More Evidence for Tabletop Fusion

heptapod writes "Researchers at Purdue University have statistically significant evidence that their tabletop fusion experiments were successful. Yiban Xu's experiment different from an earlier Oak Ridge experiment using a different and cheaper source of neutrons than Oak Ridge's pulse neutron generator. Surpassing break-even point still eludes the grasp of science."

Comments

Re: More Evidence for Tabletop Fusion

[lightyear4]

Statistical evidence of fusion at this level is indeed impressive; however, while fusion experiments such as this others remain below the break-even point, they shall yet be little more than a labtable source of neutrons. We await developments from the latest in the field.

Re:Source?

[jericho4.0]

It was published in Nuclear Engineering and Design in May (last article in list).

5+ standard deviations against the control is interesting. Should be easy to reproduce. (or not).

tabletop fusion has been around for decades

[cahiha]

You can get tabletop fusion with a TV high voltage supply, a glass bulb, some wire, and deuteriums gas. That's been known for decades and is used as a neutron source commercially. People build those things for science fairs. It's called the "Farnsworth Fusor" (I know, in light of Futurama it sounds like a joke, but the fictional character was named after the real one).

Why don't we all have flying cars, then? Because you can't get a net energy gain with the Farnsworth Fusor--it seems to be impossible in general to do so, the numbers just don't work out.

Of course, even if you do make it efficient, it's not exactly "clean energy": even with so-called aneutronic fusion, a few percent of the fusion reactions will generate neutrons, which, for realistic power generation, results in a neutron flux that causes the power generation to be quite dirty. Not as dirty as fission--disposal should be easier--but don't expect something harmless you can just run in your basement.

So, tabletop fusion isn't really anything impressive: there are probably lots of ways of getting fusion on your tabletop. The question is how you make it efficient enough to useful amounts of energy out of it. And cavitation seems no more promising there than inertial confinement in the Farnsworth Fusor. But maybe if enough people keep playing around with this, someone will get lucky and find something that works.

Re:Cars?

[deragon]

About coal being worse than nuclear, I have not the best references, but here are a few:

http://geology.cr.usgs.gov/energy/factshts/163-97/ FS-163-97.html
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html
http://yarchive.net/nuke/coal_radiation.html