Missing?

In article ,
says...


On one hand, I think we need someone LIKE Mook.
Someone who can think outside the box. A person who can look at ideas that
others have not.

Someone sort of like John C. Houbolt who is willing to question the status
quo.

But more like Houbolt who will question the current paradigm, but whose math
works out and who can actually convince others of his ideas.

Someone like Elon Musk.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

In article ,
says...

I liked mook, but most of his ideas were above me...

Most of his ideas were science fiction. There was usually a tenacious
connection with some sort of research that he thought could easily be
scaled up by many orders of magnitude, but very little that was "shovel
ready". He quite simply didn't know the difference between scientific
research and engineering development. His online posts show he still
doesn't.

the problem was fred j mc call who was just 100% offensive, and no doubt drove many people from here

30 years ago Usenet News was high tech ****. Messages broadcast to
interested readers all over the world and it only took a day or so for
messages to show up.

But, Usenet News isn't exactly bleeding edge tech anymore. No pictures,
no audio, no real-time interactivity (likes, stars, hearts, and etc.).

Usenet News is quite simply obsolete tech. It's the equivalent of over
the air analog standard definition television in a world of on demand
digital streaming 4k video streams.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Monday, January 25, 2016 at 4:14:16 AM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

Mook is still writing but posts to his LinkedIn page:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/williammook

With exciting "articles" like:


SpaceX and the Final Frontier
January 6, 2016

This one includes SpaceX buying every other US space company (breaking
up the US Military Industrial Complex's stranglehold on space) as well
as this gem:

With suspended animation, weight per person drops to 0.1 tons per
person along with 0.5 tons for Mars landing, and that's 0.6 tons
per person.

Because suspended animation on a human is proven tech to Mook. :-P

And this:

SpaceX can organise the prison companies and investment companies
to create opportunities for both these people, while reducing
population on Earth, and developing Mars' capacity to support
people.

So, we're going to colonize Mars with prisoners, I suppose because no
one else would want to go?



The title of this next one is more than enough to show Mook is still out
in Neverland:

Industrial Production of Positronium and its uses
December 5, 2015

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

Industrial Production of Positronium and its uses.

by William Mook

Abstract
Humanity is already a Kardashev Class 2 civilisation on an instantaneous power basis. This article explores how humanity will make use of artificial solar flares to produce industrial quantities of positronium. This positronium resource will be used to make star travel with photon rockets commonplace.

Keywords: Solar Energy, Kardashev, Antimatter, Photon Rocket, Interstellar Travel, Relativistic Rocket Equation, Star Faring Civilisation, Fermi Paradox.

Introduction

Prometheus was the Greek god of Foresight, always thinking of the future. To that end he stole fire from the gods and brought fire to humanity on the Chariot of Helios, the Sun. This article explores a modern version of this legend, based firmly in modern day engineering and scientific understanding.

Near term alternatives to humanity’s legacy power system must entail some low-cost nuclear source delivered at less than $0.01 per kWh to be competitive today. To support today’s industrial economy at its current scale, and more importantly, end the use of legacy fuels extracted from deep within the Earth whilst depositing their exhaust in the atmosphere, which in the end returns Earth to the Carboniferous era, requires that we produce synfuels that the market readily accepts. Synfuels made from atmospheric carbon using hydrogen extracted from water with nuclear energy to produce hydrocarbon fuels everyone is familiar with fills this bill.

This requires that 44.4 TW of primary nuclear energy be used to deliver synthetic secondary fuels at a rate of 14.8 TW all at a cost of less than $3.8 trillion per year.

Making hydrogen from water with these nuclear processes to produce synthetic fuels from atmospheric CO2 was considered in my previous paper. This approach ends the use of legacy fuels, restores balance to our atmosphere, and sets the stage for the eventual adoption of direct hydrogen use by humanity over the next 24 years.

Achieving these price points gives us access to virtually unlimited riches! The world’s oil production was said to have peaked around 2008. It is no surprise that the idea spawned a banking crisis at that time. The sub-prime mortgage market was a weak link in the banking system, and was a symptom of a problem, not the cause. The root cause was lack of energy in the future to power our future industrial growth. Addressing this cause will reverse the economic decline of the industrial world while reversing our reliance on confrontational politics that rely in turn on increasing militarization of our culture.

What about the future beyond 2040 AD?

Developing low-cost nuclear power derived from

1. natural fusion - solar power;
2. artificial fusion - using 6LiD; and
3. artificial fission - using 235U & 238U, 233Th fuel cycles

is what it will take to secure economic dominance in energy, wresting it from the hands of those who lack the imagination to develop real alternatives.. We now consider the physics of continuous growth in human energy use and what future energy trillionaires might consider as their next steps to maintain and enlarge their financial position by being of service to industrial humanity going forward.

To this end, I consider tapping directly into solar energy from the Sun in space. Namely, what is required to capture positronium in sufficient quantities from the Sun when produced by an artificially induced and maintained solar flares?

What outputs are needed to support human industry on Earth today and far into the future? To this end, we also consider a future super civilization that operates throughout the solar system and beyond using captured positronium generated in an artificial solar flare.

Epistemology and the Kardashev Scale

In 1964 and later in 1985, the Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev felt that the growth of energy use in technical civilizations was an inevitable feature of progress. Humanity, according to Kardashev, will one day become a super civilization of the type he envisioned. This fundamental tenet has changed radically in the 21st century with the adoption of sustainable development by the United Nations. This adoption stems from acceptance of the limits to growth epistemology promoted by the Club of Rome through the 1990s. Placing firm limits on growth is considered an acceptable way to deal with the effect that unlimited growth has upon the environment. This thinking considers humanity’s present reliance upon the biosphere as a permanent fixture of both human biology and human industry.

Like the Club of Rome and the UN, Kardashev accepts that exponential growth over short periods has the capacity to alter nature radically. Where Kardashev differs from the UN is that he views exponential growth as a natural consequence of progress and considers changes not only at the level of the biosphere, but also at the level of the cosmos.

Kardashev thus constrains his considerations only by the observable limits of the cosmos and physics, rather than the much more greatly constrained limits of disturbance to our fragile biosphere. Present thinking also enforces a dependence of industry upon the biosphere, which is ultimately dangerous to both humanity and the biosphere. This dependence of human industry on biological energy flows also requires that the vast majority of humans live at a subsistence level and that humans survive in far lesser numbers than they do today. How to bring about the implied depopulation required is an unresolved problem. Further, how desirable depopulation is as distinguished from an undesirable extinction event is not well considered. The point being, how do we stop a depopulation process from leading to our certain extinction? This seems to be an important question to answer if you support depopulation as a solution to environmental problems.

Kardashev certainly accepts that we should treat our biosphere with respect and care, but ultimately as human understanding and capability grows, we will use appropriate technology to isolate human industry from the biosphere regardless of industry’s size. Once human industry surpasses the power level of the biosphere, which it will do at 4,000 TW in the 2150s assuming a 4% growth rate, we then create an industrial infrastructure that supports synthetic expansion of our biosphere off world. In this case, the Earth’s native biosphere itself is untouched by humans except where absolutely necessary. It is important to achieve this today because we already exceed the capacity of the biosphere to support our need for oxygen as shown in Table 1.

Today, humanity masses 400 billion kg and consumes 0.54 TW in food energy. Thus, the food energy needed by humanity is 3% of our industrial energy consumption and 0.003% of all biospheric energy flows. Linking human industry to the biosphere enforces a burden on the biosphere that need not exist and magnifies humanity’s impact on the biosphere. Again, supplying the oxygen for humanity and its livestock is already a burden, and the only way forward is a zero-impact philosophy.

Table 1: Oxygen Consumption Burning WTI Crude.

Component Mass Combustion Product Weight Moles Enthalpy of Formation Joules Oxygen
Barrel WTI Crude Oil 131.48 kg 6,140.8 MJ/barrel 461.35 kg O2
Carbon 110.72 kg 405.99 kg CO2 9,227.0 moles 393.5 kJ/mole 3,630.8 MJ/barrel 295.26 kg O2
Hydrogen 20.76 kg 186.85 kg H2O 10,380.4 moles 241.8 kJ/mole 2,510.0 MJ/barrel 166.09 kg O2

It is interesting to note that millions of varieties of Algae contain all types of nutrients produced at an 11% photosynthetic efficiency of sunlight to biomass. With luminescent salts, solar spectrum may be modified so that colors unusable to chlorophyll may be made usable, doubling photosynthetic efficiencies to 22%. At 220 Watts/m2, 0.54 TW of food energy requires only 2,455 square kilometers of growth area to create all the nutrients to feed cell cultures that supply 3D food printers in sufficient quantity to feed everyone a large variety of high-quality foods at reasonable prices.

Gerard O’Neill also adopted Kardashev’s view in his Space Colony Studies of the 1970s. This zero impact approach frees humanity of the constraints of Earth whilst freeing the natural biosphere of any impact at all from human activity. In the end the natural biosphere of Earth is depopulated without any decrease in human numbers as humanity becomes increasingly independent of the natural biosphere.

With this understanding in mind, Kardashev perceived that super civilizations come in three varieties:

1. civilizations that control all the power on their planet;
2. civilizations that control all the power in their star system;
3. civilizations that control all the power in their galaxy.

On this scale, Kardashev rated humanity as K = 0. Our present adherence to sustainable development will keep us at K = 0 for the foreseeable future. While appreciation of the fragility of the biosphere is commendable, and no one argues with humanity’s present dependence on the biosphere and our adverse impact on it, present approaches keep humanity at K = 0. A more beneficial approach may be a zero-impact, least-restrictive philosophy that incorporates all the benefits of sustainability, whilst freeing us of the artificially low constraint thresholds of sustainability and enforced reliance.

Astronomer Carl Sagan noted the following relations when considering Kardashev’s scale;

1. civilizations that control all the power on their planet. For the Earth this is 17.38 x 1016 Watts which Sagan rounded to 1016 Watts);

2. civilizations that control all the power in their star system. For the Sun this amounts to 3.83 x 1026 Watts. Sagan rounded this figure to 1026 Watts;

3. civilizations that control all the power in their galaxy. For the Milky Way this totals 5.00 x 1036 Watts rounded to 1036 Watts.

from which he derived the following equation;

Kardashev Number (K) = (LOG10(Power in Watts) - 6)/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLKykmSNbxU

Figure 1: An H-bomb explosion an example of K = +2 energy use. From Operation Ivy, produced by the US Department of Defense and the US Atomic Energy Commission, released in 1952, and available via standard creative common license. Narration by Reed Hadley.

An 11-megaton explosion produces 4.6 x 1016 Joules released in picosecond reaction times, which exceeds the power output of the sun.

Expansion of the Kardashev Scale across Human Experience

It is interesting to note that the basal metabolic rate in humans averages 72.7 Watts and that a modified Kardashev Number of 0 is an energy rate of the minimum viable population of humans (around 14,000 persons). Also, the metabolic rate of a single mammalian cell is 3 x 10-10 Watts, and a Kardashev Number of -1 equals the power of 1 million cells the size of the smallest multi-celled organisms. A Kardashev Number of -2 equals the power of a Kinesin protein walking along a cytoskeleton filament.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8

Figure 2: Kinesin an example of K = -2 energy use. From Inner Life of the Cell: Mitochondria Animation Conception and Scientific Content, by Alain Viel and Robert A. Lue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). © 2006, the Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College, available via standard creative common license Animation by John Liebler/XVIVO.

Humanity’s Kardashev Rating

Humanity’s current Kardashev Number, based on average industrial energy flows, is K = 0.7236, whilst the proposed rate of use for synfuel previously outlined has a Kardashev Number of K = 0.7647. Other numbers of interest include the metabolic rate of humanity, which is 0.54 TW. This translates to K = 0.5732 and makes hardly any difference in our total at present. At a 4% per year growth rate in industry (far higher than the natural 1.15% growth rate in human numbers), it will take humanity until 2178 AD to reach a Kardashev Number of K = 1 on a continuous basis and until 2765 AD to reach a Kardashev Number of K = 2 on a continuous basis.

The biosphere’s 4 quadrillion watts of power represents K = 0.96, which is 5.7% of the amount of sunlight intercepted by Earth in space. At 4% annual growth in continuous industrial energy production, humanity will achieve this level of energy use by 2154 AD. Yet if we ignore the present rate of continuous power production on Earth and look at instantaneous power production, we have already exceeded the power output of the Sun for very brief periods. By this measure, we are a Kardashev 2.5+ civilization, using Kardashev 0 political and economic systems to manage our affairs. This is a problem for humanity generally, and leads predictably to a common mode failure that could lead to our extinction.

One aspect of legacy fuel use is the amount of biospheric energy needed to support oxygen production on Earth so that we can burn our legacy carbon fuels. Even if fuels were unlimited in supply, the atmosphere is not. Consider that a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude oil masses 131.48 kg. When a barrel is burned, this produces 405.99 kg of CO2 and 461.35 kg of oxygen in the process (see Table 1). The energy released by burning the crude oil products totals 6.1 GJ per barrel. The amount of sunlight needed to make this much oxygen requires 194.1 GJ of biosphere energy, which in turn requires nearly 4 TJ of sunlight. Today’s rate of energy consumption using legacy fuels exceeds the current capacity of the biosphere to add oxygen, which explains both of Keeling’s curves: the famous CO2 and the less well known O2 curve.

The Power of the Sun

As noted above, the power output of the Sun is 3.83 x 1026 Watts. When converted at high efficiencies to positronium, this power level will not exceed 4 million tons of positronium each second at present levels of solar luminosity. Less than half a gram per second is required to meet our present energy needs. Synthetic increases in luminosity combined with increasingly efficient collection could maintain solar conditions on the planets whilst exceeding the limits described here.

Now, Gerard O’Neill and Stanford, with NASA support, have estimated that it takes 10 metric tons of material and 10,000 Watts to support a person in deep space indefinitely using total recycling in a synthetic biosphere. Mark Roth, MD, has developed procedures to place mammals in reversible suspended animation using small quantities of H2S. These methods might be extended to indefinite terms. Rindler has solved the Tsiolkovky rocket equation for relativistic motion, allowing us to estimate the amount of positronium needed to supply a photon rocket.

dV/c=TANH (LNe(M0/M1))

With two boosts of a positronium-fueled rocket that first fires and accelerates a 10-ton payload per person to 90% light speed and then slows to rest relative to a target star some distance away, we can see that a single stage, assuming a 7% structure fraction, has 915.4 tonnes take-off weight for every person on board and that each person requires the vehicle carry a total of 853.4 tonnes of positronium. This allows a ship travelling at 90% light speed to travel 2.3 light years per year of ship time following a boost at each end that lasts 2.85 years ship time, which equals 4.00 years star time, whilst traversing 1.26 light years distance, a distance of 2.52 light years overall traversed in boost, with the remainder coasting. Once at the terminus, a flare similar to a solar flare is formed, and is used to recharge the rocket’s positronium propellant if desired, or to support an extrasolar human civilization. A trip to Alpha Centauri entails a 10-month ship time coasting phase and takes 3.72 years ship time each way. A 49-light-year trip takes 28 years ship time at this speed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrnGi-q6iWc

Figure 3: Solar Eruption. From Goddard Spaceflight Center 2014. Published by Goddard Media Studios. Publicly available via creative common license from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO

The point of this calculation is that a Kardashev 2 civilization should have the capacity to remove 87,941 persons per second from the solar system by tapping all of the Sun’s output. That is 27.7 trillion persons per year. With a natural rate of growth of 1.15% per year, this represents the population limit of the Sun, for a Kardashev type 2 civilization of 2.4 quadrillion persons. This is the K = 2 limit to growth within our solar system. We will not reach this population level before 3125 AD, well after we reach Kardashev type 2 status (which we have already achieved with our technology on an instantaneous basis). Thus it is likely that human numbers will stabilize and fall in the future as large numbers of people decide to seek their fortunes off-world.

A more important calculation for us today is the rate of positronium production needed to maintain stable numbers of people within the solar system today.

Rate of positronium use = 7.4 x 109 x 0.0115 x 853.4 / (8766 x 3600) = 2301 metric tons/second
This is the rate of positronium needed to remove people from the solar system at a rate that maintains human population on Earth today. This rate of power use totals 0.05% of the Sun’s output. It is also about a million times the energy intercepted by Earth from the Sun. Removing people into interstellar spacecraft at double the peak rate of population growth reverses population growth on Earth and allows us to reduce numbers on Earth to any level desired within thirty years or less, without reducing absolute human numbers. Those in transit are time dilated and in suspended animation. So, they are not reproducing. They do, however, face the risks of interstellar travel.

Fermi Paradox

Enrico Fermi, considering these facts following the first atom bomb test, asked, “Where are they? The Extra Terrestrial Intelligences (ETIs)? The physics of evolution presumably operates everywhere. Science is the same everywhere. We have the capacity to travel to the stars with atomic energy. Where are they? There are several answers possible. The thinking today is that there are those ETIs that refuse to constrain growth and become extinct through environmental collapse or thermonuclear war. In that case, we will not see them. There are also those that do constrain growth along the lines of sustainable growth promoted today by the UN. In this case, the thinking goes there are no ETIs because they’re permanently in balance with the natures of their home worlds, and there are no super civilizations, none, as Kardashev imagined.
Yet there is always a Gaussian distribution around any mean in living systems. So, there must be other answers to Fermi’s question! Some super civilizations must exist even if the majority do not become super civilizations. Given the nature of exponential growth, we still must answer Fermi’s question! Where are they?

Another answer that makes sense is that the operation of the speed of light limit, in combination with time dilation and advanced suspended animation, limits the rate of growth of mobile populations! Since there is an inexorable increase of probability of vehicle loss with distance for mobile populations, an exponential drop off in the density of any super civilization as it moves away from its home world is expected. This means that the human affected zone around Sol, once humans create a super civilization in the future, is limited in all practical senses to about a 1,000 light year radius of Sol. The rate of drop off depends on the dangers of high speed interstellar flight.

Freeman Dyson in 1960 outlined what a super civilization might look like to astronomers. The Kepler Space Telescope may have found evidence of such a super civilization nearby.
Positronium Production in the Sun

Positron annihilation radiation from solar flares was first observed by Chupp in 1973. In 2004, Share showed that positrons are produced naturally in the Sun from the interaction of particles within solar flares. Could long-lived solar flares be induced and maintained in the solar photosphere to produce a stream of positronium which is then used by humanity?

https://goo.gl/zOVFHD

Figure 4: LM-4 Nuclear Pumped Laser Module. Eksperimentalnyy kompleks LM/IGR Ustroystvo i printsip raboty. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference “Physics of Nuclear-Excited Plasma and Problems of Nuclear- Pumped Lasers,� Arzamas-16, 1995 vol. 2, 172-78. Photo produced by Russian Federal Nuclear Center and excluded from copyright by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, plenum decision no. 15/2006, point 22, as a public work.

The photosphere is a natural basis for controlled excitonic matter. Nonlinear optical effects in the plasma can be exploited to create self-sustaining structures that exhibit Boolean interactions and may undergo controlled replication. Once made to occur in the solar atmosphere, the process is then controlled by radio waves. According to Stephen Wolfram, it does not take a lot of technology or a lot of evolution to do computations as complex as anything. Wolfram also points out that computing is a new kind of science as important as calculus, and its broad application will change the way we view the world.

https://goo.gl/C7wT25

Figure 5: EXCALIBUR Space-based nuclear pumped X-ray laser. © DARPA. Images, photographs, audio, and video files and other works created by DARPA or its systems engineering and technical assistance contractors (© DARPA) and posted on the DARPA website may be used for educational or informational purposes, including, for example, photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, web pages.

Projecting patterns of gamma rays to induce a pattern of excited plasma in the solar atmosphere from a series of powerful laser blasts produces a synthetic solar flare. Nuclear pumped lasers delivered to the solar surface provides this. This engineered pattern interacts in a nonlinear way to implement a computing platform in the solar surface itself. This pattern self-replicates and evolves in a manner similar to those described by John Conway in his computer based “Game of Life� to produce steady streams of positronium like Bill Gosper’s Glider Gun. Just as interacting patterns on a surface that follow a few simple rules may carry out a computation to maintain a structure as complex as anything, humanity, as described here, produces a pattern on the solar surface to maintain a permanent solar flare that efficiently generates a controlled stream of positronium that is received by a receiving station at Earth Sol Lagrange Point 1, converting our instantaneous K = 2 status to a permanent one.

At 90 TJ/gram, a flow of 192 milligrams of positronium per second is required to produce 17.3 TW. To produce 44.4 TW requires 493 milligrams per second. These streams may then be sent to GEO and LEO satellites to generate powerful laser pulses that are received on Earth. Alternatively, positronium may be compressed and stored as a Bose-Einstein condensate at high density, and maintained in a stable form by active quantum-level controls. If this seems overly optimistic, one should consider that Cooper Pairs that are responsible for superconductivity are Bose Einstein condensates as well. Confining 4.4 x 1027 positronium pairs per cc creates a bulk material that has the same density as iron. At this density, separation between pairs is 4.8 Ã…ngstroms. This is almost ten times the Bohr radius of 0.53 Ã…ngstroms of Ps at 13.6 eV.

The Program

Candle flames persist even though the fuel and oxidizer that flow through them changes constantly. The Great Red Spot of Jupiter has been present on that planet since 1655 AD. This shows that nature can maintain vortices and other immaterial objects persistently over long periods. So, even while the solar environment precludes solid and even liquid materials, the nature of the solar photosphere is such that it can be manipulated with intense light sources in useful ways. By creating light sources with fusion reactions in the photosphere, a feedback loop is possible in the nonlinear optical materials created, and a self-replicating machine made of structured interacting plasma becomes possible. The plasma patterns would then be controlled by more gentle microwave beams from an orbiting radio telescope.

How Humanity May Structure Plasma in the Solar Photosphere.

The project involves two satellites at a minimum. One is the receiver, operating at Earth Sol Lagrange Point 1, and it also provides microwave and laser control signals. This satellite operates 1.5 million km from Earth. Two is the transmitter flare forming device, which flies past Jupiter and is gravity boosted into an orbit that falls into the Sun at a point near the solar surface where the line between the Earth’s center of gravity and the Sun’s center of gravity intersects the surface.

Satellite 2 is a flare-forming device that becomes the positronium transmitter. It consists of a number of self-contained X-ray lasers, each pumped by a small nuclear charge shining through a tantalum synthetic hologram carefully oriented above the photosphere. When fired, each satellite projects structured patterns of light into the photosphere. Interacting plasma is formed there whilst other satellites set the pattern’s initial program.

Satellite 1 is the positronium receiver, which consists of a loffe-Penning trap of an appropriate size operating at L1. Initial designs call for the creation of high-intensity positronium beams that beam positrons and electrons to reforming satellites in geosynchronous orbit. These geosynchronous satellites then beam laser energy to receivers on Earth that replace the nuclear system described in my first paper. Ultimately, just as hydrogen replaces hydrocarbons once vastly lower cost hydrocarbons are made with very low-cost hydrogen, so too will hydrogen be replaced by laser beams and later positronium once positronium comes in at a vastly lower cost than nuclear energy made more conventionally.

Transitioning from our present hydrocarbon legacy fuels we will proceed as follows;

1 Synthetic Alkanes – $10.00/MWh – 20 TW – Terrestrial
2 Hydrogen (protons) – $1.00/MWh – 400 TW – Advanced Terrestrial
3 Lasers (photons) – $0.10/MWh – 80 PW – Interplanetary
4 Anti-matter (positronium) – $0.01/MWh – 160 ZW – Interstellar

Satellite 1, at Lagrange Point 1, also operates as a research lab that develops positronium storage technologies and other techniques that make more efficient use of positronium. The entire program is completed in ten years at a cost of less than $100 billion, radically reducing energy costs and transforming human industry in the process.

Collecting $3.8 trillion for primary fuel replacement each year, over a 50-year period, discounted at 5% per year, and supporting a 4% growth in energy demand, this project has a present value of $148.95 trillion the day the process switches on. Using Toshiba 4S reactors to produce hydrogen that is then used to convert atmospheric CO2 to hydrocarbon fuels costs less than $15 trillion. Using even more advanced technologies described here involves the construction of two satellites, creating nearly free energy in the process. The revenue, when valued as an annuity, when used to support bank debt in a stable central bank, allows the annuity to be leveraged 50 to 1 in a banking system (the Federal Reserve carries loans with a 53 to 1 leverage as of 2008). This supports up to $7,447.5 trillion in loan activity. This is an amount sufficient to end the financial crisis within our banking system at present and support 4% industrial growth throughout the world indefinitely. Further efficiencies are gained by collecting the $6.0 trillion from end users of energy. This allows these amounts to be increased proportionately to support the industries that develop appliances vehicles and industrial equipment to make use of positronium directly.

© William Mook. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.

REFERENCES

Tom Whipple, “The Peak Oil Crisis: July 2008 – A Month to Remember,� Falls Church News-Press, December 5, 2008, fcnp.com/2008/12/04/the-peak-oil-crisis-july-2008-a-month-to-remember.

Space Science Board, United States Space Science Program: Report to COSPAR (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 1972); G. H. Share and R. J. Murphy, “The Physics of Positron Annihilation in the Solar Atmosphere,� Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 12/2008 (161) 2: 495.

Nikolai Kardashev, “The Inevitability and Structure of Super Civilisations,� Proceedings of the International Astronautical Union 1985:497.

G. K. O’Neill, “Space Resources and Space Settlements,� 1977 Summer Study at NASA Ames Research Center.

R. Keeling and H. Graven, “Two Decades of Atmospheric O2 Measurements and Their Implications,� Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Paper presented at the NOAA Global Monitoring Annual Conference 2012, San Diego, CA.

Richard D. Johnson and Charles Holbrow, Space Settlements: A Design Study, NASA, SP-413 (Washington, DC; NASA, 1977).

Charlie Schmidt, “Mark Roth: Profile,� Nature Biotechnology 27 (2009): 13.

Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John A. Wheeler, Gravitation (San Francisco: Freeman 1973), Section 6.2.

Natalie Angier, “A One-Way Trip to Mars? Many Would Sign Up,� New York Times, December 8, 2014.

Charles Krauthammer, “Are We Alone in the Universe?� Washington Post, December 29, 2011.

Freeman J. Dyson, “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation,� Science 131 (3414): 1667-68.

Ross Anderson, “The Most Mysterious Star in our Galaxy,� The Atlantic, October 13, 2015; T. S. Boyajian et al., “Planet Hunters X. KIC 8462852: Where’s the flux?� Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, September 14, 2015.

Space Science Board, Report to COSPAR.

Share and Murphy, “The Physics of Positron Annihilation.�

Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science (Champaign, IL: Wolfram Research, 2002)

S. P. Melnikov, Lasers with Nuclear Pumping (New York: Springer Science + Business Media, 2015); T. E. Repetti, “Application of Reactor-Pumped Lasers to Power Beaming� Report Number: EGG-PHY-9978 (Idaho Falls: EG and G Idaho, 1991).

Nouredine Zettili, Quantum Mechanics: Concepts and Applications (New York: John Wiley, 2009) 35-36.

Pricing of Future Industrial Energy

by William Mook
November 14, 2015

Introduction

Would you invest in an industrial economy that didn't have a fuel supply to run its industry?

Obviously not!

So, this is the deep connection between the stability of our banking system as currently constituted and an assured abundance of low cost energy going forward. Since 2000 the markets have invested quadrillions of dollars on Default Swaps instead of underlying growth in resources.[17]

Since these transactions merely apportion losses and do nothing to create new supplies, they do not avoid the problem, merely manage the impact of the coming fiscal failure. The point is, the market is willing to take risks with money on a scale unavailable to governments, providing the appropriate technical solutions are presented to them in ways that meet the needs of the market.

The scale of the problem

https://goo.gl/y6Cd2X

Fig. 1: Chart of World Energy Flow. [2] (Source: W. Mook)

Humanity currently numbers 7.3 billion persons and uses 1.146 × 1013 kg (11.46 billion tonnes) of fossil fuels each year. These fossil fuels suck up 3.712 × 1013 kg (37.12 billion tonnes) of O2 and produce 3.747 & times 1013 kg (37.47 billion tonnes) of CO2 [Table 1] each year to power human industry at a rate of 1.5 × 1013 watts (15 TW). This power use sustains an economy that generates $1.1 × 1014 ($110 trillion) per year while spending less than $3.8 trillion per year to supply those legacy fuels from deep within the Earth. [1-3]

Cost of Legacy Energy

$3.8 × 1012 /yr
1.5 × 1010 kW × 24 hr/day × 365.25 days/yr = $0.0289/kWh

In a competitive market any alternative to these legacy fuels must deliver alternative fuels at a price and in forms people readily buy and use. So, to dominate the market in legacy fuels going forward requires that the alternative fuels be made in volumes sufficient to meet all needs going forward in forms that people readily use.

A competitive alternative system must produce primary energy at substantially less cost than present day alternative energy costs. Such a system of ultra-low-cost alternative primary energy is at present speculative since it is by no means certain that we can achieve the price points called for. The motivation of such speculation is that by achieving the goals described here, innovators gain access to the $600 billion spent each year by speculators seeking new sources of legacy fuels [18], and the trillions of dollars spent by those seeking to manage the risk of higher priced fuels to their underlying businesses. Since these markets form the basis of the US dominated banking system and today's use to the petrodollar, any new source that meets the needs of this market competes effectively with legacy fuels has access to vast funding resources.

Primary Power Needs to match Present Legacy Fuel Use

4.64 × 1015 kg H2/yr × 1.418 × 108 J/kg
60 sec/min × 60 min/hr × 24 hr/day × 365.26 days/yr × 0..47 ) = 4.4 × 1013 Watts
Targeted Cost of Competitive Primary Energy

$3.8 × 1012 /yr
4.4 × 1010 kW × 24 hr/day × 365.25 days/yr = $0.0099/kWh

The proposed system considered here, calls for creating synthetic hydrocarbon fuels from atmospheric CO2 and hydrogen derived from water using a nuclear heat source using the sulphur iodine cycle. [4] To be competitive with legacy fuels, the primary nuclear energy must be delivered as heat at less than $0.01 per kWh. To support the scale of today's industrial economy requires that we produce 44 TW of primary nuclear energy[See Figure 2] produced for less than $22 trillion. The proposed infrastructure is designed to produce hydrogen in sufficient quantities so that by combining hydrogen with atmospheric CO2 synthetic fuels are delivered at a rate of 15 TW at a cost of less than $4 trillion per year. Once legacy fuel use is displaced, the adoption of technology that makes efficient use of the ultra-low- cost hydrogen that converts CO2 cheaply, to provide for further cost reductions and increased energy consumption while clearing the Earth's atmosphere of excess carbon in less than 10 years.

https://goo.gl/sudpRs

Fig. 2: Chart of synfuel mass flows. [2] (Source: W. Mook)
Making hydrogen from water with low cost nuclear sources and producing synthetic fuels from atmospheric CO2 with that hydrogen produces alternative fuels that are essentially identical to legacy fuels at a price that is less than legacy fuel production. This ends the use of legacy fuels, restores balance to our atmosphere and sets the stage the eventual adoption of the direct use of hydrogen created at low cost by the process.

Achieving $0.01 per kWh primary energy cost and using that energy to make legacy fuels from combustion products of those legacy fuels, gives the developers of alternative energy sources competitive access to existing legacy fuel markets. This is important since those markets spend nearly $600 billion per year today developing new sources of legacy fuels. These markets may change by as much as 20% in a year to develop new cost- efficient reserves. These markets have also been known to withdraw resources from failed resources at similar rates. In fact, the markets are quite efficient at this. The chances of success for any real alternative need not be high since at present only 20% of new oil field developments are profitable. The important detail here is that a steady growth at 20% per year from current levels amount to a total of $22 trillion invested in less than 16 years. The only requirement is that the market be able to produce as much or more energy in forms people readily buy, at the same prices they spend today or less. So, the problem humanity faces with legacy fuels devolves to this one challenge, reducing the cost of primary nuclear energy sources to 1/2 to 1/9th the current price projections.

Atmospheric Carbon as a Resource

Keeling tells us that essentially all the carbon contained in fossil fuels that have been burned by humanity is still in the air as of 1960 and updated figures show that over half the CO2 we burn today remains in the air. [5] This suggests that the Earth's biosphere is responding to the insult of massive and persistent CO2 release. What this implies for the future is uncertain since we don't know what the biosphere is doing with the surplus CO2 and what impact that will eventually have, or what elimination of the insult will do. So for this reason its important to ask what it takes to make use of all surplus CO2 in a way that allows us to restore preindustrial balance to our atmosphere going forward?

Let's revisit the scale of the problem with this in mind. The dry mass of the atmosphere is 5.1 × 1018 kg. Since the present atmospheric CO2 concentration is 400 ppm by volume, the mass of carbon dioxide in the air is [6]

5.1 × 1018 kg × 4.0 × 10-4 × ( 12 + 32
28 ) = 3.2 × 1015 kg

Since pre-industrial Earth had a 285 ppm by volume, this represents a difference of 0.92 × 1015 kg, which represents an amount of carbon contained in

0.92 × 1015 kg
139 kg/bbl × ( 14
12 + 32 ) = 2.1 × 1012 bbl

i.e. 2 trillion barrels of crude oil. To put this number in perspective, British Petroleum estimates the present world total proved crude oil reserves to be 1.7 trillion barrels. [2]

Treating this carbon supply as a resource to make new synthetic fuels allows us to use our smokestacks to extract carbon from the atmosphere providing we have a sufficiently low cost primary source to supply the low-cost hydrogen needed. Once that source is available at a competitive price and used to make competitive synfuels, a more efficient all hydrogen economy will naturally grow around it over time, that extracts energy at an even lower cost! Thus establishing the same sort of adoption and expansion of use of the alternative energy source as was seen over the past fifty years in the field of computing, even as polluting activity is reduced.

Sulphur Iodine process has a 47% conversion efficiency from a primary nuclear heat source. This means a minimum of 44 trillion watts of power must be generated to produce synthetic fuels at the required rate of use of 15 trillion watts or

4.4 × 1013 joules/sec × 60 sec/min × 60 min/h × 24 h/d × 365 d/year
= 1.4 × 1021 joules/year

to supply sufficient hydrogen to convert carbon dioxide to carbon based fuels.

Nuclear Fuel Sources

Sufficient power is generated to run the proposed synthetic fuel industry by the conversion of

1. Primary Fuels

Fission fuel: 503.4 grams/second

Fusion fuel: 164.4 grams/second

2. Secondary Fuels

Positronium: 0.493 grams/second (captured from solar flares)

Hydrogen: 314.2 metric tons per second (generated via nuclear powered sulphur iodine cycle

The amounts of materials needed to support our industrial world, namely a minimum of 164.4 grams per second of fusion fuels or 503.4 grams per second of fission fuels are vanishingly small compared to chemical fuels.

3. Deuterium & Tritium Fusion with 6Li Breeder

6Li + n → 4He + 3H + 4.8 MeV
3H + 2H + 4.8 MeV → 4He + n + 17.6 MeV.
Net: 6Li + 2H → 2 4He + 22.4 MeV.

Energy Density

22.4 MeV/atom × 1.6 × 10-13 J/MeV × 6.02 × 1023 atoms/mole
6.015 gm/mole (6Li) + 2.014 gm/mole (2H) = 2.7 × 1011 Joules/gm
Rate of Use

4.4 × 1013 Joules/sec
2.7 × 1011 Joules/gm =164.4 gm/sec
Fuel Cost Per Hour

164.4 gm/sec × 60 sec/min × 60 min/h
1.00 × 106 gm/tonne × 1.82 × 106 $/tonne = 1.077 × 106 $/hour
Fuel Cost Per MWh

1.077 × 106 $/hour
4.4 × 106 MWh/hr = $0.0248 /MWh
4. U-235 Fission

235U + n → (fission products) + 215 MeV.
Energy Density

215 MeV/atom × 1.6 × 10-13 J/MeV × 6.02 × 1023 atoms/mole
235.044 gm/mole (235U) = 8.82 × 1010 Joules/gm
Rate of Use

4.4 × 1013 Joules/second
8.8 × 1010Joules/gm = 503.4 gm/second
Fuel Cost Per Hour

503.4 gm/sec × 60 sec/min × 60 min/h
1.00 × 106 gm/tonne × 1.5 × 104 $/tonne = 2.72 × 104 $/hour
Fuel Cost per MWh

2.72 × 104 $/hour
4.4 × 106 MWh/hr = $0.0062 /MWh
Where we know the prices, such as $7000 per kg for Deuterium, $95 per kg for Li-6, $15 per kg for U-235, fuel costs are also vanishingly small. The challenge then is to develop technology at the requisite capital and operating costs needed to be competitive.

Cost of thermal energy from primary nuclear sources must be lower than $0.01 per kWh to gain access to existing legacy fuel markets. Given the time value of money demand by markets that invest in developing new legacy fuel supplies, this translates to $0.488 per watt at typical capital utilisation rates. These costs are as little as 1/9th the cost of conventional nuclear power systems. Reducing costs by this factor is the challenge that must be met with advanced designs.

Where Energy Comes From

Nuclear energy may be derived from natural primary sources or artificial primary sources. Natural sources have the advantage of needing no power plant, but do require some method of collection, storage, transmission and conversion. Artificial sources may be fashioned to make power in forms that are most convenient for industrial use, but must be paid for and maintained over their life, and disposed of safely after.

Natural fusion occurs in the Sun, and the Sun is the source of our legacy fuels to date through a series of arcane geological accidents. Even so, only 68.8 hectares of solar surface is needed to supply the primary energy to support synfuel production at a rate humanity currently uses legacy fuels. This is about one part per trillion of the total solar output, a vanishingly small amount of the total available! [7]

The figure of 2 calories per minute per square centimetre translates to 1394.7 Watts per square meter at the top of the atmosphere, plus or minus 3%. [7] The radius of the Sun is is 0.004691 AU, so the intensity of light at the solar surface is 64.526 million watts per square meter. 44.4 trillion watts divided by this figure is 688,094 square meters at the solar surface. At 1 AU this area grows to 31,836.8 sq km in space above the atmosphere. To account for the dispersion of the atmosphere and the day-night cycle on Earth we require 220,660 sq km on Earth's surface. This increases again to nearly 670,000 sq km of solar collectors when one assumes 32% overall conversion efficiency of terrestrial solar power systems today.

Current large scale solar power systems are projected to produce a kWh of electricity at 32% efficiency and a cost of $0.07545 per kWhe. When used as a thermal source in a sulphur iodine cycle this drops $0.0241 per kWht. This is 2.5x the cost required to achieve the goals outlined above.

All that is required that we be clever enough to capture this energy efficiently and make efficient use of it where its needed at costs that are competitive.

Artificial fusion occurs in hydrogen bombs and will likely one day occur in power plants as well. There is an abundance of Deuterium in seawater and the most feasible reaction is Deuterium + Tritium. In most fusion energy designs 6Li when bombarded by a neutron, breeds tritium while releasing energy.. 7.5% of all Lithium mined is 6Li. 6Li is easily separated from 7Li. Once separated from bulk lithium, 6Li mined today when combined with abundant Deuterium in the ocean easily supplies five times our present energy needs, if we are clever enough to make use of these materials at competitive costs. ITER fusion systems are projected to produce electricity at $0.075 per kWh and like the solar power systems are about twice as costly as required to achieve the goals outlined above.

Natural fission and radioactive decay supplies approximately 40% of all geothermal energy with the balance of energy from this source derived from primordial heating. The difficulty in using geothermal energy in any meaningful way is that even if we capture all of the 44.2 trillion watts of geothermal power available it will not supply us with the synfuels we presently need. [8] This makes it unlikely that natural fission will be a game changer, notwithstanding its brilliant application in special situations.

Artificial fission occurs in atomic bombs and nuclear power plants today. Naturally fissile fuels are limited. With naturally fissile fuels fertile fuels may be made into fissile fuels. Fertile fuels exist in sufficient quantities to meet our energy needs, if we are smart enough to manage the safe use and disposal of the fissile fuels involved. Wide scale use of fission requires on the scale envisioned here means that we must make use of fertile materials to breed additional fission fuels using fission reactor neutron flux.

Fuel Energy Consumed
(1020 J/y) Specific Energy
(107 J/kg) Fuel Consumed
(1012 kg/y) Specific Fuel Cost
($/kg) Fuel Cost per year (1012 $/y) Replacement Methane
(1012kg/y) Hydrogen Generated
(1012 kg/y)
Crude 1.76 4.24 4.16 0.50 2.08 4.67 0.51
Coal 1.63 3.26 4.99 0.05 0.25 6.65 1.66
Gas 1.28 5.56 2.31 0.64 1.48 2.31 0.00
Total 4.67 --- 11.46 --- 3.81 13.63 2.17
Table 1: Important Legacy Fuels Synthesis Requirements: 13.6 Gt/y (13.6 × 1012 kg/y) of methane is created from 6.81 Gt/y of hydrogen and 37.5 Gt/y of CO2. 2.172 Gt/yr hydrogen is from the synfuel process itself. 4.640 Gt/y is made from water using a nuclear source.
Synfuel Production

Converting water to hydrogen and oxygen using the sulphur iodine cycle, provides us with the hydrogen we need using a nuclear primary heat source. Hydrogen plus atmospheric CO2 provides us with the carbon we need without adding to the carbon load in the atmosphere extracting it with hydrogen using the Sabatier Process. Table 1 computes the masses of hydrocarbon fuels used based on known energy flows and looks at the value the market gives to each..

Methane may be converted to any of these hydrocarbon fuels. Natural Gas is primarily methane. Coal is primarily carbon and may be formed from methane efficiently through pyrolysis. Crude oil is easily formed from methane any of a variety of convenient gas to liquid processes.

Converting water to hydrogen and oxygen using a low-cost nuclear primary source, and combining that with 37.466 Gt/yr of CO2 to create hydrocarbon fuels removes 4.15% of the excess carbon each year. Removing more CO2 than that allows oil wells, gas wells, and coal fields to be refilled. A 24 year synfuel reserve (at today's rate) using CO2 extracted from the atmosphere over a 7.3 year period, returns the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases 285 ppm by volume. [6]

While it may be surprising to find that an infinity of fuel use can be corrected in a short time period going forward, this is easily seen as a consequence of historical 'growthmanship' [Figure 3] Integrating an exponential function from minus infinity to zero adds up to an area of one. Continuing the same exponential function forward to x=ln(2) the area from t=0 to t=ln(2) also adds up to one. When constrained to fuel supplies that follow a logistic curve, its easy to see why things that were easily done in the past, when on the rising side of the curve, cannot be undone in the future, when on the downward side of the curve. Thus, if we care about the future of Earth, we must accept for a time at least, of continued exponential growth.

Changing the scale to match our numbers we can see that historically we've burned the equivalent of 2 trillion barrels of oil, and that at present we're burning the equivalent of 83.3 billion barrels of oil per year. 31.8 billion barrels per year of oil, and 6 billion tons of coal along with x billion tons of methane and grows at 4.2% per year. There are also long term fires in mines and in forests that have raged for decades that add uselessly to the total. A growing rate of CO2 extraction from the atmosphere clears the air in 7.3 years.

https://goo.gl/ktbD5z

Fig. 3: The area of an exponentially growing curve from t = - ∞ ➞ 0 is equal to the area of the same curve from t= 0 ➞ log(2). So, an infinite history of exponentially growing atmospheric pollution may be cleared by 7.3 years of continued growth in anti-polluting activity. This is the basis of growthmanship, growing your way out of a problem. Source: W. Mook.

What Energy Replacements Must Cost

For nuclear sources 80% of cost is for equipment purchase and maintenance and 20% is for fuel and waste processing. This is the reverse of fossil fuel plants. [10,11]

Now, if we are to create synthetic fuels from nuclear sources at 47% efficiency, to be competitive, our total cost of energy must less than $0.099/kWh.. That's because we must still pay to maintain our legacy system. Why? Because its cheaper to maintain and use an existing system than demand everyone change to a new system. So, we don't do it unless we have to. When we do change our legacy system, we do so over time and take advantage of natural cycles of capital replacement and growth on the consumer side, which is a different economic problem.

Applying our allocation of $0.01/kWh costs to the equipment and fuel costs, we can say that 80% of this may be allocated to capital costs for our nuclear plant, and 20% for fuel processing costs, including processing of the synthetic fuels made. [9] This obtains the following target costs needed to be competitive.

Ideal Fuel Source Target Price:

$0.005/kWh - CAPEX

$0.003/kWh - OPEX

$0.002/kWh - Fuel Processing

A kilowatt-hour per year requires 125 milliwatts of generating capacity when used 91% of the time, and is down 9% of the time for maintenance. At an 8% discount rate over 50 years $0.005/kWh supports $0.061 capital cost which translates to $0.488 per watt when divided by 125 milliwatts.

So, $0.488 per watt is our nuclear synfuel plant cost. This is about the capital cost of a coal fired plant, and 1/3rd the cost of a gas fired plant, and 1/9th the cost of a current generation fission plant.

To meet today's energy needs in this way requires 44.4 TW of nuclear powered synfuel capacity be installed at a cost of less than $21.7 trillion.

Now, $21.7 trillion is 1.4% of the current $1.6 quadrillion derivatives bubble facing European investors. In short, $21.7 trillion is something we an afford to do, [12] once we have solved the problem of cost competitiveness and have access to the energy markets in competition with existing fuels at prices lower than those legacy fuels cost in the markets today. This access is attained once price points and profitability is assured with the same certainty as major oil field developments. Once synthetic fuels are available to the market in forms energy users use, those users will then source the lower cost synthetic fuels and drive the legacy fuel providers out of business.

Profitability will determine rate of growth of the new energy sector.

Notice, this matters not what primary source we use. Although it is important to notice that terrestrial solar plants have an added burden of low capital utilisation. That is, regardless of the efficiency of the primary conversion, the solar panel is only useful for about 20% of the time in most terrestrial locations. So, costs must drop for solar plants to $0.097 per peak watt from $0.488 per peak watt for solar plants to be competitive.

To produce 44.4 TW with the 135 MWth Toshiba 4S nuclear reactor requires the construction of 328,900 units throughout the world. The cost must be less than USD$65.8 million each, which is achievable given the projections by Toshiba.

https://fissionenvironmentalists.fil...2/picture1.jpg

Fig. 4: Fission fuel radioactivity over time. [19] OECD
Postulating a 55% efficient multi-spectral ultra low-cost solar panel[13], to produce 44.4 TW with 55% efficient solar collectors that take rain water and produce hydrogen in situ, where the hydrogen is then gathered in a manner low producing gas fields operate today, assuming the aforementioned 20% capital utilisation, requires 403,640 km2 of solar panels. Using half the $21.7 trillion cost allocated to the panels themselves, and half to the gathering system, the cost of a 1.2 m x 2.4 m panel must be less than $154 installed. At 55% efficiency this panel produces 1.58 kW peak output costing $97.22 per kW. Providing hydrogen at tremendous profit.

It is interesting to note that abandoned surface mines in the USA alone total over 600,000 km2. These mines also have rail lines with rights of way to major industrial centers. Covering polluting surface mines with panels that capture rain water as well as sunlight, reduces polluting discharges from the mines by reducing water throughput. This fact was pointed out in 2004 to the Bush Administration by the author following Saudis ending the $22 price cap for oil and oil's subsequent rise to over $40. Following discussions with the author in 2009 Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway spent $26.3 billion buying Norfolk & Southern, which was the beginning of a rail acquisition programme for that company.[14] The important detail here is that someone with even the hint of a good idea, regardless of the execution risk, may quickly attain access to tremendous power and resources, if those ideas are presented in ways that the energy markets value.

Practical Difficulties

While I have given an example of the Toshiba 4S reactor in my pricing model as a way to achieve the goals outlined in this paper, one should not read that this is a complete or final solution, or even a preferred solution to the difficulties faced by industrial humanity going forward. There are a plethora of practical difficulties going forward that should not be ignored, regardless of the solution one proposes.

For example, 235U amounts to only 0.72% of natural uranium. The bulk of the remaining uranium 238U is not fissile. It is however fertile. Easily converted into 239Pu. Now there are 5.6 million metic tons of recoverable uranium in the world, thus only 40,300 tons of 235U is available. At 88.2 GJ/gram and a 44.4 TW use rate, the proposed system cycles through all the known reserves in 2.5 years. Obviously we need to make use of all the uranium available if we choose fission, which increases the fuel supply by a factor of 140, or 353 years at this rate. But then we have the problems of proliferation of plutonium technology and the problem of radioactive waste, see Fig. 4. Processing 5.6 million tons of uranium into radioactive byproducts in less than 1000 years, will increase background radiation by a factor of 420. Obviously this waste must be processed into inert forms using particle accelerators or removed from the biosphere entirely, either underground or off world. All these costs, including the costs of removing poisons that quench the nuclear reaction, and dealing with those, must all occur within the $3..8 trillion figure outlined here.

My discussion of the D+T fusion reactor should not be seen as a preferred method of approaching fusion reactors. Like the 238U cycle that produces 239Pu, the extraction of 6Li from bulk lithium and combining it with 2H to produce a practical reactor, assuming the difficulty of maintaining neutron flux and energy extraction can be resolved, produces the same concerns around proliferation of dangerous technologies. So, this is not offered as a complete survey or final solution related to artificial fission or fusion, but only indicative of what must be achieved to maintain the present levels of energy efficiency in our economy. A host of competing techniques and the techniques described here, in far more detail, need to be analysed and researched before the solution outlined here is even possible. In addition to a variety of hot fusion technologies there is inertial confinement fusion and muonic fusion which all have real potential going forward. The potential of combined fusion/fission systems, and very low cost solar power systems, are also important even if technical details remain to be worked out and are not mentioned in this article.

© William Mook. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.

References

[1] "World Population Data Sheet," Population Reference Bureau, 2015.

[2] "Statistical Review of World Energy 2015," British Petroleum, June 2015..

[3] "Key World Energy Statistics 2014," International Energy Agency, 2014.

[4] R. Elder and R. Allen, "Coupling a Very High/High Temperature Reactor to a Hydrogen Production Plant," Prog. Nucl. Energ. 51, 500 (2009).

[5] C. D. Keeling, "The Concentration and Isotopic Abundances of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere," Tellus 12, 200 (1960).

[6] K. E. Trenberth and L. Smith, "The Mass of the Atmosphe A Constraint on Global Analyses," J. Climate 18, 864 (2005).

[7] F. S. Johnson, "The Solar Constant," J. Meteor. 11, 431 (1954).

[8] N. N. Pollack, S. J. Hurter, and J. R. Johnson, "Heat Flow from the Earth's Interior: Analysis of the Global Data Set," Rev. Geophys. 31, 267 (1993).

[9] F. P. Bundy, "Power Generating Plant with Nuclear Reactor/Heat Storage System Combination," U.S. Patent 3848416, 19 Nov 74.

[10] E. S. Rubin, C. Chen, and A. B. Rao, "Cost and Performance of Fossil Fuel Power Plants with CO2 Capture and Storage," Energy Policy 35, 4444 (2007).

[11] N. N. Pollack, S. J. Hurter, and J. R. Johnson, "Cost Estimates for a Thermal Peaking Plant: Final Report," Parsons Brinkerhoff New Zealand Ltd., June 2008.

[12] S. M. Markose, "Systemic Risk from Global Financial Derivatives: A Network Analysis of Contagion and Its Mitigation with Super-Spreader Tax," International Monetary Fund, Working Paper 12-282, 2012.

[13] Mook, W.H., "Solar Panels with Liquid Concentrators Exhibiting Wide Field of View." U.S. Patent Application , US 2006/0185713 A1 Aug 24, 2006.

[14] M. J. de la Merced and A. R. Sorkin, "Buffet Bets Big on Railroads' Future," New York Times, 3 Nov 09.

[15]This paper was prepared by the IRENA Secretariat. The paper benefitted from an internal IRENA review, as well as valuable comments and guidance from Luis Crespo (ESTELA), Zuzana Dobrotkova (IEA), Cedric Philibert (IEA), Christoph Richter (DLR), Giorgio Simbolotti (ENEA), Craig Turchi (NREL) and Professor XI Wenhua (UNIDO-ISEC). For further information or to provide feedback, please contact Michael Taylor, IRENA Innovation and Technology Centre, Robert-Schuman-Platz 3, 53175 Bonn, Germany; . "Renewable Energy Technologies: Cost Analysis Series, Volume 1: Power Sector Issue 2/5 CONCENTRATING SOLAR POWER," June 2012. This working paper is available for download from www.irena.org/Publications

[16] A. G. Cross, M. S. Liberman and G. W. Morrison, "Graphical and Tabular Summaries of Decay Characteristics for Once-Trough PWR, LMFBR and FFTF Fuel Cycle Materials," Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL/TM-0861, January 1982.

[17] The Editorial Board New York Times, "Betting on Default"," New York Times Editorial Jan 2, 2015.

[18] OJG Editors, "Sharp drop expected in global E&P spending in 2015, study says," Jan 8, 2015.

[19] Chopin G., Liljenzen J., Rydberg J., Ekberg C., "Radiochemistry and Nuclear Chemistry", Elsevier Inc., 2013, page 698 figure 21.7.

In addition to the two energy papers I've written, I've done a number of articles on space flight and off-world development. These include;

SpaceX and the Final Frontier
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/space...mp-reader-card

SpaceX Will Succeed!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/space...mp-reader-card

The Falcon Heavy!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/falco...mp-reader-card

Energia II
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/energ...mp-reader-card

Rocket Crash Ends Space Tourism?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141...mp-reader-card

There's Plenty of Air on Mars!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141...mp-reader-card

Small Power Satellites for Microgrids
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140...mp-reader-card

Peak Gold!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141...mp-reader-card

Rocket Power is Key
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140...mp-reader-card

The Stars are in Our Reach
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140...mp-reader-card

There are countless other documents I've prepared over this period, but they're not easily available on line, being mostly in the files of government agencies and private industry.

In article ,
says...

William Mook wrote:

In addition to the two energy papers I've written, I've done a number of articles on space flight and off-world development.

And I'm sure they are all as nonsensical as everything else we've seen
from you.

Does industrial positronium production and suspended animation for
manned missions to Mars count as nonsense?

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

William Mook wrote:

In addition to the two energy papers I've written, I've done a number of articles on space flight and off-world development.

And I'm sure they are all as nonsensical as everything else we've seen
from you.

Does industrial positronium production and suspended animation for
manned missions to Mars count as nonsense?


Yeah, pretty much...

And this:

"Once on orbit, pyroelectric fusion rocket arrays provide low levels of
thrust at extraordinarly high exhaust speeds, to propel the ship
throughout the solar system with a large array of fusion powered
microthrusters. Other advances as described elsewhere are used as
described."

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Sunday, January 31, 2016 at 12:57:04 PM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

William Mook wrote:

In addition to the two energy papers I've written, I've done a number of articles on space flight and off-world development.

And I'm sure they are all as nonsensical as everything else we've seen
from you.

Does industrial positronium production and suspended animation for
manned missions to Mars count as nonsense?

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

Why don't you tell us what you think. Do you think it nonsense? If so, why? Once I understand your thinking, I can then give you pointers as to why that thinking might be wrong.

In article ,
says...

On Sunday, January 31, 2016 at 12:57:04 PM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

William Mook wrote:

In addition to the two energy papers I've written, I've done a number of articles on space flight and off-world development.

And I'm sure they are all as nonsensical as everything else we've seen
from you.

Does industrial positronium production and suspended animation for
manned missions to Mars count as nonsense?

Why don't you tell us what you think. Do you think it nonsense?
If so, why? Once I understand your thinking, I can then give
you pointers as to why that thinking might be wrong.

Been down this road before. At this point your ideas are so "far
thinking" I'm sure everyone who's reading them is thinking WTF? No
direct comments are necessary as they'd just be the same old, same old.

You point to an experiment on a frog and conclude full scale human
suspended animation is not only possible, but somehow you know the mass
of the equipment needed to make it happen is less than food, air, and
water for the trip. That and the food and water makes for excellent
radiation shielding for a radiation "storm shelter" on the ship anyway,
so leaving that mass off doesn't help with a long term trip anyway.

Blah, blah, blah...

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 4:02:49 AM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Sunday, January 31, 2016 at 12:57:04 PM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

William Mook wrote:

In addition to the two energy papers I've written, I've done a number of articles on space flight and off-world development.

And I'm sure they are all as nonsensical as everything else we've seen
from you.

Does industrial positronium production and suspended animation for
manned missions to Mars count as nonsense?

Why don't you tell us what you think. Do you think it nonsense?
If so, why? Once I understand your thinking, I can then give
you pointers as to why that thinking might be wrong.

Been down this road before. At this point your ideas are so "far
thinking" I'm sure everyone who's reading them is thinking WTF? No
direct comments are necessary as they'd just be the same old, same old.

Only those who are so caught up in their day to day life that they don't actually read the literature, or talk to the movers and shakers of next decade's technology, would say WTF? Those whose JOB IT IS to stay ahead of the freaking curve, would understand or more than likely ALREADY KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! lol.

You point to an experiment on a frog and conclude full scale human
suspended animation is not only possible, but somehow you know the mass
of the equipment needed to make it happen is less than food, air, and
water for the trip. That and the food and water makes for excellent
radiation shielding for a radiation "storm shelter" on the ship anyway,
so leaving that mass off doesn't help with a long term trip anyway.

Blah, blah, blah...

You're an irritating lunatic and dealing with you is a major reason I WILL NEVER POST HERE AGAIN!

lol

The beach awaits - good day.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer