reactor. The demonstration is a
significant step toward the long plasma confinement times needed in a
practical fusion reactor.

Physicists sustained the three-megawatt electric discharge in the Tore
Supra reactor at the Association Euratom-CEA in Cadarache. During that
interval, it dissipated more than 600 megajoules of energy, more than
twice the previous record, also set by Tore Supra in 1996.

The record was broken thanks to an upgrade that added active cooling to
the tokamak, the reaction vessel. The experiment was also the first one
to use a series of superconducting coils to generate a strong permanent
toroidal magnetic field to contain the plasma. The scientists did not
aim to demonstrate nuclear fusion on this occasion.

Operating time has been a key technology limit for fusion, says
Federico Casci of the European Fusion Development Agreement office in
Garching near Munich, Germany. Previous experiments have heated and
compressed nuclear fuel to the point where the nuclei of heavy hydrogen
isotopes fuse and release energy. But the confinement times were so
brief that the reaction released little energy.

<end quote>

One should break down and cry at such pseudoscientific chicanery. A
joule is a watt-second and 600 Megajoules is 166.7 kw hours.

distributed over 3.5 minutes isn't really that impressive. One would
think that a battery operated welder could easily be designed to
operate for 3.5 minutes, eh?

These fools are grabbing at straws and casting out red herrings all in
the same action. They don't understand the actual physics of fusion
in the first place so any parameter that they think they are increasing
while holding others stable won't do them any good at all. Even if
they could deliver them as a simultaneous package deal (confinement,
temperature, density, percent of ionization, etc.) since they have the
fundamental physics wrong they still won't have a working reactor.
American lawmakers need to wake up to the fact that this fifty year
long running con should be stopped and the way to put a bullet right
between its eyes at least in the U.S. is to disband the present D.O.E.
and fire every employee and ban every one of them from future gov't
related employment. This present nonsense, even though ostensibly a
European effort, has the fingerprints of D.O.E. all over it. Big
science these days, especially in the area of nuclear fusion is a
global enterprise. We train their physicists at our universities and
our grad students attend their universities and physics institutes
while receiving funding via grants from D.O.E. and connected sources.
Someone has to haul this octopus up on shore in the light of day and
let it dry out and die.

CC.


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