Re: Fusion is a reality today, well almost...
Originally posted by ktlx
Scientists have been able to achieve fusion for quite some time. They just cannot figure out how to control it to make anything other than a bomb. 
The earlier claims of cold fusion are suspect. Some skeptical scientists have claimed that the tiny amount of energy generated could have come from larger chemical reactions.
In my opinion, fossil fuels will be extinct before we can gather energy from any fusion reaction besides our sun. The only evidence we have for sustained fusion reactions require masses and pressures on a scale that are unthinkable for a earth-bound environment.
I said they have not been able to do it on a large enough scale or consistently enough to be used as an energy source, so for that discussion it was irrelevant. The type of fusion that scientists have achieved is used in the H-bomb, but it is not quite the same as fusion which occurs in the sun. While it does combine hydrogen ions (deuterium) to create helium and give off energy, it has to use nuclear fission in order to do it and gives off great deals of radiation.
Cold fusion is highly suspect, and after scientists actually looked over the results of the first claim most of them decided the results were false. In a report by the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy it was shown that the results thought to be cold fusion did not produce near enough energy to have actually been fusion.
In order to achieve fusion we would need large sources of deuterium, hig pressures, and extremely high temperatures. The surface waters of the earth contain more than 10 million million tons of deuterium, an essentially inexhaustible supply. Scientists have been able to achieve temperatures that are 20 times that required for fusion and high pressures can be produced. It making high temperatures and pressures at the same time that makes fusion harder. Department of Energy and several sponsored programs are making progress in fusion and have produced, in some cases, tens of millions of watts of energy.
