Fusion Reactors starting to look more feasable?

GlynnStewart wrote:Yeah, mis-read the quote - my bad.

I could have sworn the Aviation Week article mentioned a testbed they already had running.

Either way, this is sadly early stages yet.

SWM wrote:Nope. Quoting from that Aviation Week article:

“We would like to get to a prototype in five generations. If we can meet our plan of doing a design-build-test generation every year, that will put us at about five years, and we’ve already shown we can do that in the lab.” The prototype would demonstrate ignition conditions and the ability to run for upward of 10 sec. in a steady state after the injectors, which will be used to ignite the plasma, are turned off. “So it wouldn’t be at full power, like a working concept reactor, but basically just showing that all the physics works,” McGuire says.

An initial production version could follow five years after that. “That will be a much bigger effort,”
[/Aviation Week]

They have not built a test model. They expect to take five test models before building a prototype, at one year per test model. Then the prototype will demonstrate actual ignition. Then 5 more years with prototypes before making a production model. From what I know of such projects and the description they give, the production model would be the first time they can get more power out than they put in.

yeah, that "already shown we can do that in the lab” initially sounds like they'd done some test models for this. But on reflection it seems more likely that the guy is just saying their lab has a track history of being able to iterate a test model every year on projects of similar complexity.

Jonathan_S wrote:yeah, that "already shown we can do that in the lab” initially sounds like they'd done some test models for this. But on reflection it seems more likely that the guy is just saying their lab has a track history of being able to iterate a test model every year on projects of similar complexity.

Considering how compact and simple the design looks compared to the Tokamak style it seems feasible with an iterative process that only has a cycle of 1 year. And the cost compared to what others have invested in ITER (50 billion USD so far) it seems like a no brainer plunking down some investment in it to see if it works, especially since the ROI-period is only 5-6 years.

I found it interesting that the design incorporates ideas and features from other conceptual fusion reactors, like the polywell which looked very promising but lacked funding.

Yeah, I'm a fan of the Farnsworth-Hirsch-Bussard Fusor. Neatly does away with a lot of the tokamak's problems. Just before he died, Dr. Robert Bussard (yep, THAT Bussard) estimated that it would cost less than $20 million to build a net-energy-producing prototype based on their last design.

Lockheed's design still has two fundamental problems - it uses bulk heating of the plasma to accelerate the particles by banging them against each other, and it attempts to confine heavy positive ions with magnetic fields, a process the Tokamak Boys refer to as "wrapping Jell-O up with rubber bands".

Where thermal fusion has to reach temperatures over 20 million Kelvin, the Fusor generates a much more effective potential well with less than 200,000 volts DC. It is also capable of achieving Hydrogen-Boron fusion which produces no neutrons, only alpha particles which pick up two electrons and become helium atoms. If they can be directed "uphill" to a plate with an appropriate positive charge, the reactor can convert fusion energy to electric current at over 90% efficiency. Of course you then face the problem of what to do with 100 amps or so at 1.6 million volts DC, but that should be solvable.
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If you ran a business the way they run the government, you'd either be in the poorhouse or jail within 6 months.

I have not read the above mentioned article(s), but I would suspect that the Navy, or actually the Defense Department in general, but run by the Navy, would be much more likely to develop Thorium Reactors than to bother with Fusion.

FFI, see:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flibe_Energy ,
* http://thoriumremix.com/th/ and
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fl ... um_reactor




.

One area I think is overlooked is that you need more than just a fusion reactor that, ultimately, is simply a heat generator... In conjunction with heat generation, we also need a more effective way to transfer that energy in a more efficient manner than steam turbines.

If someone can develop a breakthrough in thermo-electrics, well... I think you see the point.

BobG wrote:

Spacekiwi wrote:Well, at least this is a fair bit more plausible then that italian dude promising cold fusion at the mo. That, and the fact that its lockheeds skunkworks means that they might actually have a fair starting point. Fusion in 10 years? Probably not. 20? maybe.

There's another cold fusion article as well... The claim is that researchers from Sweden and Italy verified it does something, but they don't know how or what.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reactor-verified-by-third-party-researchers-seems-to-have-1-million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline

-- Bob G

Every time I see a cold fusion article, I cringe. I normally read them anyhow. This sounds interesting on the surface. If the independent testing organization has any credibility at all, the energy results they publish are so far out in absurdland that there has to be something interesting there.

If there is nothing there, well, then it's another example of a cold fusion hoax that's just ruined the credibility of an organization that likely only had the most tentative grasp on credibility to begin with. I've only skimmed the article once. Now time to read it more in depth and see what others have to say about it with a few pokes and prods at Google.

Cheopis wrote:

BobG wrote:There's another cold fusion article as well... The claim is that researchers from Sweden and Italy verified it does something, but they don't know how or what.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reactor-verified-by-third-party-researchers-seems-to-have-1-million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline

-- Bob G

Every time I see a cold fusion article, I cringe. I normally read them anyhow. This sounds interesting on the surface. If the independent testing organization has any credibility at all, the energy results they publish are so far out in absurdland that there has to be something interesting there.

If there is nothing there, well, then it's another example of a cold fusion hoax that's just ruined the credibility of an organization that likely only had the most tentative grasp on credibility to begin with. I've only skimmed the article once. Now time to read it more in depth and see what others have to say about it with a few pokes and prods at Google.

Pseudoscience.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiEC ... line.shtml

This particular energy source is a scam. If he had such amazing output from such a lightweight source, with no radiation, there would be people beating down his door to get access to the technology.

Hm,mm this is interesting on some levels. Seems to be just the containment systems proposed for early NASA rocket designs though. Doesn't look like they're going with laser initiation though.

Interesting but i'm not gonna put any money on it succeeding since there's no sign they've solved the equally large issue that igniting the fusion matter is really energy intensive. It's what tripped up laser initiation, the basic energy cost to do so was harshly underestimated and with current laser designs it's so huge it's cutting power generation too much.

Certainly if they can perfect the mag field design for containment purposes it will be a big step forward, but this won;t be what sorts the problem out IMO.