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by Tondoteottotote on February 10th, 2005

Tondoteottotote

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As seen in "Back to the Future", could garbage really be a reliable fuel for fusion power? What would the byproducts be?

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  • by zeropointburn on April 26th, 2005

    zeropointburn

    Yes.
    Plastics, hydrocarbons, and biological materials all contain significant amounts of hydrogen. So, your first problem is extracting hydrogen. The easiest way would be to pulverise the garbage, then electrostatically ionise it until all the molecules are dissolved into their constituent atoms. The resultant ions would be spun in a magnetic field to separate out the hydrogen, and prevent any messy explosions. Whatever's left over after that will make the bulk of the byproducts. (mostly carbon, some nitrogen, oxygen, and chlorine, traces of other elements)
    The second problem is turning your hydrogen into deuterium. So, you would need a source of neutrons, with a safe level of shielding. The hydrogen would be bombarded and spin-separated again. Once you've made your proper fuel, you're almost ready to go.
    Except for the third problem, which is making portable fusion work. If you can make the fuel fuse, and extract the energy safely, you've got a garbage-powered vehicle. You'd also have helium exhaust.
    It will be a while before anything like this is possible. Even when it does become possible, I doubt any government is going to just let people have something that could produce radioisotopes. It's more likely that garbage would be processed at a plant, and we'd buy deuterium at the pump. Perhaps we would get free waste disposal at that point, since nearly any waste would be viewed as a valuable commodity. Hope that helps.

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