In fact, thus far, hydrogen bombs have been the only successful and reliable fusion reactions produced by man.

Well, you can build a Hirsh-Farnsworth fusor in your garage, and quite a few people have. They have various commercial applications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

No one has produced a fusion power plant yet, but that may be only 10 years off now (as opposed to the usual 50). Field-reversed configurations are being funded by Paul Allen, and Bussard’s Polywell concept is an active Navy project. Proponenets of both believe they can deliver a net power system at far less cost than the $20B ITER program, which is the only one most people know about.

That’s ignoring, of course, the more far-fetched ideas such as focus fusion, cold fusion, and hydrino theory, all of which have aspects that run counter to known physics and are therefore generally considered crackpottery.

Was that a flux capacitor? Seriously, yeah, fusion (IMO) is the long term solution to our energy needs. Emphasis on long term. There’s been a lot of progress made, they’re using floating magnetic containment now, and they have the reaction up to a few seconds, IIRC. I don’t see anything commercially available in the first half of the century. That is the long term stuff His Holiness keeps telling us about (though I doubt he has ever heard of the stuff), which is why we need oil, nukular, etc to bridge the gap til we get there.

Production of electricity though fusion proposes even greater challenges. While there are many potential benefits of a fusion reactor over fission — for instance, it would produce almost no waste — the engineering obstacles are enormous. There is no known material that could contain the type of reaction that powers the sun, for example. There are many other problems as well, which is why nobody in the West has yet produced a viable design for a commercial fusion reactor.

All of this tells me that A-jad is, as usual, full of shit. The Iranians may be close to a fission weapon but they couldn’t possibly be close to a fusion model. I don’t think A-jad could even photoshop his way out of this one.

Better still, plan it to coincide with a visit by Am-A-Jerk and the Supreme Ruler.

“sweetheart deals”

An empty promise is not a sweatheart deal. If the US wants to give Iran a sweatheart deal, then they should pay Iran for not processing their uranium resources. Iran has the equivalent of 45 billion barrels of oil. Price per barrel = $120. No promises, but pay now. 45 billion x $120 = 5.4 trillion. If the US pays Iran 5.4 trillion immediately, I believe Iran would agree.

Johan Klaus:

I do not think that drilling in less than two thousand acres would destroy ANWR.

The word “destroy” has nothing to do with the point I was making. You are free to leave the word out.

It seems more likely that bragging about progress on fusion has a lot more to do with the construct of a weapon rather than any peaceful use of nuclear energy.

I think such plain possibilities as that Rafsanjani isn’t clear on the distinction between fission and fusion deserved at least to be acknowledged.

The US wants to destroy ANWR for 8 billion barrels of oil, but demands that Iran leave the equivalent of 45 billion barrels of oil in the ground.
dave742 on August 1, 2008 at 9:03 AM

” All President Bush has asked is that oil exploration take place on 2,000 acres within ANWR – itself 19.5 million acres in size. That’s a tract about the size of a big-city airport in an area the size of South Carolina with a population of fewer than 2,000.” I do not think that drilling in less than two thousand acres would destroy ANWR.

Given their recent shenanigans, I’d almost be willing to put money on that one.

Diogenes of Sinope on August 1, 2008 at 8:40 AM

But would you bet your life on it?

“After all, the Saudi’s and Hugo Chavez routinely persuade us not to drill for our own oil”

You are comparing the pressure being put on Iran by the West, including three rounds of sanctions and constant threats of bombings and invasions, to what pressure from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? Can you explain to me what methods the Saudi’s and Venezuelan’s are using to “persuade” us to not drill in ANWR, and compare that to the Iranian situation? I never realized that we are not drilling in ANWR due to Saudi and Venezuelan demands. This is a new revelation for me. Please explain.

“Hugo routinely threatens to cut off our oil unless we agree to support him as President for Life”

You are obviously ranting. Can you show me where Hugo Chavez said this? Chavez simply wanted to remove term limits, the same as Australia and France.

95%+ of the homicide bombers in the world today are Muslims”

No. Over half of suicide bombers are secular.

“it costs about 100 times as much to get uranium into a usable form to make electricity than it does to use oil for the same purpose”

Can you show me where you got this stat? I have this nagging suspicion that this stat came directly out of your little pinhead. Why does Russia, an oil exporter, also have nuclear power plants? Why does the US build nuclear power plants when we can simply buy oil for 1% of the price?
Fleeter:

Where do you get the figure of 8 billion barrels for ANWR.

“In 1998, the USGS estimated that between 5.7 and 16.0 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil1 are in the coastal plain area of ANWR (also referred to as the 1002 Area), with a mean estimate of 10.4 billion barrels, of which 7.7 billion barrels falls within the Federal portion of the ANWR 1002 Area.”

I rounded up the 7.7 billion number.

“if the Iranians want to ‘give’ us oil in exchange for not drilling our own, I think we’d have the good sense to accept it.”

I don’t think the West is offering to “give” Iran uranium. I think they are offering a “promise” to supply it. I think Iran would have to pay something for it.
Even if, in my scenario, Iran offered to give the US an equivalent amount of oil, a demand by Iran on the US not to drill in ANWR would be met with complete contempt by both our government and our citizens. I think you know this is true.

“the international community has offered them the sweetheart deal”

The international community has made offers before concerning Iran’s nuclear power program. Those offers were not fulfilled. The US made offers to the DPRK regarding their nuclear program. Those offers were not fulfilled. The US signed a treaty outlining behaviour regarding nuclear weapons and nuclear power. That treaty has been broken in several ways by the US. Iran has seen enough of US promises.

Reference:
Iran plans to knock out U.S. with 1 nuclear bomb

Where do you get the figure of 8 billion barrels for ANWR. I’ve been to the potential drill site, and I can tell you that no one knows what may be under that ground. 8 billion is an estimate, such estimates are usually absurdly low compared to what is really there. The original estimate for Prudhoe would have meant that it was emptied out by now. It is still our largest single domestic source of oil and there is plenty left.
BTW, if the Iranians want to “give” us oil in exchange for not drilling our own, I think we’d have the good sense to accept it. If all the Iranians really want is nuclear power, then the international community has offered them the sweetheart deal of all sweetheart deals. We have offered them the equivalent of the Sierra Club offering every family in America a free Prius in return for not drilling ANWR.

Iran’s uranium reserves can produce an amount of electricity equivalent to 45 billion barrels over oil. Iran’s oil reserves are a little of 90 billion barrels. The US expects Iran to waste half of its known oil reserves when the same amount of electricity can be obtained from another source. The US wants to destroy ANWR for 8 billion barrels of oil, but demands that Iran leave the equivalent of 45 billion barrels of oil in the ground.

So let’s turn the situation around. Let’s say that Muslim countries demand that the US not drill for oil in ANWR, and that they “promise” to give us some oil as compensation. They warn that if the US does not comply, there will be sanctions, followed by possible bombings and invasion. I am sure the US would respond positively to this.

dave742 on August 1, 2008 at 9:03 AM

You are dumb as a bag of hammers, aren’t ya?

How does that last paragraph differ from what is actually occurring now? After all, the Saudi’s and Hugo Chavez routinely persuade us not to drill for our own oil, but to buy theirs at a cheaper price, then use our money to pay for things to hurt us, including invasion (buying property and businesses in the US), sanctions (Hugo routinely threatens to cut off our oil unless we agree to support him as President for Life, and by the way, save Fidel with our miracle cures), and bombings (95%+ of the homicide bombers in the world today are Muslims who have an agenda to kill Americans).

How can one “destroy ANWR” by drilling on 2000 acres of a multimillion acre tract, most of which is swampy mud flats where not much grows, including caribou. Except the mosquitos do quite well there. The land is all still there. The mosquitoes still breed, the caribou still walk thru far away from the swampy end, and the fish still make love in the ocean.

And it costs about 100 times as much to get uranium into a usable form to make electricity than it does to use oil for the same purpose. Plus no one seriously intends to kill millions of people using oil bombs when regular PBXN or C-4 or other high explosives would do the job so much neater and cheaper. I guess the Iranians are really all about spending money to pull stuff out of the ground that isn’t economical to use.

Drive your solar powered car down to the beach much, do you? Don’t use sunscreen or you’ll eliminate the cells effectiveness and rot your brain in the process. Just accept the increased risk of skin cancer later in life.

Subsunk

Shy Guy on August 1, 2008 at 9:23 AM

Not bad at all.

dave742 on August 1, 2008 at 9:03 AM

It depends. In your scenario, did the US sign a treaty stating that it would not drill for oil in Alaska and when the world caught us building derricks, did we say “Oh no, we’re drilling water wells”?