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Liquid Lithium to Contain Fusion Reactors

Posted by michael on from the hot-enough-for-you dept.

nigelc writes: "ABCNews.com reports on Liquid Metal walls for a fusion reactor, and how it may solve some of the temperature problems. Probably only of scientific interest to most of us, unless you're into some serious overclocking.""

3 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. This is science journalism? by Spamalamadingdong · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The article states:
    and then direct a torrent of neutrons to collide head-on.
    No fusion reactor does any such thing. Collisions of neutrons with neutrons do not figure in any reactor currently contemplated, fusion or fission; the only collisions are between neutrons and nuclei, or between nuclei themselves. So why is a science-illiterate writing an article about the cutting edge of fusion research, and why should we give the slightest bit of credence to either an author or a news outlet which would let something like this go out without proper fact-checking?
    --
    Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
    1. Re:This is science journalism? by lee1 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The article doesn't make itself very clear, but it doesn't say that the neutrons collide with each other head-on.
      It seems pretty clear to me that that was the author's intent, so I agree with the poster who lamented the journalist's paucity of background knowledge. But I had a different problem with the article (which read as if it were written for children, like everything generated by ABC, but that's ok): since I work on Inertially Confined (laser) Fusion, and liquid metal walls for ICF chambers have been pretty much assumed for years, I was a little confused by the article until it dawned on me that (1) it's only about magnetically confined fusion (2) the author and his editors are unaware that there are several schemes for fusion energy being funded on a large scale by the US, so (3) for this (yes, alas, scientifically illiterate) author, "fusion" means "magnetically confined fusion". In summary, the article was useless, muddled, and confusing, and the author is not qualified.
  2. Re:Lets try a little logic here by TheBoquaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you get nothing else out of this, know that neutron absorbtion and tritium production are GOOD, not sneaky, nor nefarious. They are things we are trying to accomplish so that this will be a commercially viable technology.

    From working at General Atomics in San Diego, I know that the "wall problem" is one of the few last hurdles that fusion programs will have to clear before they produce a commercial grade reactor.

    So... what will this wall need to do?
    First, it's there in part to seal in the vacuum chamber, but there are many ways of doing that.
    Second... well, there are a LOT of things the wall has to do, but one of the most difficult, and important is that it HAS to absorb neutrons.

    You point out that lithium absorbs neutrons all over the place, and that makes you suspicious. The reason they want to use lithium in liquid walls is because it absorbs neutrons! In fact, it would be nice if it absorbed MORE neutrons. They want to use lithium in solid walls, but it melts too quickly, hence, liquid walls.

    We don't want those things just flying around everywhere, I would rather create some tritium than irradiate my office (and if you can feed it back into the reactor... remember tritium is FUEL for fusion plants!)

    I'm sure that the engineers who will eventually design a lithium, liquid metal wall reactor will have no idea what to do with all this spare fuel they are generating. What a problem! Better just go sell it to the government, because we don't want any more fuel in our reactor.