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A Step Closer To Cheap Nuclear Fusion
ewsnow writes "The Focus Fusion Society reports that the scientists and engineers at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics have finally built an operational Dense Plasma Focus device. While still at less than half power, they were able to achieve a pinch on their device. The small company that Eric Lerner started recently gathered enough funding to start a two-year study on the validity of his theory regarding fusion-inducing plasmoids. If the theory holds, the device will produce more electricity than it consumes. In contrast to the billions of dollars spent on Tokamak fusion (think ITER), LPP is conducting their research on a budget around a million dollars. Yet, if it works, it will provide nuclear fusion with much simpler equipment and much less cost. Eric Lerner and Focus Fusion have been discussed on Slashdot before."
Sorry but the reaction "H + B -> 3 He" is nuclear fission -- the fission of boron.
Isn't that what they use on the sun!? I don't want that sort of thing in my backyard! what if the reaction gets out of control and it annihilates the entire solar system!? What are we going to do with all of the nucular waste?
Folks, can we pretty please think of another name for this stuff? 50 years worth of misinformation is, I fear, holding us back. People here the word "nuclear" and immediately start shitting their pants with fear.
I vote we call it "Hydrogen Energy". After all, hydrogen is 2/3 of the ingredients in water!
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
I really hope this works. I get more excited about science for cheap and clean energy production than I do about efforts to raise the cost of energy consumption as a means to drive conservation. Too much emphasis on conservation will lead to a world where only rich people have the freedom to consume large amounts of energy. Access to cheap and clean power must be pushed down to today's poor. This will offer lots of ways for them to overcome their systemic poverty.
The idea is interesting- creating a self confining toroid of plasma instead of relying solely on external magnetic containment but from what I've seen of the "tech" it looks to be unfortunately the work of crackpots. Don't get me wrong, I really hope that they actually succeed in doing what they're claiming they can but I sincerely doubt it.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
This is great news! If this works, I'll be able to install a Mr. Fusion device on my DeLorean, which should be able to generate the 1.21 Gigawatts of electricity that I need to run my flux capacitor! I'll no longer need to steal Plutonium from the Iranians! ;-)
I was about 3/4's power and after a night at the bar, and I achieved not just one pinch, but several, some spontaneous and uncontrollable followed by a full on intra-device regurgitation.
I hear Fusion has moved from "Always being 10 years away" to "Always being 5 years away." Great progress!
Fusion is difficult, REALLY difficult. But once it gets working, it will provide abundantly cheap energy with relatively few side effects. The availability of fusion will trigger a revolution similar to the beginning of the industrial age. Cheap, clean energy with no dependence on hateful towel-heads - what's not to like?
Fusion is a long-term project, so whoever funds it risks not seeing the rewards. So all those who could be funding research are holding back in hopes that someone else will do the work for them. Shareholders demand consistent and predictable profits, so the standard capitalist model of venture capitalization no longer works for powering "ventures" in the original sense of the word.
Wouldn't it be funny if they got it working in China, say, or Japan, and they'd end up collecting lifetimes of royalties from the US?
I would love to see this (both the expensive high-power stuff and the cheap off-chance research) funded much more heavily by the governments of the world.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
You keep using that word. I don't know it means what you think it means. Theories don't "hold". Theories are verified and verifiable explanations of the behaviour of natural processes. If you have a plausible explanation that you still need to validate either by physical observations or by logical deductions then what you have is an hypothesis. Come on, the words have very specifically defined meanings. Please don't add to the confusion.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Where we're going, we don't need roads ...
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Earth has moved one step nearer to the Sun?
In fusion research it always look good when you do low-energy tests or low density etc... It is relatively easy to confine plasmas that don't "burn". A penning trap will do the job quite nicely. The problems always show up when you try to push your design to operate close to the lawson criterion, at which point many otherwise promising designs just fall short ( taking the penning trap as an example the required magnetic field for any practical confinement time exceeds that at which modern superconductors stop beeing superconducting ).
Now I admit that I don't know the details of this particular scheme, but I can say with almost certainty that when they try to get closer to break even the higher temperatures, densities and confinement times required will turn the thing into a massive headache.
... now we admit it's a dupe *in* the summary!
That's a silly summary - it's not like we've achieved sustainable fusion at any cost, cheap or expensive. Right now the goal is still the same one we've been pursuing for a few decades.
#DeleteChrome
Folks, can we pretty please think of another name for this stuff? 50 years worth of misinformation is, I fear, holding us back. People here the word "nuclear" and immediately start shitting their pants with fear.
Folks, can you all stop reacting to stories regarding nuclear power on slashdot by falling over at your computers, foaming at the mouth, and shrieking about how the general public are all so stupid that they oppose any use of nuclear power because they're luddites and they're not as scientifically informed as all of us blah blah blah.
There are 104 nuclear reactors in this country. They provide almost 20% of the country's electricity consumption. They are not thronged by those hordes of sign-waving hippies that most of you seem to think are keeping nuclear power down. There have not been any new nuclear plants built in this country in a long time not because of protesters, but because they are insanely and hideously expensive to build. They are for the most part not cost-effective.
There are groups who argue against nuclear power for a variety of reasons, some environmental, some political, and some were formed to protest the operation of specific plants that have a track record of environmental damage. Some of these organizations are led by or advised by nuclear physicists and engineers, who know a hell of a lot more about the technical aspects of nuclear power than 99% of the people reading this.
I can't help but remember all the talk about nuclear fission doing the same thing- energy too cheap to meter and all. Fusion as it is currently is dependant on Deuterium and Tritium fuel for the most part and Tritium is mostly produced from the Li6+n => He4+T and Li7+n => He4+T+2n reactions both of which must occur in a high neutron flux environment (conventional fission reactor) which makes the first fusion plants very dependant on fission reactors for fuel production. What is worse is that you'd have to produce about a dozen Tritium nuclei for every Uranium atom fissioned just to make fusion produce as much energy as the fission reaction that was used to synthesize the fusion fuel in the first place. The future of fusion that *may* approach what you're expecting of it will likely involve aneutronic fusion reactions such as the B11+H1 => 3He4 reaction among several others. THe problem is that they are much more difficult to get working than D+T fusion. The B11+H1 reaction requires a roughly 10^9 degree core to work which is nearly ten times what D/T does.
You can read more about what's required here:
Fusion
Nuclear magnetic resonance? God man don't you know how dangerous that is, it's got nuclear right in the name. You can only guess how many extra limbs you'd get from that. Now if you'll excuse me I have to get ready for my MRI tomorrow:)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Western countries have by far most access to cheap energy and cheap food. Yet their population diminshes and they (we) import immigrants to fill the gap. It is true for all advanced economies. Once a nation gets sophiscated enough to have people educated and equipped with birth control means, growth halts as people can "trade" number of children for economic conditions. Emerging countries will see the same thing once their societies will get sophiscated enough.
It's a shame that western nations keep so much countries in 3-rd world rank by manipulating/corrupting their governments, stealing their natural/energy resources and making them debt slaves. Excess population growth of many countries is actually an effect of those shameful actions. Cheap energy source and help in achieving real advancements (as opposite to this shameful circus performed by Bono, Geldof and other idiots) would solve the problem.
Imagine owning a swimming pool with porous walls. In order to use it, we either have to build a new swimming pool with non-porous walls (or hack it somehow), or constantly fill it up with more water. Which makes more sense? Do we have a water efficiency problem, or a water shortage? To improve the analogy a bit, let's say that we live in a very dry area and get new water from an aquifer.
Energy efficiency vs energy shortage is analogous. And when these ultimately short term methods of energy production are exhausted, the poor will die in droves.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
That's why we're having this discussion: Unlike the current majority of energy sources, fusion is a potentially limitless source - or as limitless as the water in our oceans. Limitless energy also makes it a little easier to grow more food. For example, given cheap energy, it becomes simple to desalinate seawater.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
I have information that supports an iron and nickel rich sun model. According to the model, fusion reactions occur within the molten metal when it cycles through the deuterium absorbed from water vapour. (Water vapour detected in sunspots) . A possible explanation for sunspots; deuterium and hydrogen loading should also mean less activity in the local area. In this model, most of the sun's body is liquid metal with a surrounding plasma and the real magic happens when D2 transmutates into He4.
D2 fusion results in He4 atoms + additional heat (See Arata fusion experiment). As the gas atoms are expelled they are further excited by the plasma and nano-flares in the atmosphere. If the model is accurate, it should be possible to replicate easily.
To my knowledge, no one has experimented with molten metal / deuterium loading. In the spirit of open source I hope someone here will find this information useful. As a simple experiment I have devised an apparatus consisting of an inductive coil with a sphere of nickel which are submersed in deuterium liquid. When power is applied to the inductive coil, it will levitate and melt the nickel sphere within it to initiate the desired reactions. In order to prevent oxidation, Sulfur is added to the deuterium liquid.
note to self: be rich.
So what you're saying is don't build swimming pools in dry areas?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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I wonder where all that waste heat will go. I know - let's just make a huge refrigerator and leave the door open. That'll cool things back down again!
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
That's the beauty of the thing: If we stop burning fossil fuels, we'll be creating less of a heat-capturing blanket around the planet, which will compensate at least in part for the greater amount of energy released by us.
Long-term strategies will be needed to balance the whole thing out, but fusion would help give mankind a few more decades in which to get their act together.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
An important facet of LPP's research is that they are pursuing aneutronic fusion. This is truly clean nuclear energy. Explained well here. and here. Nuclear Power without Nuclear Waste: It's Closer Than You Think
Nuclear fusion has the potential to generate power without the radioactive waste of nuclear fission, but that depends on which atoms you decide to fuse. Conventional fusion approaches work with deuterium and tritium, while focus fusion works with hydrogen and boron. When a boron-11 atom fuses with a hydrogen atom the result is three helium atoms and energy, but no radioactive waste. This is because: the fuel (boron and hydrogen) is not radioactive, the reaction product (helium) is not radioactive, and the reaction releases no neutrons (it's "aneutronic").
We need to get this concept out there. It's a whole different nuclear fusion. Read this blurb and this one. - not to sell shirts, just trying to get this concept out there! ANEUTRONIC FUSION! A- without, NEUTRONIC - neutrons.
This is truly different nuclear energy LPP is working towards. Good luck to them - to all of us.
in 1983 when the movie came out they disbanded 'kerr mcgee nuclear corporation' into a mining company and a 'fuels company'. (hey im sure the timing was just a crazy coincidence)
in 1986 a uranium transport canister burst at their 'fuels facility' and spraed 26,000 pounds of UF6 into the environment. 1 guy died and many were injured.
they also sprayed the raffinate (waste water from processing uranium) on cow fields and called it fertilizer... until people got tired of the smell and the sick truck drivers and sued them.
cant imagine why people are nervous about 'nuclear'... but guess what happens if you try to 'hide' it?
slashdot decries 'security through obscurity'... what are you suggesting here that is not using a similar principle?
Just more noise. Fusion - whether it suceeds or not - won't change the destiny of this planet under human control, which is total death and destruction. Your Future
I always thought that KDE had a tendency towards including a bit too much in the desktop environment but this is extreme. Come on Kdevs, leave the fusion to physicists.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
"They are not thronged by those hordes of sign-waving hippies that most of you seem to think are keeping nuclear power down."
Actually, it's not the sign-waving hippies that are the concern. It's the government petitioning NIMBYs that have the attitude "nuclear power, sounds good,but... OMG WAIT, DON'T PUT THE REACTOR NEAR MY CITY"
I really hope this works. I get more excited about networking technology for posting on /. than I do about efforts to raise the cost of /. posting as a means to drive bandwidth conservation. Too much emphasis on conservation will lead to a world where only rich people have the freedom to make large numbers of posts on /. Access to /. posting must be pushed down to today's /. impoverished. This will offer lots of ways for them to overcome their systemic /. poverty.
If anyone would like a one hour pass to tour my futuristic, union-produced, cruelty-free, pollution-free/carbon neutral, class- and socially just utopian flying machine, please, feel free to ask. Thank you. And, no, I'm not being sarcastic (please see my parent post).
sigfault (core dumped)
This means fusion is now 9.5 years away?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Another interesting thing about 'aneutronic' fusion is that you can do direct power conversion.
As the previous poster said, D-T fusion releases much of its energy in the form of fast neutrons. In order to convert this energy into electricity, you have to get the fast neutrons to heat up a fluid and then run a turbine or run some other thermal process.
If your energy is largely in fast He nuclei, these are charged, and you can convert the energy directly into electricity in several ways, like just running these charged nuclei up against a high voltage. (There are other better schemes).
That means you can get power with no expensive steam generation cycle--though since you probably need to cool the reactor anyway you may as well extract some power from the coolant as well. However, the whole cycle can be more efficient.
--PeterM
The public needs to be shown that the word "nuclear" is not cause for panic. Better yet, not to judge technology such as NMR as being dangerous simply because of the name. But I guess it is too much to ask that they have even a basic competency in science.
This is a force that can be constructively harnessed. For example, the decision to call it "Magentic Resonance Imaging" instead of "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging" decreased the general populace's fear of the procedure and increased utilization. There is a general tendency to overutilize medical procedures, so this was a step in the wrong direction. It should be renamed to "Sudden Death Imaging".
Alternative (not ITER-like) Nuclear Fusion technologies are mushrooming all over the world. We are one step further for fusion energy.
In contrast to the billions of dollars spent on Tokamak fusion (think ITER), LPP is conducting their research on a budget around a million dollars. Yet, if it works, it will provide nuclear fusion with much simpler equipment and much less cost.
So let me get this straight: You have a budget of _three orders of magnitude_ less and the technology you are developing cheaper tech?
I am not saying this is not a good thing, but ewsnow sure has a funny way of putting (or thinking about) things.
Please sprinkle some grammar over the above :)
When I look up Eric Lerner on Wikipedia, I can see that he is an activist who has been campaigning against things like the big bang - shouldn't this alone warn us to be bit skeptical? So why do we see this being taken serious again and again?
The fact that he has completed a scientific education is not in itself proof that he is right; there have been many brilliant scientists who have proposed theories that were later proven to be false - this is the way science works - but once a theory has been dismissed, it is time to move on and leave it behind. Perhaps the most well-known, and rather sad, example of this is Fred Hoyle, a brilliant cosmologist, who until his death clung on to his steady-state theory, while everybody else had accepted Einstein's theory as the best working model.
Plus, with all that Helium being produced, the cost of party balloons will fall dramatically.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Its also 100x harder to do than DT fusion with a fraction of the power density. So if it cost 1 million to build a 1MW B-p plant (which, by current theory and experiment is quite impossible) I can get a 1GW out of a DT plant with the same reactor design and probably 10MW with DD fusion.
Neutrons will probably cheap enough to deal with.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
in charge of this, instead of Eric Lerner.
Even if the primary goal of aneutronic fusion fails, and even the neutronic reaction is not net-positive, you can still use this design to generate neutrons to burn nuclear waste at sub-critical fission plant.
Everything costs something. I'm still concerned about nuclear waste. If you think about our global warming problem, it is actually the problem of dealing with the waste from burning gasoline. Water pollution is essentially dealing with human and industrial waste. People slough off the waste problem even as they deal with the one they inherit from the grandparents.
On one hand, the nuclear crowd wants to point out that although we've had some near misses, we've never had a really serious nuclear accident. True enough. They also like to point out that all this safety is expensive, which is also very true. And somehow the conclusion reached is: we need less of that expensive safety stuff so nukes can be cheap! I'm sorry, but WTF? The expensive safety stuff is what's actually PROVIDING the good safety record. In fact, experience has shown that it's pretty carefully crafted to neither be over- nor under-safe - we have occasional near misses, but nothing too serious.
Insisting on having high safety standards isn't just the domain of dirty fucking hippies, and it's hardly insane. It's a result of people's perfectly rational desire not to have a serious nuclear accident in their hometown. And yes, that means nuclear energy is always going to be expensive. Sorry.
I think the real issue with nuclear plants isn't the cost-effectiveness, it's the (economic) risk. From the same Wikipedia article:
In other words, you really don't know in advance whether you'll be able to make a profit. It should also be noted that for alternative energy sources like wind and solar, both the capital costs and the fuel costs are lower than nuclear. And given that wind/solar have a much warmer and fuzzier public perception, for an investor, the decision to go with alternative energy is a no-brainer.
So in other words, although a nuclear plant may be marginally more cost-effective over it's lifetime than another form of energy, there are still economic reasons why these plants are not being built. It's not simply a matter of NIMBYism.
No, I'm saying if you must build them, make sure that the environment they are in is near enough to being hermetically sealed. E.g. indoor, with walls that don't leak.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Wow. I was modded down 'overrated'. I've gotta start using sarcasm tags.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Reminds me of testimony given by Rickover when he was being criticized by academia for pursuing pressurized water reactor technology when others thought that it would be better to more conduct studies. Yes fusion may eventually (and hopefully) become a viable method of producing electricity...and solar possibly becoming large-scale practical, but ignoring what "fission" nuclear power can do right now - and has done safely for 1000s of reactor years - is irresponsible.
Paper Reactors, Real Reactors (1953)
"Paper Reactors, Real Reactors" (5 June 1953); Stating they were comments from the early 1950's Rickover read some of these statements as part of his testimony before Congress, published in AEC Authorizing Legislation: Hearings Before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (1970), p. 1702
It is incumbent on those in high places to make wise decisions and it is reasonable and important that the public be correctly informed.
* An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose. (7) Very little development will be required. It will use off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.
On the other hand a practical reactor can be distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) It is being built now. (2) It is behind schedule. (3) It requires an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. (4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build because of its engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is heavy. (8) It is complicated.
* The tools of the academic designer are a piece of paper and a pencil with an eraser. If a mistake is made, it can always be erased and changed. If the practical-reactor designer errs, he wears the mistake around his neck; it cannot be erased. Everyone sees it.
* The academic-reactor designer is a dilettante. He has not had to assume any real responsibility in connection with his projects. He is free to luxuriate in elegant ideas, the practical shortcomings of which can be relegated to the category of "mere technical details." The practical-reactor designer must live with these same technical details. Although recalcitrant and awkward, they must be solved and cannot be put off until tomorrow. Their solution requires manpower, time and money.
* Unfortunately for those who must make far-reaching decision without the benefit of an intimate knowledge of reactor technology, and unfortunately for the interested public, it is much easier to get the academic side of an issue than the practical side. For a large part those involved with the academic reactors have more inclination and time to present their ideas in reports and orally to those who will listen. Since they are innocently unaware of the real but hidden difficulties of their plans, they speak with great facility and confidence. Those involved with practical reactors, humbled by their experiences, speak less and worry more.
* Yet it is incumbent on those in high places to make wise decisions and it is reasonable and important that the public be correctly informed. It is consequently incumbent on all of us to state the facts as forthrightly as possible.