The Brown Bully

First off, I couldn’t care less how poorly Gordon treats his people. Frankly he could hog-tie and brand them for all I care,  so long as his attention was stolen from today’s stint at country-reaming for a few minutes.  Those precious moments of distraction would’ve saved us about half a billion, surely.

That all said,  I was suspicious (and people have since been all over this) of a supposed bullying victim helpline taking calls in confidence and then revealing the contents of those calls to anyone who’ll listen – including , presumably, the caller’s employer.  A quick look at the charities commission does nothing to assuage suspicions:

Hmm, not very active are they?  (When they deign to submit accounts, that is).  It also transpires that they are run by a company who provide a ‘mediation’ service and that they use callers to the helpline for potential clients.  Read this as an alleged example of their work.  Not looking like a class outfit, to be honest.
And as I’m writing this, I’ve just read the Grauniad piece on them here.

There are tenuous Tory links to the place as well (their office is next door to a Tory regional office, numerous endorsements, the patronage of  Ann Widdecombe etc.), but I care about that much less than the resultant bullshit calls for an “enquiry” from both Cameron and Clegg. 
Never mind the parlous state of the country and our perpetual progress down the path to oblivion, it’s far more important to these clowns that they play at playground hair-pulling and pre-election showboating.   Christ, no wonder Ding is barely managing to maintain a lead in the polls. 
To reiterate a previous topic: 
Dave, how do you fuck that up?  How?

As highlighted by Obo before, I’ve got to agree with Peter Hitchens’ assessment that it has never been more apparent that Call-Me-Dave is Blair's spiritual successor and that there never be any respite from the grasping mediocrities at the rotten core of parliament as long as the situation is allowed to continue.

I’m growingly tempted by the unthinkable…

Non-News

And this is why I’ve been quiet - nothing is happening, and everything is bollocks.
Tiger Woods says he’s sorry for doing something irrelevant to golf to people who purely watch him to, you know, play golf.
Some people think they’ll be able to take JK Rowling for a billion based on the blistering accusation that she wrote a 636 page novel on the back of material gleaned by plagiarising a 36 page pamphlet, which may also have also featured a child wizard in a bathroom.
Lucky citizens were issued some new paperwork today,  in order to make sure records are correct and that they are in fact themselves.   A nation breathes a sigh of relief.
Increasingly irrelevant idiot talks bollocks and pretends to understand a fucking thing while embarrassed hacks look on.   His semi-lucid dribblings were met with approval by the spokesman from a chimp’s tea party next door, right before he tried to eat his own feet.
Communist saboteurs foiled in plot to destroy airline.  Apparently their foaming mouthed hatred of profitability was so acute that several of their number had to be restrained from gnawing on the corporate logo in the car park.

Seriously, fuck this. 
Do something far more constructive and go here to make sure you’re qualified to use the internet.

Doug Stanhope

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to (and my bloated ego likes to think that you have),  I have been near constantly distracted.  Not that there has been much to distract me from as everything is tedious right now, and I’m trying to wean myself off recycling inflammatory tabloid articles.   My intention was from now on to write only if I have something ‘real’ to say….which would explain the hiatus. 

Anyway,  while watching Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe I have discovered Doug Stanhope –who I’m hoping will find this while ego-googling his name (which he says he does) so I can tell him just how unproductive he has made me.  Here’s a clip in case you haven’t had the pleasure:

You can see the rest of the Stanhope-bits from Newswipe here.

I've been listening to his work all week, some of which I've bought and some of which I've grabbed from the ether. For these last I intend to catch up with Doug at some point and personally put the money in his hand or behind the bar because he is the funniest and most brilliantly offensive guy I've heard in an age.  Also, politically I've never heard a comic who resonated with me personally as much as this guy. 

So this week I was listening to his stage shows while fixing the iPod-chewing neutron polariser (posts passim), and was consequently found flailing about the lab laughing holding a heat gun in one hand and a scalpel in the other, narrowly avoiding seriously harming myself, only to open my hand up on a piece of exposed encoder tape.  I was still giggling like a tool, though.
Later I went for a run, as part of my ongoing effort to get my sorry office-bound self back into some kind of shape, and popped out for a 5K’er around the Ridgeway outside work.  So off I yomped around the Oxfordshire countryside, Stanhope in my headphones, occasionally alarming passing dog-walkers with random deranged laughter. 
It gets dark, I get a bit less sure of my sense of direction, there are trees, I’m pissing myself laughing.  I’m listening to this part of his sketch:

I’m intermittently laughing out loud, and totally losing track of where I am in the gloom.  The footing is unsure and I stumble down some dirt track or other and end up by the boundaries of UKAEA Harwell.  Now this is the only landmark I’m familiar with and visibility is about 4 feet in front of me, so I decide to follow the perimeter in order to find a main road. 
Problem is, the track next to the fence is churned up by whatever 4x4 used it last and the recent rainfall has made the footing ludicrous, so I’m clinging to the fence and working my way around.  Eventually I manage to get my footing and carry on unsteadily.
Meanwhile Doug gets to his punch line:

"That's what I need - I need a forty four holed, two-headed baby girl. Because that's the only way I can come."

I totally lose it,  I slip in the mud, veer off the track, stumble down through the trees and crash, grasping into the fence, laughing all the while – just in time to scare the living fuck out of a patrolling constable on the other side. 
Before he gets a chance to compose himself, I squelch off into the wilderness, still tittering.

So the takeaway lesson is: Listen to Doug Stanhope and buy his shit, because he’ll harm you and possibly get you arrested as a terrorist.

 

Oh and as an aside, the remainder of my home time has been taken up playing Mass Effect 2 on the Xbox.  Now for those of you who don’t ‘get’ the whole video game thing, the reason I’m willing to spend 40-odd hours playing a game is for moments like this: 

That's entertainment.

The problem with magnets

I think I mentioned my issues with magnets and iPods before. Here’s another conversation with Dave on the subject at the time:

Me:

Take a memo-
Don't listen to an iPod whilst elbow deep in Neodymium magnets. The iPod won't thank you.

That is all.

Dave:

Useful advice.

Sellafield has a superconducting cyclotron - worth remembering to leave your wallet in the office and to hang your security pass on the back of the door to its domain, 'cause it lived to erase magnetic strips.

Have you tried your cards?

Me:

Not yet.

Watch is being a bit odd as well. Didn't really think this whole thing through.

Also, working with handtools in the vicinity is a bit of a 'mare. Was trying to do a bit of a frig with some wires, had to resort to using only a scalpel because it had the smallest amount of steel. Messy.

Dave:

Gone off half-assed as usual.

We have titanium tools for magnetic parts. That's where your tax-dollar ends up.

If it's any consolation, going mechanical might not have saved your time-telling technology from being odd. The field from induction furnaces can mess with springs and balance weights in wind-ups and automatics, and make them run at strange speeds.

I've just told a ex-submariner colleague of your travails, and he tells me they were once degaussing their boat on the American's facility at King's Bay in Georgia. Fairly predictably, those boys have a hi-power piece of kit. One of the crew had a stainless plate holding his skull together from an old RTA.

His head became too warm to touch.

 

Now that’s just cool.

Concerns about the film ‘Wanted’

Right, I have several serious posts stacked up, but I cannot work up the enthusiasm to complete. So instead I shall reproduce an email conversation with my mate Dave regarding the Angelina Jolie shooty-action flick, Wanted.  If you’ve not seen the film, get the jist over here.  Basically ‘The Fraternity’ are a group of preternatural assassins who off people based on the readings of anomalous stitches in an endless tapestry being woven by a big loom in their attic. Yes, really.

Me:

I was giving the whole loom thread-to-name thing a bit of thought and I have certain reservations.

My questions thus far:

1. What coding system are we using here? At first I’m jumping towards threads>binary>Hex>Ascii characters but then I realised that your 1000 year ago weaver would have limited knowledge of harmonised 20^th century programming standards. Binary they could’ve come up with on their own, and then coded to a base 26 lettering scheme. This would of course leave 6 bit combinations spare in their six-bit system, presumably reserved for non-Latin characters. I’m guessing smileys.
2. Why did a group of textile workers think that ‘Fate‘ wanted these people dead? Bit of leap wasn’t it? Wouldn’t be the first conclusion I’d jump to unless I was of the ‘God told me from a gravestone to cleanse the streets of Leeds with a hammer’ frame of mind.

Dave:

I have reviewed your comments and find them to be logical. I would note

1. People have enough trouble with using standard ASCII now, despite it being widely publicised and unequivocally a good idea. I was guessing that at least one of the 6 was the Russian million symbol, which was then derided as "the cancer killing the loom" much as it is now the "cancer killing the internet".
2. The textile workers were specifically identified as Belgian monks. Said monks used to brew extremely strong beer for consumption during the fast for lent, presumably to numb the continual gnawing pain of partial starvation. The effect of having strong ale as your sole nutrition can be imagined. After 40 days of this, malnutrition, sleep deprivation and general self-abuse, I'd probably be seeing mathematically encoded messages in textiles. However, as you'd say, I'd imagine these to be revelations from the lord rather than a frag order.
3. How would you deal with multiple names? Like John Smith. Does it give national insurance numbers out as well?

 

We were also struck by how alike the plot of 'Wanted' and that of "Yellowjacket Greenapple PI" proposed by fashion SWAT was. Obviously they have a loom rather than a Babbage Engine, and not a renegade blimp pilot in sight, but still.

Presumably they also disproportionately assassinated people with short names.
Granted, I may have chosen the wrong story to poke holes in.

As you were.

Haddon-Cave report

This has been passed on to me by a former colleague from back in my days working in the defence industry.  I recall it being in the news, but I was off jet-setting at the time so have only just got round to reading it.  
Haddon-Cave briefly and succinctly tears the MOD, BAe Systems and QinetiQ a new arse, although –as anyone who has encountered the MOD in a professional capacity will tell you- statements like:

"The MOD IPT was sloppy and complacent and outsourced its thinking"

and

"failed to advise its customer properly or ask any intelligent questions"

will come as no surprise whatsoever.

I recommend you take a read and see the nature of those whose task it is to provide life-critical kit to our service men and women.

Haddon_cave_statement - 5 Nov 09 (3)

Magic Money

A load of luvvies, lefties and charities have had the inspired idea to magic up $400 billion out of thin air:

A tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, here and abroad.

It sounds complicated, but actually it isn’t. A tiny tax on bankers (an average of 0.05% on speculative banking transactions) has the power to raise hundreds of billions every year – giving a vital boost to the NHS, our schools, and the fight against child poverty – as well as tackling poverty and climate change around the world.

Not complicated. Just brilliant.

Now, my knowledge of economics is much like my knowledge of cars:  random, inadequate and publically embarrassing.
That said, this is not a new idea, and from what little I know of such things, a FOREX trader that could make a 0.05% profit on every trade would be able to retire very soon. The margins on such trades are already extremely small.  If the transaction has a return of less than 0.05%, it will simply not happen and no tax will be taken.  See ByrneTofferings for a more informed take on such things.

During the (hilariously polarised) banter on twitter today, it was noted that the likes of HBOS only made about 4 billion at their most profitable, so where the toss do they think this money is going to come from?  Surely it would only work if applied to the whole world’s banks? Best of luck with that.
And how exactly does this cash filter down to the ‘poor’, once they’ve robbed from the  ‘rich’?  It wouldn’t be via the same unionised public sector agencies and charities endorsing the plan, would it? 

But no, they say it’s simple and brilliant, so plainly I’m just on the side of the evil bankers and this is just free money waiting to be taken.  Must be a lot of spare cash floating around that those careless bankers haven’t noticed.  Those big sillies. 

I think it was Charlotte Gore (who is plainly blogging prolifically in 140 character bites instead) who made the point (and probably several of the above that I’ve nicked) that if adding 0.05% to broker charges was painless, they'd already be 0.05% more expensive. 
No, I’m sure that the luvvies have used their vast collective financial acumen to think all this through thoroughly.

Being a major financial centre is one of the UK’s only remaining global strengths.  To continue to demonise and treat the financial sector as some kind of public piggy bank is to invite economic ruin when they eventually decide that they’ve had enough and bugger off somewhere less stupid.

And Bill Nighy can go fuck himself.

Religious double standards (again)

Following on from my previous rants on the matter of religious special pleading, we have this chap:

"I see no objection to a young Sikh girl or boy, who's been baptised, being allowed to wear their Kirpan if that's what they want to do," said Sir Mota, who received a knighthood in the 2010 New Year Honours list.

Right.  So anyone whose religion (if they have one) doesn’t stipulate the obligatory carrying of a bladed weapon has to abide by the law saying that they can’t (Criminal Justice Act 1988, section 139), but anyone whose chosen superstition does allow said wielding can carry on carrying (Criminal Justice Act 1988, section 139A). 
Not that I necessarily agree with the legislation in the first place (it’s not like knife crime is at an all-time low) but surely the fact that someone is a Sikh does not make them intrinsically less of a hazard to other people than the law plainly assumes the rest of us are?

"I accept that, because I think as one realises the increase in crimes of violence involving the use of knives and other offensive weapons, I can see that.

"But there has been no reported case, certainly none that I know of, of a Sikh using a knife in order to cause injury."

Oh, so he reckons ‘Yes’ then.  Super.

"It is the right of every young girl and boy to be educated at the school of their choice. For him or her to be refused admission on that sort of ground, as far as I'm concerned, is quite wrong.

I see.  It is a ‘Right’ for any child to go anywhere they like, wearing and brandishing whatever the proclivities of their parent’s dogma dictate –regardless of the policies of that school and the societal sensitivities that other children and parents must abide by.  To do otherwise would be unfair, is that it?

" I think it's wrong to be discriminated against for that reason."

Far better to discriminate against everyone else (non-Sikhs being 99.4% of the population) by granting special dispensation to your precious little group and their charming pointy trinket –which would be grounds for my arrest if you were to hand to me to carry home for you. 
Bollocks.  If the handwringers are packing everyone else’s kids in cotton wool, yours will have to leave their ‘article of faith’ at home too.

There have been problems for Sikhs going to tourist attractions," he explained. "Part of it is education.

"We're actually working with the government to introduce a code of practice which would then be used to educate people in the security industry so they are aware of the different articles of faith," Mr Singh told the BBC Asian Network.

It’s not a problem with ‘education’, it’s a problem with you carrying a fucking blade into areas where we’d have problems carrying tweezers.

Yes, society has become more suffocating and nannying.
Yes, all sense of proportion and context has been tossed out the window.
If you want to change that then we shall join you in a call for rationality, just don’t expect us to be sympathetic to your little special-interest opt-out to the restrictions the rest of us have to put up with.  

Today’s exercise in amusement

Append every statement to work colleagues with “..well, it all looks the same on fire”.  

Tally so far: 4 baffled looks, 2 worried glances and 1 theatre-of-all-emotions played out through a mist of spat-out coffee.

My work here is done.

Friday night

Urgh. I’ve done the whole ‘left the blog for too many days and am now finding it impossible to write anything’ thing again. It’s a momentum/inertia problem: you have to keep it going or it’s creaky as hell to start back up. So, here’s a quick post on the weekend’s bloggy meet-up to grease the skids:

So, as some of you already know, some fellow bloggers and I met up on Friday for some drinks and a chin-wag.  I’d encountered a couple of people before, but mainly I was meeting people for the first time.  If you’ve never had the interspaz/meatspace interface before: Yes, putting a face and a voice to a profile name and an avatar is more than a bit surreal. 

I concede that I speak incredibly fast.  It was suggested by AJ that there was a verbal resemblance to Malcolm Tucker.  Mum will be so proud when I tell her. 

Conversation centred around the various facets and idiosyncrasies of blogging/twittering and was surely impenetrable to anyone listening in who is not of our ‘kind’. Needless to say if you weren’t there we probably talked about you; little gossiping bitches that we are.

It was for the most part a great night out, although there was apparently (as I found out via phone on the train home) a bit of an altercation between a couple of our merry crew after we had all bomb-bursted out into the night.  Was a bit random, as we’d all been getting on famously ‘till then.  But, as was suggested to me later, someone probably wasn’t calibrated for wine.  An unfortunate way to round the night off.
Ah well, was good to see everyone anyway. 

Might be best to choose a venue with a bit less tweed and a bit more sawdust next time though…

The law doesn’t count if you believe in fairies.

So this guy gets into an altercation with another guy in a bank queue, things get heated and he punches him in the face and leaves.  The chap whose been belted follows him outside to remonstrate, whereupon Punchy decks him, breaking his jaw.  It’s all caught on the bank’s CCTV and they catch him later by way of his car registration plate.  It goes to court and he pleads guilty. Open and shut.
But no, Cherie Booth -for it is she- is presiding and there are other considerations:

Ms Booth told Miah that violence had to be taken seriously, but said she would suspend his prison sentence because he was a religious person and had not been in trouble before.
'You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at Lloyds Bank.You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.'

I’m not a religious man, and I know it’s not acceptable behaviour.  Do you know why that is? Because you don’t need the babblings of bronze age savages to tell right from wrong. Because whatever superstitions you may cling to make exactly no difference to what is legal and what is not.  Besides, if he was more aware it was unacceptable behaviour due to some assumed sense of enlightened moral consciousness due to his religiosity –which appears to be her suggestion-, doesn’t that make the transgression worse?
To quote from the NSS:

Now, what would have happened if he had been an atheist? Would Mrs Blair/Booth have refused to suspend the sentence on the grounds that non-believers have no guiding principles that tell them that smashing people in the face for no good reason is not the right thing to do?

Gee, I wonder.  As ever, the best analysis is by way of the 'Mash:

"But Mr Bin Laden at least believes most of the same things that I believe and knows that an all-powerful creator is watching over us, preventing wars and natural disasters with his all-embracing love and making sure complete maniacs aren't appointed to the bench in what is supposed to be a civilised country."

Update.  JackofKent has suggested that the 'sphere is making too much of this.  See his comment here. 

Doing the unthinkable

Over at B&D’s gaff, on the tail-end of a post I really can’t fault,  Mr Rob posted this comment:

Well, time to post the link again for those who have not read it...
Peter Hitchens

where Peter Hitchens argues, with logic I have yet to see countered, that the destruction of the Tory party is a necessary though not sufficient condition for a change to more conservative and/or libertarian government.

Personally I think that if one accepts his argument, the only logical course of action is to vote for the party with the best chance of defeating the Tories - namely Labour. A vote for anyone else, or a spoiled ballot paper, is more like abstaining than voting against the Tories. I doubt even Peter Hitchens can come out and recommend this publicly though - not least as being an ex-Trot, his Tory loyalist readership would accuse him of some dark plot to support the socialists (they are just as irrational).

So, as the great Hitch says, voting should be a pragmatic act designed to produce a desired outcome, not an emotional spasm - can we all bring ourselves to vote Labour then?

So, if you thought things would play out like that, and that it would result in Labour having to stay around to answer for their own incompetence (rather than the usual blaming of successive Tory governments when they clean up the mess ), and that the Tories would be broken in order to be remade into something more agreeable;  could you choke back the bile and bring yourself to vote Labour?
Christ, the pen would burn my fucking hand.

Stay classy, Peta

Out there in wide wide world there exist animal rights activists.  These are people who feel the need to protest about the harm that we often do to our fellow creatures of the furry, feathered and scaly varieties.  Fair enough.  But among their number there exist those who have a bit more zeal, and apply themselves to the issue with a bit more passion. Okey doke.  But then there are those amongst them who are so pants-shittingly demented that they would utilise the torment, abuse and eventual murder of a local toddler as a platform for self-righteous posturing.

The organisation insisted the ad was "well within the prevailing standards of decency". It added that the "documented link between animal and human abuse was shocking and intrinsically frightening", and it was "not possible to educate the public about that link without anticipating some fear and distress".

There are strawmen and then there are strawmen…

I don’t even agree with the ASA forcing them to pull it down; I think this should be left up as a lasting testament of  Peta’s fevered mindset.   I mean, can you imagine the marketing/communications team who sat down, brainstormed some concepts and  eventually went “ Hey, remember that kid who was brutally killed that everyone was talking about? We could totally use that!”.

Really inspired way of maintaining the moral high-ground there, guys.

Cunts.

Harder than it needs to be

Not many people have predicted that Call-Me-Dave’s crowd would be much more than the flip-side of the Labour coin,  but  with every passing day it’s becoming harder and harder to believe he’s not just taking the piss.  It should be easy to list the ways in which the (probable) incoming Tory government is going to differ from this outgoing Labour one, surely?  Why the blue fuck are they doing their level best to be so indistinguishable? 

There’s been a couple of heart-sinking moments in the past few days, the first being Cameron’s baffling promise that he wouldn’t make any ‘swingeing cuts’ to public spending in his first year.  So the one thing that really needs to happen, he’s not going to do.  I understand the populist desire to not be seen as the ‘nasty’ party, but reality doesn’t care about public opinion and we are spending far more than can be sustained - to put it mildly.  Let’s hope we can rely on this politician to be a politician, and that he’s lying through his teeth.  Otherwise, he’s oblivious to the very pertinent example of Greece and we are all screwed.

And I carried that happy thought right up to the point where I read an article in the Grun by George Osborne, who has shrewdly decided that we’ve all been left alone to get on with our lives for long enough, and that what we need is someone in charge to tell us what to do: “We can make you behave”.  More social engineering; that’s just what the doctor ordered. I mean it’s worked great so far, and we’ve never been so happy. You utter plank.

So, unless this is all so much vacuous vote-grabbing to be forgotten by the tail-end of the summer, it’s looking grim.  We will continue to be harangued by Righteous busybodies, we will continue to work for half the year just to pay tax, the public debt will continue to be a ludicrous millstone around our necks, regulatory burden will continue to suppress small businesses, public services will remain meddled with and mediocre, and we will continue  to circle the economic plughole.

So tell me Dave: is there some logic here that I’ve missed, or is this really how you intend to proceed? 

God help us.

I don’t think I’m qualified either

Ben has found an interesting job advert, but unfortunately he doesn’t meet the entry criteria:

I could read this all day

It really is an exclusive and specialist opportunity.  I could (and often do) heft a novelty paperweight out of my office window and it would hit 3 particle physicists before reaching the ground;  that said, I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to find a single soul capable of filling this vacancy on the entire site.  Furthermore, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to find a suitable candidate outside of a conversation with Dali in a crack lounge:

This is a project on the development of sub-molecular harmonic frequencies and ultimatonic field patterning instruments.

Project applications will include interrupting molecular radiations and electromagnetic field potentially of stable/unstable material particles.

I really envy the creativity of the woo-bludgers sometimes, I mean it almost sounds real doesn’t it? It’s a special kind of genius to dream up bullshit of this quality.    Pays better than my first job, mind.

A personal vegetarian minimum health standard is required

Well now you’re just being silly.

The future of fusion

Written originally for the brand new and improved TDP, which can be found here

If you’ve been reading the science news sources, you may have noticed that there have been some exciting steps recently along the path toward sustainable fusion : the holy grail of nuclear power.  I thought it would be an idea to run through my geek layman’s take on the concept, the various approaches and the implications.

Your common or garden nuclear reactor works on the concept of nuclear fission, where we quite literally split atoms in order to release heat energy for boiling water and use the resultant steam to turn turbines in the manner of conventional power stations.    You’re probably aware of the historical issues with this method with regard to waste disposal and the proliferation of weapons-grade material.  Indeed, it is impossible to have a civilised discussion on the matter in some quarters, so politicised and emotional has the subject become.

So many in the field are looking to nuclear fusion  as the answer to all our woes; it being theoretically clean, sustainable and with zero carbon emissions –if that's what floats your boat.  Fusion is the process of joining together several atomic nuclei (the ‘centre’ of the atom) to form a larger nucleus.  This produces or absorbs incredible amounts of energy -potentially creating super-heated plasma- and is the mechanism at the heart of every star.  The idea is that we use this as our heat source for producing electricity.  Yes, I too am always disappointed that all power stations essentially boil down (pun probably intended) to an overly elaborate kettle;  2010 is supposed to be the future damn it.  But that’s what we’ve got to work with.

Now we have artificially produced atomic fusion before, *ahem* ,  just not in a controlled manner suitable for power generation.  The problem is, any viable energy source needs to produce more energy than it took to run to initiate the process in the first place,  and getting two positively-charged nuclei to share the same space is an astonishingly energetic enterprise. We, at present, haven’t managed to break-even on this score, so there is a fair way to go yet.

The  two main approaches to fusion power are Inertial Confinement and Magnetic Containment facilities. although there have been some novel recent developments which merit mentioning.

Lasers and Inertial confinement

  Image courtesy of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Laser insertion devices work on the principle of inertial confinement fusion (ICF): that if you can focus enough intense laser light on a small spherical target (containing fusion fuel like the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium)  you can induce an explosive reaction on the outer layer, causing a resulting implosion on the inside of the target, which forces the fuel to compress to exceptionally high densities and temperatures.  This would initiate nuclear fusion at the very centre of the target and then, because the surrounding fuel can’t move away fast enough due to it’s inherent inertia, the expanding shockwave can induce fusion in that too- causing a chain reaction amongst the remaining fuel.

This line of research is primarily the domain of the Americans, and it was the NIF facility that recently overcame a major foreseen obstacle, namely the possible interference of the generated plasma with the delivery of the lasers on-target.   In fact they're confident of full ignition before the end of the year.  Something to watch out for.

Getting ahead of ourselves, if NIF is successful there is a future application being designed for which could actually use the existing long-lived nuclear waste -which causes so much consternation- as fuel.  It is called LIFE and is an example of possible ‘Hybrid’ reactors, a mixture of fission and fusion.  It would involve a ICF facility (as described above) to also provide a constant source of neutrons for burning up fissile material like spent nuclear fuel or weapons-grade plutonium.

  Image courtesy of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

There are many substantial steps in between that goal and today –not least achieving ignition with the standard ICF facility- but if and when this is achieved, the LIFE system could be revolutionary.

Magnetic Confinement

This is the oldest approach to nuclear fusion, and the mainstay of the European contribution to the field.

  Image courtesy of the European Nuclear Society

With this technology, our fusion fuel (deuterium and tritium again) are heated up to 100 million degrees kelvin in order to strip away the electrons and leave us with our plasma of bare nuclei.  Now,  if we achieve a high enough density and temperature, the nuclei will fuse and we will have achieved fusion.

And if that sounded too easy,  that’s because it is.   Once you achieve fusion conditions, you need to contain and maintain them.  The magnetic containment method generally uses a Tokamak-type facility, consisting of a toroidal (i.e, Doughnut-shaped) arrangement of conductive coils which heat, manipulate and contain the plasma  by passing a current through it and inducing magnetic fields to stop it drifting into the walls.

  Facilities like JET in Culham have made huge advances advances in the the field of plasma physics, but no facility has managed to produce  even break-even energy production.  JET holds the record with 70% of input power.  The energy requirements for generating the plasma, containing it, and  cooling the cryogenic components and the other parts you  just don’t want to get hot are just too large. At least so far.

The ITER facility  to be built in France is designed to be the first tokamak facility to produce greater than input energy: 500MW for 50MW input.  Something to watch for in 2012.

Levitating Dipole

I’ll give a brief mention to a very recent innovation which has been in the news: the Levitating Dipole or LDX. This involves the use of a large half-ton torus magnet which is suspended inside a magnetic field,  which causes plasma to form around it by the mechanism of ‘Turbulent pinching’', a phenomena reverse-engineered from astronomical observations of the way plasma in space interacts with the planetary magnetic fields.

The lab has rather thoughtfully produced a video clip of the first experiment:

More on this one as soon as I have the first clue what is going on.

So there you go, two contenders and one hopeful for the title of ‘solution to all our future electricity needs’.  To my mind, it’s been a long while coming (about 50 years and counting) but I think we’ll see real, useful progress inside the next few years.

Otherwise I want to speak to the manager-I should have a robot servant and rocket boots by now.