Alternative to Tokamak Fusion Reactor

Sterling D. Allan writes to tell us OpenSourceEnergy is reporting on a "far more feasible and profoundly less expensive approach to hot fusion". Inventor Eric Lerner's focus fusion process uses hydrogen and boron to combine into helium which gives off tremendous energy with a very small material requirement. Lerner's project apparently only requires a few million in capital investment which is a far cry from the $10 billion being spent on the Tokamak fusion project.

Comments

Equal time for cranks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does slashdot give time to cranks who purport to have achieve something revolutionary, but really have no idea what they're talking about?

Mmmmm... astroturf

[jfengel]

by Sterling D. Allan
Open Source Energy News -- Exclusive Interview

I suppose occasionally major scientific advances are announced in press releases, but since 99.999% of the time it's somebody jumping the gun, I think I'll let it go.

I do find it interesting that the article describes him as an "inventor" rather than a "physicist". Somehow when proposing a radically different model of the universe, the former always rings of "I was puttering around and I found something I didn't understand, therefore it must be both correct and completely novel."

None of this is proof that he's wrong, but the crank-o-meter is pushing towards the red zone. Which is too bad, because apparently he's an extremely smart man with a lot of valid research to his name.

Slashdot Needs a Science Editor

[jpgrimes]

As a scientist I'm dismayed by the number of people who always believe in science conspiracies (like here where he says the only reason he didn't get funding was the tokomak). It's hard to decide how useful this method really is from the article as it's not a science article, but I have some doubts.

What people need to realize about science like this is that if he can make this work he will be lauded and made very rich. Although science does make mistakes, occasionally supporting wrong theories and such, overall it progresses by natural selection (and those who are correct get high end jobs because of it). I would love to disprove dark matter or dark energy because that would make me really well known. But yet I read about how the entire field of astronomy is so stuck on it that they won't look at other possibilities (but we do and they don't work with what we know).

If this guy is correct he should be able to convince most other scientists in his field (which he hasn't been able to do). This isn't always due to science (some people can't communicate and sometime politics plays a role) but generally it is.

I wonder how many theories have been posted on slashdot now that are just like this. Slashdot has been around long enough that someone could go back and look at the current state of these theories. How many are still, "waiting for that big moment" even after they go some funding. More importantly, I think slashdot should make more of an effort to put up articles when they show something has been disproved (like that article a few weeks ago arguing against dark matter in galaxies which used the wrong gravitational potential). Somebody with a science background should at least edit the original slashdot post so that people could get a better background before deciding that the future of energy production is safe.

Reverse Particle Accelerator

[CustomDesigned]

The coffee can sized device is very similar to a plasma rocket engine. The rocket engine trys to keep the plasma symmetrical for nice controlled thrust. Focus fusion "snaps" the plasma filaments like a whip. At the tip, where a leather whip exceeds the speed of sound, the magnetic compression in the plasma is enough to ignite fusion. The plasma is then ejected in one direction at high speed, like the rocket engine. Ironically, the major problem plaguing conventional magnetically confined fusion is that the plasma "leaks" out in high speed jets. Both plasma rockets and focus fusion recognize that this can be a feature rather than a bug.

The neat thing is that the reaction ejects beta radiation (electrons) in all directions, but ejects the alpha particles with the plasma in one direction. The actual fusion generator is the size of a refrigerator, with the coffee can near one end. The larger device captures the beta radiation with a shell around the reactor and has a target at the other end to collect the alpha radiation. The result - fusion reaction produces current directly! The next refinement *decelerates* the speeding alpha particles through a magnetic field, converting their kinetic energy to electricity before it heats up the target. That is the "reverse particle accelerator" aspect. Beta radiation ejected in the same direction as the alpha beam is "lost" and becomes heat at the target. Future refinements will make the alpha beam as narrow as possible so as to minimize the number of beta particles it takes with it.

After the proof of concept, engineering challenges include materials to collect beta radiation without becoming dangerously radioactive, materials to collect alpha radiation (hopefully low speed after magnetic decceleration) without becoming dangerously radioactive, and shielding to stop the occasional neutrons (from impurities, and the random nature of nuclear reactions). Will also need to store energy to "crack the magnetic whip" to drive the reaction, and meter precise amounts of ionized fuel. I'm not convinced that too much fuel won't be dangerous.

Re:Eric Lerner

[deglr6328]

"Transient nonequilibrium burning systems [are ruled out] which try to produce enough fusion power before the particle distributions equiligrate (eg. ICF, bombs, and pulsed beam methods)."

That is bizzare. I'm really at a loss to explain such a statement, though, IANAP. Obviously fusion bombs work and DO produce far more energy than they consume and ICF is capable of doing the same or this would not be currently under construction. I can't understand what he may have meant by such a statement. weird.