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Amateur Scientists Seek Fusion Reaction
ElvaWSJ writes "A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans — fewer than 100 worldwide — are building working nuclear-fusion reactors at home. The designs are based on the work of Philo T. Farnsworth, an inventor of television, from the 1960s. Some of these hobbyists hope similar reactors can one day power the planet, but so far they consume more energy than they create."
Can a string theorist explain why this won't work?, in simple terms please.
Does anyone remember the "radioactive boyscout"?
David Hahn to make his own reactor (breeder, i think). He accumulated quantities of radium and tritium from smoke detectors and lantern mantles in a shed. The DOE had to lock down his parents whole house and yard to clean it up.
David Haun
"A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans -- fewer than 100 worldwide -- are building working perpetual motion devices at home. The designs are based on the work of Albert Michelson, co-proponent of luminiferous aether theory, from the 1890s. Some of these hobbyists hope similar devices can one day power the planet, but so far they consume more energy than they create."
Good article.
All known hydrogen fusion reactions produce strong neutron fluxes. Strong enough to kill, and death by radiation poisoning is not my idea of a fun time.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
who built a tabletop farnsworth reactor a few years ago
its technically challenging to build one of these, but not beyond the skillset and material list of a committed and persevering amateur science buff
however, saying that once you build one you can work towards self-sustaining fusion is like saying after playing with legos you can go build a pyramid. well yea, you have the conceptualization down, but you still need to move heaven and earth and invest trillions
having said that, what these guys are doing is still important in terms of awareness and getting the good word out. we NEED fusion power. to save us from pollution, global warming, petrodollar funded russian neoimperialism and islamic fundamentalism, etc.
and one of these guys just one day may provide the mental spark to get working a real breakthrough in the field, or inspire a kid somewhere to wonder in awe, and he grows up to provide that mental spark of a breakthrough. anyone who doubts that is just way too jaded
so i salute you amateur fusion researchers
keep hope alive
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, this really works as advertised. It's a high school science faire level of complexity and cost (if you're willing to deal with stray neutrons). For practical reasons, it can't be made to produce more energy than it consumes, is all. The principles have been known since the 20s. Robert Bussard (of Bussard Ramjet fame) had patents on it.
People do not build the reactors to get energy. One of the reasons they are built is to see a fusion reaction, which is quite impressive. There are some videos on youtube.
Farnsworth fusors are widely used in medicine and research as an easily controlled and cheap source of neutrons.
Despite the fact that this is a link to a non-technical publication's website, the Farnsworth Fusor is a real fusion device and works basically how they describe it. What it is not, however, is anticipated to ever be a viable power source, and there are significant theoretical hurdles to prevent it from being viable relative to other approaches (and when you make any kind of fusion reactor seem plausible in comparison, you're probably not going anywhere). In my experience, most hobbyists are well aware of this and just enjoy the tinkering.
The primary functions of a fusor are 1) Generate neutrons 2) Look really cool 3) Kill you with extremely high voltages if you screw up.
Its for the tinkerer who wishes to learn more about high vacuum pumps (absorption, ion, vane, turbo...), vacuum chamber design (welding, management of outgassing...), low pressure measurement, low pressure gas flow, high voltage (flybacks, diode stacks, corona discharge, flashover...), particle detectors (scintillators, avalanche photodiodes, image intensifiers, calibrated op amps...), instrument design (fast ADCs, multi-channel analyzers...), oh and some cool stuff related to nuclear physics thrown in. Most of us can't buy all the gear, so we make it all from scrounged parts. And learn a tremendous amount of related engineering in the process. Look at it this way - its like the difference between building an RC car and rebuilding a classic car - anyone can toss together a kit, but if you want to learn how to restore an older car you end up learning dozens of skills you didn't realize you need. Its one of the most interesting educational projects in modern science that isn't illegal (yet).
Focusing on Farnsworth fusors in an article written in part about fusion as a possible energy source seems as poorly researched as writing about steam engines in an article about internal combustion. The polywell seems be the heir apparent for serious work in energy out of the fusor lineage.
But the stray neutrons (or other energetic particles, depending on the reaction) are the real problem with fusion as a power source. To quote TFA:
Fusion advocates say reactors would be relatively clean, generating virtually no air pollution and little long-lived radioactive waste. Today's nuclear power plants, in contrast, are fission-based, meaning they split atoms and create a highly radioactive waste that can take millennia to decompose.
The spent fuel from a fission reactor is just not that hard to deal with - park it in a contianment area as robust as the reactor itself for 5-10 years, and you're left with not-very-much not-very-radioactive waste that could be easily disposed of, if it weren't so valuable that we insist on keeping it instead.
It's the rest of the reactor that's the serious problem. Depending on the reactor design, quite a bit of the reactor structure can become radioactive over time.
Fusion is going to have the same problem. Even if you have a reactor vessel the size of a washing machine, you're going to need significant shielding, an energy transfer mechanism (water leading to a turbine or something), structural elements, etc. Surem the problem with spent fuel goes away, but the problem with speant reactors remains. Not something you'd want in everyone's basement.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Sweet. They built a time machine.
.
Best book on the early days of television that I have read. The above quote is from page 126.
As the summary acknowledges, the fusor has been around for a while. If it were theoreticly possible to get net power gain, don't you think it would have been tried?
I doubt many of the people experimenting with the fusor are seriously trying to get net power gain. It's useful as a neutron source. Thus, you could make isotopes with it. That's rather scary, and something that I'm sure a lot of people would not want advertised; but it's also common knowledge for anybody who has an interest in nuclear science.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Only the first paragraph was quoted from TFA - preview button, who needs it!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I can't fucking wait for the day cold fusion arrives and we get to tell all those assholes in the middle east "Hey heres a fusion reactor that lasts for a century and costs $500. We'll no longer be needing your oil"
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans -- fewer than 100 worldwide -- are building working nuclear-fusion reactors at home.
In other news, a small subculture of amateur neoconservatives are building working homemade tanks, fighter jets and cruise missiles in order to seek out and destroy these Weapons Of Mass Destruction before its too late and a mushroom cloud appears in somebody's basement
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I don't think anyone building these expects to ever have a net power output from them -- that's not the point. The point is to be able to say you built a fusion reactor, or as others have said to generate isotopes for other experimenting, etc.
IMO, a more important area of amateur and admittedly fringe scientific research around fusion and fusion-like reactions is the several hundred teams that still continue to this day to investigate what the heck is going on with low temperature fusion. Tons of progress is being made in the field, and some reasonable theories are starting to form. There's a lot of unknowns, but helium is regularly produced, neutrons are regularly produced and more interesting from a theoretical standpoint, lots of atoms are changing from one element to another...
Its like the 1700's experimenting with chemistry. Lots of people doing lots of very cool and interesting experiments and getting lots of very interesting results, even if we (humanity, not me personally) still don't quite get it.
IMO, its an aspect of science we miss in the modern world. These days we just assume we understand things pretty well and experimenting is about engineering or proving a theory. Its cool there are still areas of fundamental science experimentation going on where we just don't get what is happening and have no idea what might happen with the next variant.
Farnsworth fusors are also used as a laboratory source of neutrons. For that application it only matters that they produce sufficient neutrons of the required energy.
Are these the same yahoos that post videos of "perpetual" motion machines on Youtube?
No. Wikipedia is your friend.
Farnsworth - Hirsch - Meeks fusors are quite real and effective. They're easy to build even by hobbyists using readily obtainable parts. Commercial versions serve as controllable neutron sources. Fusion neutron output of up to a trillion per second has been reported and rates in the billions per second are easily obtainable. To date it is estimated that Farnsworth-Hirsch-Meeks fusors have produced far more total fusion neutrons than all other non-bomb fusion devices combined.
Downside is that they involve ions moving in a trajectory past a metal electrode, which they must pass without hitting many thousands of times on the average before they participate in a fusion reaction. Hitting the electrode loses the energy used to create the ion and attempt to confine it, dumping the energy as heat in the electrode. Getting the electrode to be sufficiently "transparent" to achieve breakeven seems to be a lost cause.
Bussard's family of Polywell fusion machine designs apparently started as an attempt to steer the ions around the inner electrode of a Farnsworth-Hirsch-Meeks machine using a magnetic field. But it has since developed into a different (though related) principle: Use the magnetic field from the self-shielding magnet/electrodes to confine electrons (which are much easier to handle), creating a high-density space charge in the center of the machine. Use the electrostatic field of the electrons to attract and confine the ions in this region at high density and temperature, resulting in fusion. The magnetic field still shields the inner structures and the field is convex toward the plasma, limiting the plasma instabilities the plague "conventional" fusion machines.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Burger King and Taco Bell? You could do so much better. Let me help.
Step 1: Broccoli and Cheese soup. Crush some Oyster Crackers into it and DON'T forget the Tabasco sauce.
Step 2: Pork and Beans. 1 Can. Always a classic.
Step 3: ONE foot-long-cheap-ass Don Miguel burrito (the spicy red one). Can be purchased at any fine 7-11 anywhere. Only ONE. Trust me.
Step 4: 5 Hardboiled eggs with salt and pepper.
Step 5: Steamed Cabbage and 2 raw onions with plenty of butter.
Step 6: A single large bag of Funyuns.
Do all of this within 3 1/2 hours. Sit on the couch and wait about another 2-3 hours. Hold everything in till about 6 hours after you started.
You know that saying "killed the dog"? Well if you have pets, I don't recommend this.
DISCLAIMER: If you have any kind of a heart condition, or if anyone else in the house has one DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS.
There was an article by Tom Ligon in Analog back in September 1998-- it's available on the web if you're interested in more details.
This is pretty cool. I love amateur science.
With that said, note that there is a vast difference between merely demonstrating fusion, and producing usable power by fusion, roughly similar to the gap between the glow of your old radium watch dial, and a nuclear bomb. But if the hobbiests can learn to scale it up... now, that would be cool.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
No, no, no. It's not "almost" fusion. It is fusion. It is almost a fusion generator. That doesn't mean fusion isn't occurring. It means that the reaction is not self-sustaining. There's a huge difference. Saying that it isn't fusion is like saying that a match placed in a sealed jar and set ablaze using a laser isn't really fire because it consumes all the oxygen and burns out and there's no way to add more oxygen....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Now if they could put it in the form of a suppository...
not plane, nor bird, nor even frog...
" The designs are based on the work of Albert Michelson, co-proponent of luminiferous aether theory, from the 1890s."
It's worth reminding people that, whatever his original views of luminiferous aether, Michelson was one of the great experimentalists of the 19th century and his name is most firmly associated with the experiment that's widely credited with experimentaly destroying the credibility of aether theories.
(It's still possible to come up with aether theories even with the Michelson-Morley results (and the results of hundreds of other people who replicated and refined that result), but it's much more difficult, and the resulting theories end up rather hard to credit.) I assume that the original use of the word "proponent" was a typo).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Confucius say "Man who build fusion reactor at home flux his wife instead of his secretary."
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Apparently, he never wants to get laid ... EVER!
As someone who has worked in fusion, there is significant radiation created by the process. The larger reactors can't run on the ideal deuterium/tritium mixture because it would irradiate entire cities while the reactor burned. I would not want a small one in my garage. The reactor I worked on was in a concrete bunker a fair distance away from any people. It was also the size of a large house.
If you want to live in the future and be on the cutting edge of science, go to grad school and study physics (you're never too old). There are not enough people seriously studying fusion. You'll get paid to work on reactors (big or small) which may have a commercial future. We wear snarky shirts that no one understands too.
Why isn't this tagged with "goodnewseveryone"?
Robert Bussard (of Bussard Ramjet fame) had patents on it.
The patents apply to a fancier version called the Polywell. Polywell attempts to cut losses to the point where net power is possible. As far as I know, no hobbyist has attempted that one yet. It's a much more expensive design that, depending on the fuel, would generate truly lethal doses of neutrons, and would need lots of shielding.
If we just gathered together enough matter, it would start fusing on its own through gravitational force. Using this method, we could create a gigantic fusion reactor in space, and then collect its radiation and convert it to electricity. It would be kind of like harnessing the solar power of the sun...oh wait...
But the stray neutrons (or other energetic particles, depending on the reaction) are the real problem with fusion as a power source.
That actually depends on what your fuel source is. The common science fair level project uses hydrogen (not deuterium, even), and produces, IIRC, neutrons. There are other fuels possible, and some don't produce much of anything nasty. IIRC, Lithium 3 on one side and Lithium 4 on the other produces stable helium isotopes, and electricity, and absolutely nothing else.
There are still issues with fuel that misses other fuel striking internal components of the reaction chamber, which can produce some radioactivity, but getting to the self-sustaining point will also greatly reduce this sorts of unwanted collisions and ther resulting radioactive byproducts.
Yes, you are correct about exceeding critical mass, but keep in mind that simply having a supercritical mass is still a long way from having anything that will do anything spectacular like explode. A supercritical mass would be much happier to simply melt itself (and everything it's in contact with) into a molten and highly radioactive goo. It can take a long time for this to happen if the mass is not far above critical, plenty of time to disassemble or disable it.
Not to say it's particularly safe, either, you'll probably die of radiation poisoning not too long afterwards, like the two scientists who accidentally let the "demon core" go supercritical back in the 40s.
Random and weird software I've written.
No work is being done, so therefore no energy consumption is required.
By the same token glue would be producing energy by making two things stick to each other...
MP3 Search Engine
Actually, Bussard was trying to use a Boron-11 fuel matrix that doesn't release neutrons in the same fashion as Deuterium fusion does. One of the reasons for this is precisely to help cut down on the neutron flux coming from the reactor.
His design goal was to use it as a direct drop-in replacement for boilers at coal-fired power plants, using similar sorts of shielding and precautions as would be already in place for such a facility. Water in the boiler itself would offer what extra protection would be needed, and radiation levels for released radioactive products would be lower than would be typical for a coal plant as well.
FYI, coal plants release far more radioactive waste per kWh generated than the worst and most inefficient nuclear power plants... with perhaps the singlar exception of Chernobyl. Even that I'm not 100% certain of.
This said, you are correct that the fusion rate in a Polywell is something of a much greater concern if you actually got one going, and would be leathal if it used traditional fusion fuel targets.
I don't see anything in that link except typical Greenpeace alarmism confounding ridiculously trivial releases of radiation with "millions of litres" of radioactive water. Sure, the water might be slightly radioactive, but so is the carbon-14 in your bones -- what of it? Why don't they give us a calibrated measurement of the radiation in the released waste and put it into perspective relating to other forms of radiation? My guess is because that wouldn't serve to advance their anti-nuke FUD agenda.
create a highly radioactive waste that can take millennia to decompose.
Bullshit. You have nuclear waste highly radioactive, or cold waste which take millennia to decompose.
In fact, the nuclear waste can be recycled into fissible material, hot subproducts (very appreciated by the pharmaceutic industry), and cold waste which take millennia to decompose.
"before its too late and a mushroom cloud appears in somebody's basement"
I for one cannot wait for the moment one of those amateur fusion tinkerers vaporizes his own house in one humongous boom. I'll be there and cheering when it happens.
Do you know why ?
Because it'll signal the end of a whole era. Have you followed the research domain of LENR/CANR - formerly known as "cold fusion" - over the years, for example ? There you have thousands of labs all around the planet making endless refinements and taking almost infinite precautions so they make the most impossibly-deniable measurement of some excess heat when electrolyzing half a pint of water.
This is madness ! That kind of exercise in pointless "due process" is an incredible waste of time ! That's at best undergrad routine, it should be reserved for the time when LENR/CANR/LANR/whatever-it-is makes it to mainstream acceptance, and be funded with leftover budget while the big names focus on the Big Things like earning a Nobel rewriting our understanding of chemistry and building net power generators and licencing the tech all around.
What those guys really need to build acceptance and make a true breakthrough is one of them to go in a huge boom that razes a whole wing of the electrochemistry department building, a boom so big no one can pretend with a straight face that the excess energy in the beer-mug-sized jar was just a measurement fluke. A large fireball rising amidst flying debris and thunder ! What better pan-in-the-face demonstration of useable excess energy or net power gain can you wish for ?
How many brilliant chemist careers were started by exploding hydrogen-filled balloons and/or dumping raw sodium metal in water ? This is what we really need: more big booms for science's future ! More awe in the eyes of the passers-by ! Nuclear technology did not build such a pervasive recognition in the mainstream throughout the 50s by merely splitting some atoms inside a heavy graphite box, but by expanding radioactive mushrooms of fiery hell to the stratosphere !
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Now look at a float glass plant, a steel continuous casting and rolling mill, or any likely practical fusion design. They simply do not work at small scales, therefore they cannot be developed by cottage industry.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Here's an honest question: where do our iron deposits come from?
Um ... from dead stars that had enough mass to produce iron (as well as even heavier elements) as they died. This means stars that were much more massive than our little sun.
expensive solar pannels which have to be replaced regularly and block all the light from the ground below them making it useless for much else
Well, Arecibo radiotelescope opponents said the same and, lo and behold, under the reflector panels there's a bloody jungle.
I said per kilowatt-hour produced. Geesh... did you even pay attention to what I had to say?
Chernobyl was awful, and I don't dispute that. I also noted it was a major exception to the general rule. The one thing that makes Chernobyl so incredibly awful is due to the fact that all of the material is concentrated in one place. The reason I hesitate about how damaging it was in comparison to coal is due to the fact that Chernobyl is not only a major facility, but that it is still supplying electricity to the Grid in Eastern Europe.
It is likely that Chernobyl would beat out a coal plant using sources particularly high in radioactive elements in terms of kilowatt-hours of energy produced, but I don't think it would be several orders of magnitude higher. Keep in mind that the coal plants spew this "waste" willy-nilly all over the entire area where they are located, and over the course of decades and not all at once like the Chernobyl disaster did. I also lack all of the specific numbers to do a strict comparison.
That facility is also an example of awful engineering that simply wouldn't happen in the regulatory environment of western governments, but that is a separate issue.
As far as citations or evidence, I could give dozens here. Here are a couple that perhaps you ought to read if you don't want to believe little old me:
At least so far as some "common sense" stuff, keep in mind that coal comes from underground sources and that often that coal is mixed with a whole bunch of other elements, including nearly every naturally occurring radioactive element on the Earth. Trace amounts of Uranium alone is sufficient to spread huge amounts of low-level radiation over nearly all of the soot fall-out that comes from the burning of coal... and that goes right up the chimney.
BTW, as far as the nuclear industry being aware of this... it has been "common knowledge" for decades. They have used this argument, but very few people are really paying attention. Certainly not the "greens" that get into an uproar over the construction of nuclear power plants. This isn't in the major news media outlets because it isn't really even news. There isn't anything "new" about this sort of information, even if it may be a revelation to you.
James Lovelock and Patrick Moore (Greenpeace co-founder) are just some of the people pushing for increased use of nuclear power at the moment.
Nuclear power is indeed cleaner than coal and is the only realistic alternative to coal available today for baseline power generation.
The "pro-nuclear fanboys" that you are complaining about here are the engineers who know a hell of a lot more about nuclear power than you do... partly due to the fact that they are in the trenches helping to design these things and have a hell of a lot better knowledge about basic physics than you seem to be demonstrating with this sort of posting.
If this gives me a chance to vent my spleen, so be it.
I will admit that there are issues well above and beyond just the raw design of the reactor, and the concentration of wealth/power that comes from the building of a major nuclear power plant is a huge issue as well.
One of the advantages of the polywell reactor is that it would de-centralize the building of power plants, and put them on the scale of a neighborhood plant that wouldn't be a major terrorist target. This is a reactor that conceivably an ordinary person in a 1st world country could own on their own, or at least it could be owned by a small non-profit group.
Another of the more interesting applications that Bussard and his team came up with was a nuclear-powered semi-truck using this technology. He didn't think he could get it any smaller than something on the back of a semi-trailer rig, but it could be used on that scale and haul freight on that sort of scale. That the radioactive products would be low-grade enough to allow transport on public highways is something to think about as well.
Of course all of this depends on getting the Polywell to work in the first place. While there have been some interesting promises, Bussard had his funding dry up right before he died. There is a group that was able to get some continued funding on the idea, but it is in the backwater of the R&D development.
As an extra note, the reason why there were budget cuts for this line of fusion research: The war in Iraq. Seriously. That was the explicit reason given by the OMB about why this research program was cut. Now mull that one over for a little while. This is about the "greenest" form of power production that I can even think about, yet because it is "nuclear", the green movement doesn't want to touch it at all.
up to 500 micro-sieverts each hour
1 sievert (SV) = 100 rem So, we're talking about tens of milli-rems per hour. Great. You get cosmic radiation at a higher rate than that by flying on an airliner.
a no-dive zone was self imposed by Greenpeace's radio-protection officer
Yeah, like that means anything. Just more food for the FUD.
French Environment and Health Ministries commissioned an official epidemiological study of leukaemia around La Hague
Over ten years ago, studying a quickly-appearing illness. No results? No surprise.
Measurements taken by OPRI near the beaches detected no radioactivity above the natural radioactivity level
See? Greenpeace has no substance to their argument.
I'll admit that no plant should circumvent the guidelines, nor should they then hide that fact. But the facts are that the safety guidelines are many times more strict for nuclear power than for any other type of power. I don't mean precautionary measures, I mean environmental impact. Coal plants release many times more radiation, spreading it over large areas via their smokestacks, than nuclear plants could even dream of. Even wind power has a greater carbon impact than nuclear power -- from start to finish, including building infrastructure, mining uranium, and handling the waste. Again, La Hague seems to be acting in an unethical manner, but I just can't stand all the ignorance about nuclear power.