Pre-cutting the ground above explosive

[sepulchrave 721]

33 minutes ago, badeskov said:

Seriously? You invoke the Bible?!

He did it before in another thread... something about the Bible being the result of aliens.

10 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

It works! it increases the efficiency's of cratering. It's not like the conductive grid where I haven't performed any experiments. It's a viable method for using fusion as the tokomak,  but for reasons stated above is only a novelty at this point in evolution. Just do the math Sep 5-20% efficiency of a 10 million kw explosive would return .5-2 million kwh in electricity. It's easy. This one's a winner trust me.

I am not denying that you can get energy from this method. I am not even arguing the 5-20% efficiency metric.

I am only pointing out that it takes MORE ENERGY to make an explosive than you obtain from detonating that explosive. EVEN IF YOU COULD RECAPTURE 100% OF THE ENERGY FROM THE EXPLOSION, YOU WOULD STILL LOSE!

Coal and oil are viable (although undesirable) because NATURE MAKES THE COAL AND OIL FOR US. Even though we get less energy out than was put in, because it wasn't HUMAN EFFORT creating the fuel it is a win for us (in terms of energy, anyway).

EXPLOSIVES ARE NOT MADE NATURALLY.

As pointed out above, our existing stockpile of explosives is insufficient to power human endeavour for more than a few years (at best). It is NOT A LONG-TERM SOLUTION!

[RoofGardener 17,501]

"Pre-cutting the ground above explosives"

I'm sure I'm missing the point here, but surely the ground is ALWAYS "pre-cut" ? I mean, otherwise, how would the explosives GET there in the first place ?

sorry.... couldn't resist. I'll get my coat... .

[Ozymandias 3,454]

Based on the manner in which this idea has been presented and 'explained', it is childish nonsense.

It is not possible when excavating a very large hole in the ground to extract the material in that hole as one single homogenous mass.

The notion that you would lower a mass of explosively excavated earth/rock back into place in order to recover energy defeats the purpose of excavating it in the first place!

How do you get the explosive in under the mass to be excavated? Dig a tunnel? That requires an energy input.

How do you control and direct the charge to only lift what you want to excavate? Buried charges in earth normally leave a crater or bowl shape after they explode, not a flat level bottom.

You say you initially cut out the shape of the mass to be excavated. How deeply? That requires energy input.

You talk about efficiency. Efficiency is a measure of the percentage of energy you get from a process compared to the energy you put in to create it. Can you itemise and quantify these for us?

Edited September 5, 2017 by Ozymandias

[trevor borocz johnson 236]

12 hours ago, sepulchrave said:

I am only pointing out that it takes MORE ENERGY to make an explosive than you obtain from detonating that explosive. EVEN IF YOU COULD RECAPTURE 100% OF THE ENERGY FROM THE EXPLOSION, YOU WOULD STILL LOSE!

Fine then calculate how much energy it takes to remove say, one inch of earth from the surface of a cube one thousand feet in diameter, then calculate how much energy to remove the whole cube. I think you will notice that its substantially less. 

They may charge a lot for nuclear explosives but when talking about raw materials they can't be worth more then the same cost of a unit of equal energy going through a traditional nuclear power plant, that is mining and refining the uranium. So are they losing money at those power plants because they have to prepare and mine the fuel? no. 

I don't know, different people on the internet have said different things, the majoriity of them are just notions and not based on fact. If history of attempts to find ways to make energy out of nuclear explosives in the 50's and 60's by Teller and others, if it shows us anything its that explosives are a viable means of energy and ideas to use them should be encouraged, not just thrown on the ground and spit on like so many of you seem to fancy. 

The re-usable water cannon and loop idea is a better system and use of materials then the pre-cutting. I'll re-post that idea so we can discuss it properly since the jpeg doesn't show up for many of you in the other thread.

 

 

[DarkHunter 2,809]

1 hour ago, trevorhbj said:

Fine then calculate how much energy it takes to remove say, one inch of earth from the surface of a cube one thousand feet in diameter, then calculate how much energy to remove the whole cube. I think you will notice that its substantially less. 

They may charge a lot for nuclear explosives but when talking about raw materials they can't be worth more then the same cost of a unit of equal energy going through a traditional nuclear power plant, that is mining and refining the uranium. So are they losing money at those power plants because they have to prepare and mine the fuel? no. 

I don't know, different people on the internet have said different things, the majoriity of them are just notions and not based on fact. If history of attempts to find ways to make energy out of nuclear explosives in the 50's and 60's by Teller and others, if it shows us anything its that explosives are a viable means of energy and ideas to use them should be encouraged, not just thrown on the ground and spit on like so many of you seem to fancy. 

The re-usable water cannon and loop idea is a better system and use of materials then the pre-cutting. I'll re-post that idea so we can discuss it properly since the jpeg doesn't show up for many of you in the other thread.

 

 

The fuel in nuclear power plants is enriched normally to between 3% and 5% U 235 while to create a nuclear weapon it has to be enriched to at least 80% but normally 90% U 235 for a nuclear bomb. The difference in enriching U 235 from 0.7%, which it is naturally, to between 3% and 5% is insanely less energy intensive then from 0.7% to between 80% and 90%.  There are plutonium based bombs but that would require transmuting U 238 to the correct plutonium isotope which is also insanely energy intensive.

As for Teller, among others, looking at using nuclear weapons to produce energy they suggested it in a drastically different, and far more efficient method, then what you are suggesting by using nuclear bombs to turn massive amounts of water into steam and even with that it was found to be no where cost effective.  In project PACER, which is what this idea fell under, it would require detonating 2 nuclear bombs a day to produce 2 GW of electrical power.  When it was looked at economically in 1975 the cost was equivalent to running a normal nuclear power plant with nuclear fuel that cost $328 per pound, the actual cost of nuclear fuel at that time period was $27 per pound.  

The people who continued with looking into it even after the project was cancelled came up with a design that would require detonating a 1 kt nuke every 45 minutes.

[trevor borocz johnson 236]

3 hours ago, DarkHunter said:

The fuel in nuclear power plants is enriched normally to between 3% and 5% U 235 while to create a nuclear weapon it has to be enriched to at least 80% but normally 90% U 235 for a nuclear bomb. The difference in enriching U 235 from 0.7%, which it is naturally, to between 3% and 5% is insanely less energy intensive then from 0.7% to between 80% and 90%.  There are plutonium based bombs but that would require transmuting U 238 to the correct plutonium isotope which is also insanely energy intensive.

As for Teller, among others, looking at using nuclear weapons to produce energy they suggested it in a drastically different, and far more efficient method, then what you are suggesting by using nuclear bombs to turn massive amounts of water into steam and even with that it was found to be no where cost effective.  In project PACER, which is what this idea fell under, it would require detonating 2 nuclear bombs a day to produce 2 GW of electrical power.  When it was looked at economically in 1975 the cost was equivalent to running a normal nuclear power plant with nuclear fuel that cost $328 per pound, the actual cost of nuclear fuel at that time period was $27 per pound.  

The people who continued with looking into it even after the project was cancelled came up with a design that would require detonating a 1 kt nuke every 45 minutes.

 

I knew about this but forgot what it was called thanks for bringing it up. I just imagine this system is a lot less efficient and far more damaging to the system then what I described in the OP about weight displacement power plants.  Also I think the Pacer idea would be much more limited to the amount of power it could take from a single blast. My design can just keep going up in size. 50% of the energy that comes out of an explosion is blast energy and they don't use that at all. In my other design for a re-usable weight diplacement power plant, after several uses you would start heating up the water and could eventually run steam turbines each blast and have to mix in an outside water source to keep it cool. Fusion lasers are so important to this system but they don't work yet.

It says here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER That it was economically infeasible because the unit price was $27 for a traditional and $328 in there inefficient idea. When you detonate a 50/50 fission fusion bomb you get eight times the amount of useful energy out of the fission material then you do in traditional power plants. I wonder if they factored that in. I wouldn't be surprised if my idea was 10 or twenty times more efficient then there's anyways.

Notice there are no previous examples of weight displacement power plants, that makes this idea novel at very least.

Edited September 5, 2017 by trevorhbj

[sepulchrave 721]

12 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

Fine then calculate how much energy it takes to remove say, one inch of earth from the surface of a cube one thousand feet in diameter, then calculate how much energy to remove the whole cube. I think you will notice that its substantially less.

The work required to move a mass m to a height h in a gravity field g is mgh (approximately, as long as h is within 100 km or so of the surface of the Earth).

Removing the surface layer would require a bit more work because of adhesion, but I don't understand how you have a free-floating cube in the first place so I don't think the adhesion part is particularly relevant.

So the energy required is linearly related to the mass you are moving.

I admit I don't see your point, and don't fully understand what you are talking about... as far as I know, when doing mechanical work, the dimensions of the system are only relevant in energy calculations with regards to friction (roughly the same per unit of surface area in both cases, I'd guess, because the contact materials are the same) and deformation (much worse for larger systems that have sufficient weight to waste energy through irreversibly squishing parts).

12 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

They may charge a lot for nuclear explosives but when talking about raw materials they can't be worth more then the same cost of a unit of equal energy going through a traditional nuclear power plant, that is mining and refining the uranium. So are they losing money at those power plants because they have to prepare and mine the fuel?

They can, and are. A nuclear bomb is an incredibly finely tuned piece of machinery. Every part has to be perfectly engineered to create a self-sustaining nuclear blast (as opposed to a mis-firing ``dirty bomb'').

They are not losing money at those power plants because they do not have to enrich the fuel as much, and they don't have to transmute the fuel to other elements (plutonium), as DarkHunter points out. Furthermore, they do not have to precisely machine the finished parts; just mix the fuel with a moderator and jam it into a rod.

13 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

50% of the energy that comes out of an explosion is blast energy and they don't use that at all. In my other design for a re-usable weight diplacement power plant, after several uses you would start heating up the water and could eventually run steam turbines each blast and have to mix in an outside water source to keep it cool. Fusion lasers are so important to this system but they don't work yet.

It says here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER That it was economically infeasible because the unit price was $27 for a traditional and $328 in there inefficient idea. When you detonate a 50/50 fission fusion bomb you get eight times the amount of useful energy out of the fission material then you do in traditional power plants. I wonder if they factored that in. I wouldn't be surprised if my idea was 10 or twenty times more efficient then there's anyways.

They do; this is one of the reasons why their method is more efficient than yours. 100% of the energy from a contained explosion is converted to heat. Your method described in this post calls for an un-contained explosion, inevitably energy is wasted from heat and matter loss.

Your method using the water cannon, described in your other post, could be contained. It is a much better idea, as you have also pointed out. However it is roughly equivalent to PACER.

I am sure they factored in all of the important aspects when they did their cost analysis. I have no idea where you get this ``eight times amount of useful energy'' from a fission/fusion bomb concept, or even how you can make a valid comparison between bombs and conventional power plants, but I am confident Teller and crew would have considered all relevant issues.

 

 

[trevor borocz johnson 236]

4 hours ago, sepulchrave said:

It is a much better idea, as you have also pointed out. However it is roughly equivalent to PACER.

Why what are the efficiency's of PACER, I heard they were low like .1 percent.

4 hours ago, sepulchrave said:

They do; this is one of the reasons why their method is more efficient than yours. 100% of the energy from a contained explosion is converted to heat. Your method described in this post calls for an un-contained explosion, inevitably energy is wasted from heat and matter loss.

In an explosion, a lot of the energy is converted to blast energy. Only in pure empty space is the energy converted entirely to heat. They're talking about rotating some sort of absorbent salt which would vaporize and explode. 

It is true it is uncontained as described. If you built a container underneath the rock to be removed you could probably dramatically improve its efficiency, that's where I get 20% from. I don't see how they would build a system into exploding bombs without damaging it. Thats the beauty of this and the water cannon, that the system to regain the fuel is built outside the area where the explosive is set off. 

[trevor borocz johnson 236]

12 hours ago, sepulchrave said:

Furthermore, they do not have to precisely machine the finished parts; just mix the fuel with a moderator and jam it into a rod.

It all comes down to how efficient they thought that idea, if it even works, for detonating in a closed container? to gather heat energy was. And that we can only guess at that and how it compares to the weight displacement power plants. If it was ten times less, which sounds probable, or more, then that changes things for the fisision and the use of fusion fuel is unheard of. 

From what I understand it the fusion lasers could detonate an explosive. Yes? is this true? any ways I from what I also understand there plan is too rapidly fire the laser and collect the heat energy from an absorbent chamber, true? Well I think this power plant idea works much better don't you? Do you know anything about Laser Ignition specifically how they convert the laser energy into electricity?

[sepulchrave 721]

12 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

It all comes down to how efficient they thought that idea, if it even works, for detonating in a closed container? to gather heat energy was. And that we can only guess at that and how it compares to the weight displacement power plants. If it was ten times less, which sounds probable, or more, then that changes things for the fisision and the use of fusion fuel is unheard of.

I don't know exactly which version of PACER the GURC economics report was based off of (I can't find the original report online), but the proposed method of detonating two 50-kt bombs a day to generate 2 GW of power has a ``blast energy to electrical energy'' conversion efficiency of 41% (by my calculations). So even if your method is better, it can't be more than 2.5x as efficient.

12 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

From what I understand it the fusion lasers could detonate an explosive. Yes? is this true? any ways I from what I also understand there plan is too rapidly fire the laser and collect the heat energy from an absorbent chamber, true? Well I think this power plant idea works much better don't you? Do you know anything about Laser Ignition specifically how they convert the laser energy into electricity?

The laser ignition project is using highly focused lasers to promote fusion in deuterium-rich fuel pellets. The lasers themselves aren't ``fusion lasers'', they are ordinary lasers.

Fusion (and fission), like a wood fire, requires a ``spark'' to get going. Deuterium fusion releases an incredible amount of energy, but it also requires a large amount of energy to start it. That is what the lasers are there for, to ignite a ``fusion fire'' in the fuel pellet.

The energy released by the pellet during fusion would then be used as in any coal/oil/gas/nuclear power plant - to boil water to drive a turbine.

In a sense, all coal/oil/gas/nuclear/hydroelectric power plants operate by ``weight displacement'' (of steam and/or water).

[trevor borocz johnson 236]

4 hours ago, sepulchrave said:

Fusion (and fission), like a wood fire, requires a ``spark'' to get going. Deuterium fusion releases an incredible amount of energy, but it also requires a large amount of energy to start it. That is what the lasers are there for, to ignite a ``fusion fire'' in the fuel pellet.

The energy released by the pellet during fusion would then be used as in any coal/oil/gas/nuclear power plant - to boil water to drive a turbine.

I was under the notion that the pellet exploded like a stick of dynamite? Doesn't the fusion fuel go under a similar degeneration or chain reaction that causes it to explode? Do you know for sure that it slow burns? There is no slow burning cold fusion like that for a fission reactor. They can only fire those lasers once a day because they get so hot. It would be of benefit if that one shot set off a lot more then a pellet.  I'm pretty sure I've read they will also be able to detonate a fusion explosive with lasers or the tokomak. You can already gain heat back in the water cannon or the cannonball system, but in all other systems for gaining energy from explosives they rely on, gasses, vacuum, or heat, none of which account for the blast energy which is half the energy released. So it isn't like my system can't produce heat to run a boiler, its just not my focus. I truly feel like one of those scientists who won't get to see the benefits of his design in his lifetime. Kind of depressing.

Edited September 7, 2017 by trevorhbj

[sepulchrave 721]

11 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

I was under the notion that the pellet exploded like a stick of dynamite? Doesn't the fusion fuel go under a similar degeneration or chain reaction that causes it to explode? Do you know for sure that it slow burns? There is no slow burning cold fusion like that for a fission reactor.

Yes, you are right that it is more of an explosion. The process is quite rapid.

11 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

It would be of benefit if that one shot set off a lot more then a pellet.

Yes, it would be of great benefit. The problem is that in order to achieve self-sustaining fusion you need an enormous temperature, over a million degrees. There is no material known that can withstand that temperature, so the fusion fuel must not touch the sides of the container. The laser ignition concept would use a steady stream of small pellets falling through the laser beam focus point. The tokomak concept would use magnetic fields to keep fuel in a gas/plasma state from touching the walls.

Both the laser ignition and the tokomak are still in the test phase; there are still way to many unresolved problems for both systems.

[Some people think that the National Ignition Facility in the USA which is trying to achieve fusion using lasers is really just a cover story, the major goal is to continue research on nuclear weapons. Personally I am inclined towards this idea as well.]

Anyway, they are not yet trying to make a viable power plant using fusion. Even ITER is just a prototype and is still decades away from completion.

Your idea would work, but it is (a) extremely dangerous and (b) too expensive to be practical.

Incidentally, cold table-top fusion was developed decades ago and a system can be built by dedicated amateurs. If you are seriously worried about the future of the human race regarding power consumption, I suggest:

1. Work on photocatalysis of water to make hydrogen fuel, as I previously suggested.
2. Try to redesign the table-top fusor to get energy output.

[bmk1245 4,120]

On 9/2/2017 at 3:58 PM, Parsec said:

I know, but wanted to see if he really thinks of himself as the new almighty god of science or if there was the tiniest room for doubt and self evaluation (and thus critical thinking). I can't say I'm disappointed, just not surprised. 

[...]

He is just generating ideas like toddler naming thing he sees..; "Caw... Meow..."

On 9/2/2017 at 3:58 PM, Parsec said:

[...]

Brilliant idea regarding Antarctica!

But I suggest to move it into the Atlantic and attaching it to Africa: with all the melted ice we could both store some of the water for drinking usage and irrigate the whole continent.

Basically while solving the world energy demand we'll solve the world hunger as well! 

I wonder why no one ever thought about it before. 

Big no, Nigeria (and other coastal countries) will say no. Who wants to be land locked... Heck, no. Just Pacific area, period.

[trevor borocz johnson 236]

I sitll doubt anyone on here has the expertise to say that raw materials in would be more then energy gained out. It may cost 3 million dollars for a bomb but if I'm gaining ten million dollars back. It's not like you can google it.

[trevor borocz johnson 236]

On 9/5/2017 at 2:06 AM, sepulchrave said:

I am only pointing out that it takes MORE ENERGY to make an explosive than you obtain from detonating that explosive. EVEN IF YOU COULD RECAPTURE 100% OF THE ENERGY FROM THE EXPLOSION, YOU WOULD STILL LOSE!

Are your sources on that reliable? I learned on a different website that Teller wanted to build bombs with  fourth and fifth stages of fusion that would have ranged up into the gigatonnes. There is 1.16 million killowatt hours of power in a kt. There was no use for something that big so they never built one. are you telling me refining the fuel and the raw material cost of the steel is going to require petawatts? That would be trillions of killowatts and dollars.

And the most amazing thing is my system can handle an explosive that big! I love my power plant! The fact that it can use energy at any scale like that is such a nice find.

Edited October 4, 2017 by trevorhbj

[sepulchrave 721]

On 10/5/2017 at 3:35 AM, trevorhbj said:

Are your sources on that reliable? I learned on a different website that Teller wanted to build bombs with  fourth and fifth stages of fusion that would have ranged up into the gigatonnes. There is 1.16 million killowatt hours of power in a kt. There was no use for something that big so they never built one. are you telling me refining the fuel and the raw material cost of the steel is going to require petawatts? That would be trillions of killowatts and dollars.

And the most amazing thing is my system can handle an explosive that big! I love my power plant! The fact that it can use energy at any scale like that is such a nice find.

I admit I don't have very reliable sources because most of this stuff is still classified.

But... 1.16x10⁶ kWh does sound like a lot of energy. However I will point out that in Cleveland OH (where your bio says you live), that much energy would cost about $161 000 (as 13.9 cents/kWh is the average price of power from here), or by the same standard $75 000 for the equivalent amount of gasoline (using Wikipedia's 35.3 kWh/gal for gas and the above website's $2.302/gal).

Can you build a 1 kt nuke for less than that?

Getting yellowcake uranium is comparatively cheap - but then you have to convert all of the UO₂ to UF₆ gas, centrifuge it for a very long time to enrich it to 80%, and then convert the enriched UF₆ gas back to pure metallic U, then make the bomb with high-precision parts... This stuff isn't easy.

[bmk1245 4,120]

Sepu, with all due respect, you are arguing with door bell. In no way you will convince him that his ideas ain't worth much (for few reasons).

 

[trevor borocz johnson 236]

9 hours ago, bmk1245 said:

Sepu, with all due respect, you are arguing with door bell. In no way you will convince him that his ideas ain't worth much (for few reasons).

That's not true. Of all the people who have commented on this thread since I first posted it around the web two years ago, I can remember two people teaching me something I didn't know ( Sepulchrave would be 3 but I know the fuel is expensive) about 50 people just talk like they picked it up for the first time(like bmk) and a small handful actually congratulate me on proving something I thought up. 

10 hours ago, sepulchrave said:

1.16x10⁶ kWh does sound like a lot of energy.

That's the amount of energy in one kiloton, I said a bomb that was gigaton's. Thats 1.16 million times a million which is trillions of kwh. The problem with building a one trillion kwh crater and refilling it for energy is you would have to build a lot of the systems to refill it and get your energy back and it might take a pretty long time to refill that crater. However if the bomb's cost millions of dollars and you can get 10% efficiency on trillions of kwh then your making hundreds of billions even trillions of dollars from just one use of the bomb.

[bmk1245 4,120]

19 minutes ago, trevorhbj said:

That's not true. Of all the people who have commented on this thread since I first posted it around the web two years ago, I can remember two people teaching me something I didn't know ( Sepulchrave would be 3 but I know the fuel is expensive) about 50 people just talk like they picked it up for the first time(like bmk) and a small handful actually congratulate me on proving something I thought up. 

[...]

I have to get the credit to sepu, he did outstanding work (heck, where he gets so much patience?) in demolishing your bs.

Anyway, your bs remains as that - BS (yeah, in capital).

[Noteverythingisaconspiracy 19,072]

I have a question that I don't think you have addressed yet: What are you going to use as fusion fuel ?

Realistic fusion proposals usually use the deuterium-tritium reaction. The problem with that is that tritium doen't exist in any meaningfull quantities anywhere and thus have to be made by irradiating lithium with neutrons from the fusion reactor itself. How do you propose to do that in your power plant ?

Using the deuterium-tritium reaction will produce a lot of high energy neutrons that will irradiate the surrounding rock through a process know as neutron activation. How do you propose to deal with that issue ?

[sepulchrave 721]

19 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

That's the amount of energy in one kiloton, I said a bomb that was gigaton's. Thats 1.16 million times a million which is trillions of kwh. The problem with building a one trillion kwh crater and refilling it for energy is you would have to build a lot of the systems to refill it and get your energy back and it might take a pretty long time to refill that crater. However if the bomb's cost millions of dollars and you can get 10% efficiency on trillions of kwh then your making hundreds of billions even trillions of dollars from just one use of the bomb.

Ok, so 1 Gt is equivalent to $161 billion in electricity, or $75 billion in gas.

I pointed out earlier in this thread that the total US nuclear arsenal was around 2 Gt. Do you honestly think the US has spent only a few $million building this arsenal? I am fairly sure (again, I don't know because this stuff is classified) that the entire US nuclear arsenal costs more than $161 billion.

The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba. That is 20x smaller than what you are proposing. It made a fireball 8 km in diameter. How exactly do you plan on containing an explosion 20x greater so it doesn't kill everyone in a 100 km radius?

[trevor borocz johnson 236]

5 hours ago, sepulchrave said:

I pointed out earlier in this thread that the total US nuclear arsenal was around 2 Gt. Do you honestly think the US has spent only a few $million building this arsenal? I am fairly sure (again, I don't know because this stuff is classified) that the entire US nuclear arsenal costs more than $161 billion.

The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba. That is 20x smaller than what you are proposing. It made a fireball 8 km in diameter. How exactly do you plan on containing an explosion 20x greater so it doesn't kill everyone in a 100 km radius?

The tsar bomb was a surface blast. Surface blast's send a lot of radioactive debris into the air. The pre cut piece of earth absorbs all the energy that a surface blast would send fallout into the sky with. I'm not sure what dimensions a gigaton bomb would be able to remove, The depth of the cratering converts a lot of the energy into weight displacement. For some reason I imagine a cube of earth 4,000 feet in dimensions but I haven't done those figures in a while.

How can fusion fuel be the fuel of the future if it isn't profitable to refine and use it? I'm no expert but it seems like you could use a small amount of fissable material that has already been refined and have up to 99.9 percent of the power come from fusion. The price of the fusion should be cheap because its so abundant. Again I'm no expert but I would say buying a bomb for a few milliion and adding several stages of fusion booster would be less then the several hundred billion you may get out of it. 

[Noteverythingisaconspiracy 19,072]

Do you really think that it is a very good idea to have people plant nukes all over the place for energy production ?

If your idea become a reality how are you going to make sure that no nukes fall into the wrong hands ?

Is it a very good idea to have many different nations making nukes ?

How do we make sure those nukes are for energy production and not to built a nuclear arsenal instead ?

Not to mention that your idea would violate the Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. 

[Noteverythingisaconspiracy 19,072]

2 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

The tsar bomb was a surface blast.

No it wasn't. The Tsar bomba detonated 4 kilometers above ground.

[DarkHunter 2,809]

2 hours ago, trevorhbj said:

The tsar bomb was a surface blast. Surface blast's send a lot of radioactive debris into the air. The pre cut piece of earth absorbs all the energy that a surface blast would send fallout into the sky with. I'm not sure what dimensions a gigaton bomb would be able to remove, The depth of the cratering converts a lot of the energy into weight displacement. For some reason I imagine a cube of earth 4,000 feet in dimensions but I haven't done those figures in a while.

How can fusion fuel be the fuel of the future if it isn't profitable to refine and use it? I'm no expert but it seems like you could use a small amount of fissable material that has already been refined and have up to 99.9 percent of the power come from fusion. The price of the fusion should be cheap because its so abundant. Again I'm no expert but I would say buying a bomb for a few milliion and adding several stages of fusion booster would be less then the several hundred billion you may get out of it. 

Since no one else has brought up this massive flaws I will.

You are not going to get anywhere near the level of energy to weight displacement that you think.  I know you mentioned doing some experiment with a fire cracker but that is no where close to simulating a nuclear blast, or is like comparing an apple to a truck full of hammers type difference.  

The first main issue with using a firecracker and trying to extrapolate to a nuclear blast is that the blast mechanisms are completely different.  The firecracker is a chemical explosion meaning that the blast works by taking normally a solid, sometimes a liquid or very rarely a gas, and having it undergo rapid decomposition to gas/gases that occupy a significantly larger volume under stp.  A nuclear explosion, regardless of it being fission or fusion, works by superheating the atmosphere to insane temperatures in an insanely small period of time causing the atmosphere in the immediate area to become super heated and expand.  

In firecrackers is normally either potassium chlorate or potassium perchlorate and either magnesium or aluminum powder or it's just straight up gunpowder.  Because I'm lazy I'm just going to do the work for a firecracker made up of gunpowder and use the simplified chemical equation of 2 KNO3 + S + 3 C reacting to form K2S + N2 + 3 CO2, actual chemical equation has a lot more stuff in it and I'm lazy so this will do for this example.  Going with 202.2 grams of KNO3, 32 grams of S, and 36 grams of C has a total weight of about 270 grams which occupies a space of about 128.3 cm^3.  Of its products only N2 and CO2 are gas so I'm just going to ignore K2S, but at stp the N2 will have a volume of 22,400 cm^3 and CO2 will have a volume of 67,200 cm^3 for a combined volume of 89,600 cm^3.  The change in volume is about an increase of 67,000%.  The significance is that when the firecracker goes off and changes from a solid to mostly a gas the space it occupies is far less then the space it wants at stp causing it to have a tremendous increase in temperature and pressure.  This increase in temperature and pressure causes it to push out in all directions as it tries to expand and cool down to reach equibrium with its surroundings and if there is a boundary that can move, like the rock in your experiment, it will push that boundary with tremendous force till equibrium is reached.

A nuclear explosion simply isn't going to do any of that as it's not converting something from a small volume to something with a significantly larger volume in a confined space, it's instead creating an insanely high temperature area.  With the insanely high temperatures if rock and dirt is close enough some of it would be vaporized and be super heated to create a blast force but no where near as much as it would with some atmosphere being present, which is also why nuclear weapons are usually designed as air blast weapons as if they detonate close to or at ground level their blast force is significantly reduced, if I remember correctly it's around like a 25% to 35% reduction in blast force.  Even if you add an atmosphere component by hollowing out a blast cavity for your idea, which will increase cost significantly, it still wouldn't work as the required volume at stp still wouldn't be changing significantly if at all and while the super heated atmosphere would provide a blast force it would quickly lose that force as it cools off which would happen before it had a chance to expand too much.

Basically a nuclear weapon detonated underground isn't going to clear out some mass amount of earth or push some boundary up that can be lowered down.  Project Gnome, part of operation Plowshard, denotaned a 3.1 kt nuke 361 m underground and measured the cavity formed to be about 28,000 m^3.  That might sound like a lot, but it's only slightly more then 10 Olympic swimming pools while the world's largest swimming pool is about 10 times the size of the cavity created.