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gamenomad

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    A long, long time ago...

Everything posted by gamenomad

  1. I like the look of the martian nuclear power plant but these type nuclear reactor will not exist in the future I think. It is another more advanced technology that consist make an artificial nuclear fusion like in the stars.Not like our actual reactor that use fission.These reactor really exist and was tested first time in China I think. Here a traducted text from french with a translator that explicate all that. Nuclear fusion: the source of energy of stars Nuclear fusion constitutes the mechanism at the origin of the radiation of stars and in particular of the Sun. Indeed, within stars, the light cores amalgamate and produce heavier cores. During this reaction of fusion, the mass of the produced core is lower than the sum of the masses of the light cores of origin. The difference in mass, under the terms of the famous relation of Einstein, E=mc2, is then converted into energy. One estimates thus that, in the Sun, not far from 600 million tons of hydrogen are transformed into 596 million tons of helium each second. The difference is then converted into energy and is at the origin of heat and the light which we receive. Although the energy released by nuclear fusion is considerable, the reactions of fusion do not occur spontaneously, at least under the conditions of temperature and pressure to which we are accustomed. Thus, the probability of observing a reaction of fusion between two hydrogen cores on the surface of the ground is almost null. Indeed, to amalgamate, the cores, which are positively charged, must initially overcome their tendency natural to be pushed back. This is possible when the matter is under extreme conditions as in the middle of the Sun (enormous pressure and temperature of several million degrees). How to domesticate nuclear fusion? To produce on Earth of the conditions favourable with the realization of the reactions of fusion quickly constituted an important objective of research, taking into account the immense natural energy of this phenomenon and of the very great abundance of hydrogen. The bomb with hydrogen constituted the first “success” in this field. In this military application, the extreme conditions of temperature and pressure are obtained thanks to a starter made up of an atomic bomb of fission. Fortunately, the main part of current research follows a more peaceful approach, the purpose of which is to control the reactions of fusion and to domesticate the energy of fusion. Controlled nuclear fusion thus consists in trying to reproduce on Earth of the conditions making it possible to exploit in an industrial way this source of energy. Under the conditions of temperature necessary to obtain nuclear fusion, that is to say several million degrees, the atoms are then separate in their fundamental components - positively charged electrons and cores - and form a hot gas called “plasma”. These temperatures exclude the use of a container to maintain plasma in a sufficiently small space so that a significant number of collisions between light cores gives place to reactions of fusion. The solution most often adopted then consists in subjecting plasma to an intense magnetic field of toroidal geometry (see opposite). The particles charged composing plasma then follow roughly the magnetic field and can explore only one limited part of space. This supports the collisions between the light cores while limiting the contact between the plasma and the walls of the engine. This technique is called the magnetic containment of plasma. The engines of fusion based on this approach are known under the name of tokamak and seem most promising today. The researchers also realized that the probabilities of reaction of fusion between hydrogen cores were well too weak to consider the industrial exploitation of phenomena identical to those which occur in the middle of the Sun. On the other hand, other reactions, based on the same principle of fusion of light cores, are less difficult to realize. Thus, the reaction which seems most favorable in the tokamaks would be the fusion of a deuterium core and a tritium core. Deuterium and the tritium are two isotopes of hydrogen, i.e. elements whose cores of the atoms contain the same number of protons as hydrogen (only one) but not the same number of neutrons (for deuterium and two for tritium instead of zero for hydrogen). The result of this reaction is a helium core and a neutron.The helium core being charged, it will be subjected to the magnetic field of tokamak and will remain thus confined in the enclosure of the engine. The collisions between the helium cores and other components of plasma should make it possible to maintain a temperature sufficiently high in the engine. The neutrons not being charge carrier electric will be insensitive with the magnetic field and will leave tokamak at very high speed. Their energy then will be recovered and transformed into heat which, in its turn, will be transformed into electricity. Fusion: advantages of the nuclear power without its disadvantages Fusion has three major advantages. Initially, it uses as combustible deuterium whose terrestrial reserves are almost inexhaustible and tritium relatively easy to produce; its industrial exploitation would thus make it possible to solve, for many millenia, the problems involved in our energy provisioning. Indeed, the figures are eloquent: the exploitation of a power station of 1000 MW based on the combustion of coal requires to burn not far from 3 million tons of coal per annum. With same power, a power station functioning on the principle of nuclear fusion would consume only one quarter of ton of a mixture based for half of deuterium and half of tritium. Whereas the effects related to fossile fuel combustion (coal and oil for example) are likely to deteriorate our living conditions in the long run, the development of a source of energy not producing any gas for purpose of greenhouse meets obviously a growing interest. The second major advantage of fusion is without question safety inherent in this phenomenon. Initially, only the quantity of fuel necessary to the operation of the engine (hardly a few grams) is injected into the enclosure of tokamak. Thus, if the state of the engine deviated too much of the normal conditions of operating, it is very simple to quickly put it except service. In the same way, the accidental injection of undesirable elements (like air) in the enclosure, would stop the reactions of fusion immediately. In fact, the quantities of plasma which will be within the engine will be so weak that incident, such an improbable is it, could never involve a catastrophic event of the type of an explosion and would limit its effects to the outage of the engine. More important perhaps is the relative cleanliness of nuclear fusion. Indeed, deuterium is an isotope which is in a natural state and in a considerable fraction in the hydrogen which constitutes water. Its production is thus easy and nonpolluting. The tritium, as for him, is a radioactive element. It is degraded by emitting energy radiations. However, its life time, i.e. the period during which it emits potentially dangerous radiations, is very short (about ten year). Moreover, the reaction of fusion does not generate, directly or indirectly, of radioactive by-products of long life times. The interactions between the fast neutrons which escape from the enclosure from the engine and the walls will generate certainly radioactive waste. In fact, a great part of tritium consumed in the engines of fusion could directly be produced by the interactions between these strongly energy neutrons and lithium constituting certain elements of the walls of the engine. Thus, the only radioactive fuel would be produced and consumed directly in the engine. Moreover, contrary to the radioactive waste related to the traditional power stations, those produced by fusion will have a life time runs. Their potential harmful effect could then easily be managed by a storage and a monitoring in the short or medium term. Thus waste of fusion will constitute neither a burden nor a danger to the generations which will follow us. With when fusion? Whereas the advantages related to the industrial exploitation of nuclear fusion are clear as well from the environmental point of view as strategic (the fuels are indeed accessible to all and in almost inexhaustible quantity), it seems natural to wonder about the reasons which make that this source of energy is not exploited yet today. The reasons are multiple. Initially, the feasibility of the industrial exploitation of the nuclear fusion, although considered as acquired by many researchers, was not proven yet in experiments. Reactions of fusion were indeed produced in tokamaks. Thus, in 1997, European tokamak JET (located close to Oxford in England) managed to produce an energy of fusion of 16 MW. However, because of the reduced size of the current engines, the energy balance of these reactions does not allow their exploitation yet. In addition, the construction of an engine of fusion producing sufficient energy is a difficult and expensive task. Thus, although the cost of fuels is very reasonable, the technical installations necessary to the construction and the exploitation of an engine of fusion imply very heavy investments. Moreover, current economic logic does not integrate (or very slightly) the costs related to the environmental impacts of the various sources of energy. This situation reveals, in an artificial way, the traditional means of energy production as being more competitive. It seems nevertheless that technical and scientific progress as regards nuclear fusion, as well as the progressive exhaustion of the oil and coal reserves, will transform towards half of this century nuclear fusion into a viable energy option. Moreover, this option will guarantee an at the same time durable and respectful energy provisioning all environment. One of the important stages in the development of our knowledge in fusion will be the construction, which should be decided soon, of tokamak able to produce an energy of fusion about 500MW: ITER (International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor). This project, resulting from an international collaboration between the United States, Japan, Russia and Europe, should make it possible better and better to determine the constraints related to the exploitation on a large scale of the energy of fusion. Research in fusion: a European program in which the ULB takes part The research carried out within the framework of controlled fusion has in particular as a task to describe the collective behavior of the electrons and the positively charged cores which constitute plasmas when those are subjected to strong magnetic fields. Complex phenomena of transport of matter and energy occur then within plasma. On the one hand, the collisions tend to make deviate the components of the plasma of the trajectories which one tries to impose to them (along the magnetic field). In addition, the extreme conditions necessary to obtain controlled fusion generate many instabilities leading to a turbulent state of plasma. Plasma is then in an apparently chaotic state difficult to describe and model. The dispersion of the plasma which accompanies this turbulent state limits the time of containment and, consequently, the performances of the engines. The richness and the complexity of the physical phenomena met within plasmas justified an active research with the ULB since the Sixties. On the level of Europe, the coordination of research on controlled thermonuclear fusion started in 1957, with the creation of Euratom. Indeed, the Treaty of Rome assigns with Euratom all the activities related to the energy applications of the atom, being studied of the nuclear fusion controlled like with the applications touching to the radioisotopes. In Belgium, research on the magnetic containment of plasmas for the realization of controlled thermonuclear fusion is undertaken since 1969 within the framework of a contract of association Euratom - State Belgian. The unit of Statistical Physics and Plasmas of the ULB constitutes one of the three branches of this association with the Laboratory of Plasma physics of the Military Royal School and the Nuclear Center of Study of Mol. A shema of a fusion reactor Interior of a fusion reactor (The JET) Exterior of a fusion reactor (The JET) Hope this will help with the development and realism of SimMars. Gamenomad
  2. Lighthouse Tower Dubai

    One of the best thing on STEX.
  3. I Aint Pretty

    Ugly and bautiful at the same moment...Exactly what i want for my rought quarter! But One thing. Can you modify it to have residential and growable?
  4. 150 North Michigan

    One word. Wow.
  5. Me too I find that all is inactive. We need to see log of the work done. Plz save this project! If you want, maybe i can do the website job...
  6. Seemingly Random Crashes to Desktop

    I have exactly the same problem. I HATE it too. If i don't save each 5 minutes my game crash. I am playing my huge city Washburn, a 130 000 people city on a normal tile (Not a huge). I can't overload my CPU or ram because i have 2 GB RAM and 4 GB virtual memory, a AMD X2 (2 core) +7500 and a GeForce 7600 GT with the latest drivers and DirectX 9.0. I think it is a compatibility problem with my VGA Card or anything else like that... The problem is know by EA Game but it is will be solutionned? I hope...
  7. DEDWD Oil Fields

    Excellent but i can't run it...Brown Boxes...
  8. simmars-forum-threads BETA 2 - Thread

    The CAM is a building pack find on BSC. I think the complete name is Camelot. With that, some new building willl grow and it have a feature to make landmarks growables.
  9. I think its not my responsability but i see that you're new. if its the case welcome to simtropolis (Im making a moderator job, i know). You can edit your message. dont make 2 post or a moderator can do thing you don't like (Like sending you a message) . Yes, its your opinion. My opinion is: I really like simmars but i want to can play the real game and simmars. (I don't want trouble from the start-up manager...)
  10. Chapapotex Distillers

    Cool!
  11. BlaM Really Dirty Industries

    Yagnnn!! Funny! A sperm manifacture....
  12. Grande ferme agricole Large agricultural farm

    J'commence vraiment a haiir les lot faite avec plusieur lot de Maxis... Am
  13. The Wilderness

    I hate RuneScape. But its a good job.
  14. simmars-forum-threads BAT Workshop

    nice! I really like all your BAT!
  15. NDEX Van Boktt Tower by DT

    Good
  16. Zero Residental Demand...

    Find the problem (I have the same). The super demand ordinance and other most downloaded radical mod. Don't download both of them. The ******* Auto-Ordinance Toggling is destroying my cities! I erased the files but still the same: A message appears: Auto-Ordinance Togling) . and each 5 minute. Help!
  17. simmars-forum-threads BETA 2 - Thread

    Bug Report: Can't have reward. Only maxis Ones. And they crashe the game. AIR POLLUTION a martian water treatment plant please! Hope that will help
  18. Htin Hitech Tower

    I don't like the bat, but i find it original and plentful of detail. Good work!
  19. Yeah... When the file would be released? Tomorrow?(I dream...)
  20. Its amazing. The guy has worked on the JET?
  21. Road Maintenence building

    Realistic (The last post date from 2003)
  22. Water Pipes

    Water pipes are so laying! I miss some time and cash in that! I will not miss water pipe.
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