Article about designing new fusion powerplants

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sbrothy
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I'm a little sceptic as we've been told that fusion power is just around the corner for more or less most of the last century. This paper:

Public Perspectives on the Design of Fusion Energy Facilities,

which apart from being exciting in itself seems to be pretty optimistic about it. I stopped reading when I found this one on page 10 though:


Idea Category
[...]
Unsorted. Ambiguous or unrelated ideas.
[...]		Examples
[...]
Homer Simpson
[...]


:smile:
 
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It's not really a paper making actual predictions about how soon fusion power plants will be viable, it's about a workshop they held to discuss how the design of fusion plants should be handled:

we develop a participatory design methodology for collaboratively designing fusion energy facilities with prospective host communities. We present here our findings from a participatory design workshop that brought together 22 community participants and 34 engineering students.
 
Yeh. You're right. So basically it's science fiction. :frown:

EDIT: Also, I admit I posted the thread tongue in cheek when I encountered the Homer Simpson reference. Thence this sub-forum.
 
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The link seemed a lot like debating what colour the facilities should be.
 
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Ken Fabian said:
The link seemed a lot like debating what colour the facilities should be.
I don't know if you actually read it but there's a section in there literally discussing that very point! :smile:

EDIT:

It's in the same table as the one with the Homer Simpson reference showing that they atually discussed it:

Aesthetics. Includes ideas related to appearance and sensory appeal.Brightly colored and vibrant. Blends with environment. Carved into mountain. Music.

So a shockingly pink fusion plant carved into a mountainside with whalesong in the background.

That's what the future looks (and sounds) like! I wonder how that would have been received in the context of fission plants?! ?:)


EDIT:

Which, incidentally reminds me of the old joke from POSIX fortune:

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 2. One to change the light bulb and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.
 
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I apologize for my tendency to edit my posts after I post them. *BUMP*.
 
@sbrothy - I read the abstract/summary, didn't do the full paper. I thought it was getting a tad ahead of ourselves. It was something out of one of those Hitchhiker's Guide stories that came to my mind - a committee of hairdressers and telephone sanitizers marooned on pre-historic Earth arguing over that "wheel thingy".
 
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Ken Fabian said:
@sbrothy - I read the abstract/summary, didn't do the full paper. I thought it was getting a tad ahead of ourselves. It was something out of one of those Hitchhiker's Guide stories that came to my mind - a committee of hairdressers and telephone sanitizers marooned on pre-historic Earth arguing over that "wheel thingy".
Couldn't have said it better myself. :smile:
 
Okay, since we seem to have figured out what this article is about, I'll go ahead and close out the thread. :smile:
 
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