A bit different dynamics, but this has me thinking of snow fences or drift fences that are strategically placed to cause drifts in specified places (on the immediate lee side of the fence) while keeping other places further lee side (like roads) windswept and relatively free from snow. This is a video from an area about an hour from where I live:

wind farms destroy the environment, birds in particular. Trying to fix one problem and you create more problems.

How Many Birds Are Killed By Wind Turbines?

How Many Birds Are Killed by Wind Turbines?

Opinions on the number of birds killed by wind turbines vary wildly. We at American Bird Conservancy (ABC) look at the facts to provide a current estimate.

abcbirds.org

In a 2014 study, researchers estimated that 25.5 million birds are killed each year due to collisions with powerlines, and another 5.6 million are killed by electrocutions. Therefore, powerlines built exclusively to connect new wind facilities to the existing energy grid result in additional bird mortalities that should be factored in to the total toll in birds associated with wind energy development.

Wind facilities also require relatively large areas of land. Facility development can fragment or otherwise alter habitat in ways that make it unsuitable for species that have historically been present. For example, a study at wind facilities in the Dakotas found displacement effects for seven of nine grassland bird species after one year. While these effects have been documented in various studies, they have yet to be broadly quantified.

Why we need birds (far more than they need us)

Why we need birds (far more than they need us)

Can you imagine a world without birds? The benefits birds bring us aren't just cultural. Birds play an essential role in the functioning of the world's…

www.birdlife.org

Can you imagine a world without birds? The benefits birds bring us aren't just cultural. Birds play an essential role in the functioning of the world's ecosystems, in a way that directly impacts human health, economy and food production - as well as millions of other species. Here's how...

Quote from Fm1

In a 2014 study, researchers estimated that 25.5 million birds are killed each year due to collisions with powerlines, and another 5.6 million are killed by electrocutions.

Switzerland has one million cats. These cats kill millions of birds a year. I suggest they first should kill all cats.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Switzerland has one million cats. These cats kill millions of birds a year. I suggest they first should kill all cats.

That's nature, wind turbine not

Quote from Fm1

That's nature,

No.... It's human. Silly folks always look for the wrong excuse...

Mark U

The dynamics are the same for the snow fence. The fence deflects some of the air to above it. The remaining air passes through the slats and slows down when through dropping the snow. This effect of slowing down just above the ground is called a wind shadow and extends 10 times the height of the fence along the ground. It also works for a tree line.

solid-state

LIFE: a sustainable solution for developing safe, clean fusion power - PubMed

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California is currently in operation with the goal to demonstrate…

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

April 15, 2022

Generation IV, the future of nuclear power

Although nuclear power remains controversial, new reactors are being built in surprising numbers and these will provide the second largest share of the world’s…

newatlas.com

Quote

• Today, the nuclear industry is in Generation III or III+. The first generation was marked by the prototype reactors of the late 1940s, '50s, and early '60s, and the second by the first commercial light water reactors from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s. These were followed by Generation III, which are also light water reactors, but include new technology like more reliable fuels, passive cooling systems, and reactor cores that are less prone to failure. Generation III+, which will be built until the 2030s, are the latest reactors and are Generation III designs with additional improvements.

Also

• Of course, if nuclear fusion is ever made practical, then all bets will be off as nuclear fission will likely go the way of the coal-fired locomotive. - end quotes

The article describes many types of Generation IV designs before ending with, "...if nuclear fusion is ever made practical, then all bets will be off..."

Seems to me fission and fusion are not necessarily best viewed as separate on the nano scale. Perhaps a unifying nuclear theory of such is on the horizon in advanced LENR research.

CMNS Hybrid Fission Fusion Energy

“We’re generation five,” Dr. Khim (President of Global Energy Corp) told the Variety during an exclusive interview, “and first of all this is a brand new concept.”

“You have to change the basic science of nuclear power,” Khim explained. “We’ve been working with the U.S. Navy for about 22 years and the basic science phase is now over. Now we’re going into commercial development...

Officials of the Navy on Guam, including Capt. John V. Heckmann Jr., CO of Naval Facilities and a professional engineer, attended the GEC briefing. The GEC board of directors, Khim says, includes some well-known Washington D.C. Players, including former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former Congressman and Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, and former U.S. Congressman Tom Davis, among others.” - end quotes

Nuclear Power Renaissance Based on Engineered Micro-Nano-Nuclear Materials

Liviu Popa-Simil

Energy and Power Engineering Vol.13 No.4B，April 30, 2021

DOI: 10.4236/epe.2021.134B007   123

Abstract

Nuclear Power today is in stagnation with a fleet of 440 operational units, due to many drawback factors, as economics, safety, controllability and response time, security and waste management, which all together act as a deterrent to new reactor construction. If the present trend is followed, together with aging of many nuclear plants, by 2040 there will remain less than half of the actual reactors in operation, representing an accelerated decay of the industry. The idea of renaissance of nuclear power is more frequent, but this is not possible without the use of novel materials, based on nano-engineered structures. It is well known that Damascus swords were not possible without the use of Damascus steel, and so the next nuclear technology is not possible without the use of novel micro-nano nuclear materials, which finally dictates the performances of the nuclear structures built with them. As a first approach to modern technology, since 1980s, five types of nuclear materials, able to bring a leap forward in nuclear technology have been identified and studied, which are: 1) Micro-hetero structures able to deal with fission products, that use fission reaction kinematics to self-separate fission products from the nuclear fuel, generically called “Cer-Liq-Mesh”, because simply it consists of a ceramic material stabilized on an elastic mesh or felt, immersed into a drain liquid. This improves the radiation damage, fuel burnup, fission products separation, and specific power density. 2) Nano-Beaded-Hetero-Structures that are using the nano-cluster specific mechanisms to accelerate separation of the transmutation products and place them into a drain liquid, which improves the separation of minor actinides, and radioisotopes production. 3) Nano-hetero structures for direct nuclear energy conversion into electricity, that are resembling a supercapacitor, charged by the moving nuclear particles, and discharges delivering electricity, where the structure is made of repetitive conductive and insulating layers, generically known as “CIci”, some of the variants creating hyperbolic metamaterials, that may deliver electricity and radiation. Using these structures, one may eliminate the thermos-mechanical stage from the actual nuclear-thermo-mechano-electric energy conversion cycle, reducing it at nuclear-electric only and reducing the size of nuclear-electric plant by 90%, creating a fission battery. 4) Radiation damage self-repairing materials made of a “fractal”, multi-material interlaced structure that maintains its properties constant independent of radiation dose. These materials will be used for cladding and structures allowing a near-perfect burning, using breed & burn technology. 5) Radiation guiding structures that are using nano-structures to trap and guide radiation on desired controllable path being used for control systems assuring a micro-second response time, and light shielding allowing the creation of mobile structures.

Of particular interest...

4. Nano-Hetero Structure for Direct Nuclear Energy Conversion in Electricity

Energy released in nuclear reactions is by one million times larger than that delivered in chemical processes, and using engineered nano-hetero structures it become possible to produce battery like systems. There are three types of batteries that can be produced, generically called:

­ Isotopic batteries, known for using nuclear transmutation reactions that release alpha or beta radiation, that is harvested and converted into electricity, previously known as alpha or beta voltaic, one such battery delivering the energy of more than 100,000 same power chemical batteries.

­ Fission batteries, delivering energy at demand, being in fact a solid-state compact nuclear reactor, where the meta-material inside is harvesting the energy of the fission products , which are over 200 times more energetic than decay reactions, and

­ Fusion batteries, where the meta-material is harvesting the energy of the fusion reactors, where fusion is up to three times more energetic than fission. Complementary these meta-materials may be morphed on surfaces, able to convert particle beam energy, useful in space beamed power applications, and being hyperbolic meta-structures for some combinations they exhibit intense EM properties, being possible of emitting THz up to optical radiation.

There are many functional configurations of meta-materials that may be used, to convert moving particle energy into electricity as:

Decades ago when I was working as a very junior engineering sub-contractor at one of the UK's weapons establishments I used to take lunch with two young R&D guys working on nuclear batteries. They were trying to develop a nuclear battery based on a foaming liquid electrolyte containing (probably) U238.

The idea was basically simple- as the electrolyte heated up the top-secret foaming ingredient would blow more bubbles reducing the concentration of fission materials but covering more plate area so maintaining output. When it cooled down the foaming agent would start re-capturing gas and reduce the number of bubbles and the nucleides would become more concentrated and thus more active.

From memory they had two major problems- stability of output and radiation denaturing their foam compound so it failed to recombine with the gas. I guess they dropped the whole project in the end.

As someone who has been hopeful about the buzz regarding modular nuclear reactors in popular science articles and sites such as NextBigFuture etc I found Sabine’s conclusions disappointing.

Also concerning, especially given that Boris the UK PM announced last week that he has decided to strongly back a modular reactor project in the UK.

So a bit of a gamble. Even if it works then it seems that nuclear is a very expensive way to generate energy and possibly it might get bogged down if nobody wants to live near one.

Part of the logic for modular reactors is that they can be sited near to where the energy is needed.

I definitely think investment in new types of modular nuclear reactors should continue but am not sure we are at the point where it should become a key part of our national energy strategy.

NASA's recent achievements with lattice confinement fusion opens some interesting possibilities for fission reactors.

NASA’s New Shortcut to Fusion Power

Lattice confinement fusion eliminates massive magnets and powerful lasers

spectrum.ieee.org

The NASA experiment used 2.9MeV X-rays to decompose deuterium into a neutron and proton. The neutron then delivered energy to deuterium nuclei, which then undergo fusion.

The x-ray driven process is unlikely to achieve breakeven. However, modules of titanium deuteride inserted into a fast neutron reactor, would function as superb neutron multipliers. Fast neutrons produced by fission would transfer energy to deuterium nuclei trapped in titanium metal lattice, heating the deuterons to energy sufficient for fusion to occur. The additional neutrons yielded by fusion would reduce required enrichment of the fuel. They would also allow travelling wave reactors to function with much reduced fuel burn ups. The travelling wave reactor is presently impractical because fuel cladding cannot remain intact reliably at a burn up of 30 atom%. If the required burn up can be reduced to 20 atom% through the use of an amplified neutron flux, the concept becomes a lot more workable.

A travelling wave reactor equipped with TiD3 neutron multiplier modules, could be fuelled with a 20% enriched metallic uranium starter core. Additional fuel added at the core margins would be depleted uranium. This would be cycled towards the centre of the core until burn up had reached 20 atom%.

Quote from Calliban

NASA's recent achievements with lattice confinement fusion opens some interesting possibilities for fission reactors.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/lattice-confinement-fusion

The NASA experiment used 2.9MeV X-rays to decompose deuterium into a neutron and proton. The neutron then delivered energy to deuterium nuclei, which then undergo fusion.

The x-ray driven process is unlikely to achieve breakeven. However, modules of titanium deuteride inserted into a fast neutron reactor, would function as superb neutron multipliers. Fast neutrons produced by fission would transfer energy to deuterium nuclei trapped in titanium metal lattice, heating the deuterons to energy sufficient for fusion to occur. The additional neutrons yielded by fusion would reduce required enrichment of the fuel. They would also allow travelling wave reactors to function with much reduced fuel burn ups. The travelling wave reactor is presently impractical because fuel cladding cannot remain intact reliably at a burn up of 30 atom%. If the required burn up can be reduced to 20 atom% through the use of an amplified neutron flux, the concept becomes a lot more workable.

A travelling wave reactor equipped with TiD3 neutron multiplier modules, could be fuelled with a 20% enriched metallic uranium starter core. Additional fuel added at the core margins would be depleted uranium. This would be cycled towards the centre of the core until burn up had reached 20 atom%.

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Calliban , Thanks for your interest in the topic, we are already discussing this LCF - Nuclear Fission convergence in another thread here:

Post

RE: NASA’s Lattice Confined Fusion (LCF)

[…]

While those issues will require a lot of research to be overcome, LCF has already been considered as is in an approach to more efficient Fission plants as you can see in the abstract of this recent publication.

https://www.tandfonline.com/do…080/15361055.2021.2000327

Curbina

Apr 6th 2022

So, as this is still a theoretical idea to be proven, we can discuss this specific potential of LCF - Nuclear fission convergence there, and keep this thread for conventional Fission pros and cons.

Hope to read more posts of you!

Terahertz-Driven Luminescence and Colossal Stark Effect in CdSe–CdS Colloidal Quantum Dots

• Brandt C. Pein^*†,
• Wendi Chang^†,
• Harold Y. Hwang^‡,
• Jennifer Scherer^†,
• Igor Coropceanu^†,
• Xiaoguang Zhao^§,
• Xin Zhang^§,
• Vladimir Bulović^†,
• Moungi Bawendi^†, and
• Keith A. Nelson^†

View Author Information

Cite this: Nano Lett. 2017, 17, 9, 5375–5380
Publication Date:August 8, 2017

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b01837
Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Exactly what does traditional fission look like on the nano or femto scale?

Still questing. No?

Expertise?

Not quite yet...

E equals mass times C (speed of light) squared.

WOW

Quote from Curbina

keep this thread for conventional Fission pros and cons.

Yet the GEC LCF team are claiming improved fission fusion CMNS energy development...

Difficult to integrate

Difficult to hold as separate

GEC doesn’t think about nuclear energetics in such a difficulty... Why?

Quote from Curbina

keep this thread for conventional Fission

Gregory Byron Goble , The idea is to keep a separate discussion because the LCF has its own thread and we were already discussing it’s integration for more efficient nuclear fission there.

Feel free to go to that thread to follow this discussion.

Curbina  Calliban

Yes

Frank Gordon does not present the outlandish claims of GEC.

Rather

Baking LCF in his backyard barbecue.

As such

Pertinent to any discussion of coventional nuclear fission.

Period