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Bubble Fusion Results Replicated by 4 Institutions
Trackster writes ""TROY, N.Y. - Physical Review E has announced the publication of an article by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Purdue University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) stating that they have replicated and extended previous experimental results that indicated the occurrence of nuclear fusion using a novel approach for plasma confinement." Here's another link in case EVWorld gets burned."
Are we allowed to get excited at the possibility of a new form of energy, or do we still have maintain an air of scepticism at this unorthodox fusion method? Also does anyone know why they used D + D fusion reaction rather than the more common D + T reaction? One of the quotes suggests that it is possible, and being more energetically favourable (from what I remember), I wonder why it wasn't used.
What the article doesn't mention is how useful this might be. It appears that they have devised a reliable way to trigger a fusion reaction, but is it feasible to use it for electrical generation, for example? I understand that the major problem with fusion reactor research is that they have always consumed more energy than they have produced, making them quite useless for actually generating energy. But since they are not inducing the reaction with high-powered electromagnets as has been done in the past, would this enable the possibility of a true fusion generator?
Desktop nuclear fission, eh? Sure the power generation is less than parity, but a portable neutron generating device could be used for so many things - medical scans, security scans, neutron vision goggles...
and of course
Shark-mounted Neutron Cannon.
The Tokamac people got to break even in 97(IIRC). So something, at least came of it.
The problem I see with this bubble stuff is that they detect it by the emission of neutrons. Anything which gives out lots of neutrons is going to have many of the problems of fission - any plant big enough tobe useful will need shielding and will produce nasty waste makeing decomissioning expensive.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
From the Business Week article, it looks like they're making stronger vessels to hold the liquids at very high pressures:
"Since ordinary sonoluminescence delivers so much energy at pressures of only one or two atmospheres," he says, "you could hope that at 1,000 atmospheres, you'd be in fusion territory -- if the temperature also scaled up. But that's a really big 'if."'
I'm also surprised that this isn't on the main page of Slashdot. When reading the previous article on the discovery, there was a lot of "let's wait for confirmation" messages. Now we have it and it seems an appropriate time to get excited.
The coolest part about all of this is that it's relatively cheap, with the possibility of inexpensive and clean energy. The scary aspect that I haven't seen mentioned is that it could be an good source of neutrons used to enrich uranium and make weapons-grade material.
I'm too lazy to even try an order of magnitude estimate for this, but I wonder how much the symmetry of the collapsing bubble is distorted by the gravitational pressure gradient. A few nanoseconds isn't much time to develop distortions, but 6 mm is damn big for this sort of thing. When the bubbles collapse back to nanometer scales, any deviation from spherical symmetry will become quite apparent. The question is whether gravity is a significant contributor to such imperfections when compared to thermal fluctuations, momentum from the incident neutrons, and the like. If so, conducting the reaction in microgravity could get the system that much closer to break-even (not that I expect they'll be close anytime soon, but it's fun to think about).
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
I do not know about Princeton but the JET Experiment reached Breakeven in 1997. Spot-on about the neutron production issues though.
That's the same sort of thing people were saying 60 years ago.
When physicists started doing fusion research, the plasma chambers were about 3 feet on a side, and very easy to use (comparitively speaking). Most people didn't believe it would ever amount to anything, but everyone was in awe of the compactness, elegance and exotic behavior of the experiment.
The scientests working on it probably said exactly the same thing these guys are saying: we see some energy out, we're not quite at break even, but we'll get there.
After working with fusion guys for a couple of years, I know that this stuff gets complicated really fast. This bubble fusion technique is at the point laser fusion was at 15 years ago, which means it's about time everyone started taking it seriously. In a few years we'll be debating where to put the new, mega-huge bubble fusion test reactor, which will bring us, again, one step closer.
Sometime in the next 50 years, one of these methods will turn the corner. The magnetic field people will figure out what to make thier vessel walls out of, the laser people will figure out how to make and shoot perfect hollow spheres of frozen DT, or these guys will overcome whatever unknown problem is keeping them from producing energy.
I was at a conference of the ASA a year or so ago, and those in the know at the conference stuck around in one particular room for a particular series of talks.
First the internal review committe from Oak Ridge talked about how they couldn't find much evidence that Taleyarkhan and his group had actually produced bubble fusion -- this was pretty deadly in a scientific sense, since their OWN lab was very critical of their work. But then Taleyarkhan talked, and gave careful and convincing evidence to the contrary: His group actually HAD produced bubble fusion. It was a pretty tense afternoon, though everyone seemed to be of relatively good cheer. Fun times!
I hope Taleyarkhan and his group actually do figure a way to produce and control -- and maybe harness the energies produced -- bubble fusion; since I'm in physical acoustics, this means more jobs for me to go into!
I work at Oak Ridge National Lab (although not in physics and I don't know these folks). A physics person I spoke to that has some inside perspective seems to think that it is legit.
However, he doesn't think there are any ideas around about how it could be applied to exctract any positive energy budget at this stage (let alone any practical ones). Unfortunately.
We can just hope that more people paying attention to it will increase the likelihood that some bright person will get some ideas in that direction.
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