Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!srcsip!rutgers!att!cbnews!maniac%garnet.Berkeley.EDU@ From: maniac%garnet.Berkeley.EDU@ (George W. Herbert) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Cold Fusion Summary: A few _Minor details... Message-ID: <5391@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 5 Apr 89 02:19:26 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 64 Approved: military@att.att.com From: maniac%garnet.Berkeley.EDU@ (George W. Herbert) -LONG- In article <5326@cbnews.ATT.COM> mchamp@wpi.wpi.edu (Marc J. Champagne) writes: >To: maniac%garnet.Berkeley.EDU@ >In response to your article: > fission for CVNs and CGNs. Fusion is the obvious choice for the > more numerous classes of surface ships (DDs/FFs), though. >2) "running destroyer prices up to the CVN range".....a gross > exageration ; you can go with a modification on current tubine > designs for gas turbine engines, only you're using fussion Wrong! Use current steam turbines, please. (engineering-type detail: they allready exist and were around for Years before gas turbines. :) > The whole point is that you have a slightly higher initial outlay, > but then don't have the logistics difficulties of supplying > large amounts of fossil fuels. We probably would have seen Aack! Aack! 'slightly higher initial outlay'...? Choke! Palladium is 3 times the cost of Gold! And we'd need TONS for a reactor! One time, maybe, but what i've seen says that the Palladium for a useful plant would be in the close to low Billions: DD's currently run roughly $250 million, plus $20 million a year to operate and maintain. I may be crazy, but I'm going to be an engineer: and in the real world things that cost too much don't get built. > >As for use aboard subs, I do not think that that would be a safe > course of action. Again, if a fusion plant using the principles in > the Utah project is powered down, the deuterium ions fly out of the > lattice structure in the palladium. Then you're without your main > propulsion system for 10 hours or so while you try to resaturate it. > It's a little early to be assuming that we have to pull the entire thing down to stop it. According to sources who have been valiantly trying to replacate said experiments here at UCB, it apparently requires a pretty hefty electrical field to fuse, so it can probably be turned off by simply shutting down the electricity, leaving the palladium fueled. Note that putting the Palladium into heavy water may well not be necessary: a far more practical idea is a steel pipe, with a palladium core and a hold down the centerfor the deuterium. Immerse in water and run electricity through palladium. This way the deuterium stays where you want it. [note: based on speculation not hard data on how this operates.] >Can anyone see any practical applications aside from destroyer and > frigate power plants? Yes. Satelites, are one. I would like to make a quick comment here. What I did, attacking the possible uses of this new technology, was not intended to be defeatist or anti-progress. What I wanted to do was stop everyone from wasting their and everybody elses time with 'look: it's new...we can do _everything_ with it' postings, such as several that went up. This may well turn out to be a very important advance for technology as well as a physics breakthrough, but right now it has well- defined and overwhelming practical problems barring potential application. While those who free-associate to come up with neat ideas are fine and good (i was one for a Long time before i started getting technical training in college) they quite often ask the impossible of physics and engineering. I would suggest that next time everyone step back and look carefully at something like this before starting to discuss it. This is, after all, sci.mil not sci.gee-whiz! george william herbert maniac@garnet.berkeley.edu