Fusion Power Breakthrough Near At Sandia Labs?

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Fusion Power Breakthrough Near At Sandia Labs?

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @07:41AM from the i'll-order-a-dozen dept.

An anonymous reader writes "An achievement that would have extraordinary energy and defense implications might be near at Sandia National Laboratories. The lab is testing a concept called MagLIF (Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion), which uses magnetic fields and laser pre-heating in the quest for energetic fusion. A paper by Sandia researchers that was accepted for publication states that the Z-pinch driven MagLIF fusion could reach 'high-gain' fusion conditions, where the fusion energy released greatly exceeds (by more than 1,000 times) the energy supplied to the fuel."

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No! by alendit · 2012-09-18 07:44 · Score: 0, Flamebait

You know how it is...
1. Re:No! by Beardo+the+Bearded · 2012-09-18 08:24 · Score: 1
  
  You know how it is...
  20 years away?
  
  --
  
  ---
  ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
2. Re:No! by kelemvor4 · 2012-09-18 09:17 · Score: 2
  
  As he said, the answer is no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines
3. Re:No! by History's+Coming+To · 2012-09-18 12:53 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  40 years ago we could produce large amounts of fusion energy, just not in a particularly controlled manner.
  
  20 years ago we could produce controlled energy from fusion, but it required a bigger input than output, and only lasted for milliseconds.
  
  Now we can produce controlled energy from fusion, at ratios a little greater than unity, for tens of seconds.
  
  ~20 years from now (timetabled for 2035) we will hopefully have a proof-of-concept commercial fusion reactor feeding electricity into the grids.
  
  There's an element of truth in the "power of the future, and always will be!" gag, and it has been a very long hard slog, but advances are being made, albeit slowly compared to the development of fission energy production. That said, the first steam engine was made in ancient Greece, but didn't become a large scale commercial venture until the industrial revolution, and compared to that fusion research has happened in the blink of an eye.
  
  --
  Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
4. Re:No! by galanom · 2012-09-18 22:06 · Score: 1
  
  They did use steam engines to open large temple doors. It was a matter of priorities, and gods were given precedence.
  That is the same with fusion. The first fusion bomb was made I think in late 40's or early 50's. They all said we'll be capable to have energy for civilian purposes in some 40 years. It didn't happen. Just because gov't (both American and Soviet, the latter produced a 200Mt bomb!!) preferred allocate funds for making bigger and bigger bombs (as if fission bombs were not strong enough) rather than producing clean energy.
  I'm not pacifist, ok? But I'm pissed off when great discoveries are first given priority to the military rather to the well being of the people.
5. Re:No! by yog · 2012-09-19 01:19 · Score: 1
  
  But controlled fusion is quite different, and a lot more difficult than, uncontrolled fusion. Otherwise, we'd long since have fusion power plants up and running.
  I do agree it's a shame that the first and foremost use of this power is military applications. But, it's the old story. If we didn't do it, they would, and then we'd be nothing but ashes.
  We're making progress, at least. I wonder whether we could be making faster progress if we were throwing more money at the research. Perhaps. But there are only so many nuclear physicists out there, and only so many brilliant engineers who come up with these amazing systems for controlling and containing the fusion reaction.
  Sometimes discoveries just happen randomly, too; you can't necessarily rush the process.
  
  --
  it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
6. Re:No! by galanom · 2012-09-19 05:56 · Score: 1
  
  That story reminds me our story in Greece. "Buy more weapons or Turks will invade you" arms dealers told us. And we bought tanks, airplanes, submarines, until we reached half a trillion dollars debt, we practically bankrupt and we became slaves of our lenders. Life became so unbearable that I had to emigrate.
  Solution would be mutual agreements between the US, Russia and China for controlling weapons - both to cut down costs and to enable such great technology as nuclear fusion to be used in production for the good of the people.
Vaporwareized? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:44 · Score: 1, Funny

What do you call something that smashes things together but doesn't exist?
1. Re:Vaporwareized? by tnk1 · 2012-09-18 07:47 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Two flying cars?
2. Re:Vaporwareized? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:06 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Mitt Romney with things to smash together and enough brain power to do so?
3. Re:Vaporwareized? by slashmydots · 2012-09-18 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  What do you call something that smashes things together but doesn't exist?
  A headline! Juuuuust kidding, it's not a headline. It's a PR press release. Look how every sentence is phrased in the future tense and says might or will or could.
4. Re:Vaporwareized? by TemporalBeing · 2012-09-19 04:27 · Score: 1
  
  What do you call something that smashes things together but doesn't exist?
  Obama's budget and foreign policy?
  
  --
  Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
great! by P-niiice · 2012-09-18 07:45 · Score: 2

so the 20-50 year estimate that never shrinks may actually get reduced some?
1. Re:great! by TheRealMindChild · 2012-09-18 07:49 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  No, see as you approach feasibility, your likelihood of being bough by a competing producer to be extinguished (see gasoline) becomes multitudes greater. You will never actually reach production with things like this, for the same reason you will never reach a wall by moving in increments of 1/2. Tee short of it, there is too much money to be made to have something as valuable as energy become a low-cost commodity.
  
  --
  
  "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
2. Re:great! by tnk1 · 2012-09-18 07:50 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, it will be reduced all the way to "twenty minutes into the future".
3. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  Tee short of it, there is too much money to be made to have something as valuable as energy become a low-cost commodity.
  You mean like selling fusion energy at slightly lower prices than your competitors? Assuming it does cost less than other sources of power.
4. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:55 · Score: 0
  
  Ha. It is just a crumb to keep the funding at the grade-A, pork level.
5. Re:great! by Abreu · 2012-09-18 07:55 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Is there any evidence (real evidence, not YouTube videos of guys in their basements) of any "revolutionary, clean energy technology" being bought out and extinguished by the oil industry?
  
  --
  No sig for the moment.
6. Re:great! by funwithBSD · 2012-09-18 07:57 · Score: 2
  
  Or
  Two Minutes to Midnight
  
  --
  Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
7. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:58 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Of course not, they buy out and extinguish the evidence, duh!
8. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:01 · Score: 0
  
  What bullshit.
  Do you understand what energy costs today compared to 100 or 1000 years ago? (Better to compare about 4 years ago than now but that's a different point).
  Do you people ever use your brains?
9. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:04 · Score: 1
  
  To kill the unborn in their woooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmb!!!!
10. Re:great! by LurkerXXX · 2012-09-18 08:09 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I made a working engine that ran off of tap water. Then the oil companies had me killed.
11. Re:great! by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 08:10 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  > No, see as you approach feasibility, your likelihood of being bough by a competing producer to be extinguished (see gasoline) becomes multitudes greater.
  I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but do you have a reference?
  My own suspicion is that as you approach feasibility, government grant money tends to increase, but if you *achieve* practical feasibility, grant money evaporates. Therefore, to maximize funding, you must asymptotically approach feasibility.
  But I'm willing to hear a different theory.
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
12. Re:great! by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  Irwin Allen notwithstanding, fusion reactors don't spectacularly detonate.
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
13. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:12 · Score: 0
  
  Nope. It stays the same. The articles mentions nothing about cost and scalability. Input 1W, output 100W machine for USD 100M won't matter anything outside the lab. Even if they achieve gain of 100x, it is still based on energy input to fusion system and does not include the whole facility energy use.
14. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  No. This always get modded down everytime, but the truth is, we are extremely far away from any real source of fusion. Actually being able to sustain it is still a long ways away. Next is actually extracting that power. We've not even started there. Worse, most methods which hope to extract power rely on materials which don't even exist today.
  Most machines which create fusion today require hours, days, and even weeks between runs because so many components require replacement. Yet to sustain fusion, you need to be able to compress that cycle into tens per second - at a minimum. We've not even started here and its a very hard problem to crack.
  Realistically, we are at least 100 years away from any viable source of fusion which can provide power to mankind. That is, short of many miraculous breakthroughs in multiple science domains. The physicists whom I'm spoken to on this, and the articles I've read, all suggest these individual problems are roughly of equal magnitude of fusion itself. There are roughly a half dozen of such problems before we have an actual fusion power source. Some basic math says 20-50*~6; which makes for 120-300 years away. Many agree if we throw more money at it, the timespan can likely be reduced, but you're still looking at roughly 100 years before we can hope to have viable fusion for mankind.
15. Re:great! by Skarecrow77 · 2012-09-18 08:21 · Score: 1
  
  of course not. that's part of the conspiracy. that's how you know it's the truth!
  the only way it could be MORE truth is if there was evidence directly contrary to the conspiracy, because that'd have to be planted evidence. lack of evidence is just THEM being tricky.
  ow my head hurts.
16. Re:great! by na1led · 2012-09-18 08:24 · Score: 1
  
  No Profit, No Fusion! I think that's the case for just about every new advance technological idea that could benefit us all.
  
  --
  -- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
17. Re:great! by cayenne8 · 2012-09-18 08:24 · Score: 2
  
  Two Minutes to Midnight
  Is that you Eddie?
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
18. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:25 · Score: 0
  
  Paranoid conspiracy theory.
19. Re:great! by boristdog · 2012-09-18 08:26 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  You were lucky. The oil companies beat me around the head and neck with a broken bottle, sliced me in two with a bread knife, then danced around my grave singing "Hallelujah!"
20. Re:great! by sconeu · 2012-09-18 08:30 · Score: 1
  
  You're saying that Channel XXIII will buy them out?
  
  --
  General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
21. Re:great! by Squiddie · 2012-09-18 08:32 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Some people would take that as a challenge.
22. Re:great! by ceoyoyo · 2012-09-18 08:32 · Score: 2
  
  Fusion research is most likely somewhat ahead of where predictions made in the 70's said it would be, given the funding (decreasing) it has received since then. The "always 50 years away" thing is a stupid meme.
23. Re:great! by h4rr4r · 2012-09-18 08:34 · Score: 2
  
  Large format NIMH batteries are the only one I know of.
  In short texaco helped kill the electric car by suing Toyota for the Rav4 electric. Toyota was losing money on the cars and did not want to lose even more by dealing with texaco.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries
24. Re:great! by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 08:36 · Score: 1
  
  I don' care who you are, that's funny there.
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
25. Re:great! by sumdumass · 2012-09-18 08:37 · Score: 1
  
  There is not reason to think something like this wouldn't be implemented by the competition. It's not like you are going to have a fusion reactor in your back yard. It would be a high energy device that transmits the electricity from point A to B through existing technology. The only difference might be the fuel a certain power generation plant uses.
26. Re:great! by Trails · 2012-09-18 08:38 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  It's the same way God planted Dinosaur bones to test our faith...
27. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:38 · Score: 1
  
  While there are still quite a few issues to be worked out...
  
  Most machines which create fusion today require hours, days, and even weeks between runs because so many components require replacement.
  This isn't accurate. Smaller machines have cycle times of a few minutes just to wait for things to cool off and capacitors to recharge. Even the larger machines now can run at a cycle time of 15 minutes. After a few weeks of a data campaign, they might shut down for some servicing time of a few weeks or more depending on what work is being done. But this is hard to compare to a production machine at the moment, as in my experience, a large part of down time is dealing with repairs and upgrades to diagnostics used for research, but wouldn't be needed in an actual power plant.
28. Re:great! by anubi · 2012-09-18 08:43 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Sandia National Laboratories. Government funded?
  
  Doesn't that mean the people own the technology developed - so if anything does come of this - who is going to tell the taxpayer who funded this that he can't go build one for himself or sell the power he can make off of his unit?
  
  Or give him any authority to tell his neighbor not to do the same should his neighbor want to do likewise?
  
  --
  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
29. Re:great! by sumdumass · 2012-09-18 08:43 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  All they have to do to make profit is make it cheaper then current forms of electricity. This will not be back yard inventor stuff where every home is powered by one built out of spare parts. It will be something sitting on a large site with power transmissions lines coming to it that is selling the electricity on a market. If it costs more to make then current forms, it will not be used. If it costs less, it will be implemented.
30. Re:great! by dgatwood · 2012-09-18 08:45 · Score: 0
  
  Irwin Allen notwithstanding, fusion reactors don't spectacularly detonate.
  Depends on what you're fusing. I mean, hydrogen pretty much spontaneously combusts in air, and does so rather explosively. Remember, they launched the shuttle with that stuff (at least partially).
  Perhaps you're thinking of fission reactors. Those don't spectacularly detonate. Melt, maybe, or even burn if you're using a graphite moderator, but not detonate. :-)
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
31. Re:great! by Sarius64 · 2012-09-18 08:52 · Score: 0
  
  Sheesh SDG&E is government funded in part and I pay them $350 a month; freaking criminal. If you think local municipalities are going to give up their golden egg monopolies called "public utilities", you are nuts.
32. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:53 · Score: 0
  
  You will never actually reach production with things like this, for the same reason you will never reach a wall by moving in increments of 1/2
  Once you reach the plank unit, you'll have to move one or not, which means you will reach the wall.
33. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:57 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I made a working engine that ran off of tap water.
  Its only limitation was radius: the length of one garden hose.
34. Re:great! by tragedy · 2012-09-18 08:59 · Score: 2
  
  Some basic math says 20-50*~6; which makes for 120-300 years away.
  It's good to see someone being realistic instead of just pulling numbers out of the air.
35. Re:great! by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 09:00 · Score: 2
  
  Right, but like any long lasting memes, there is a kernel of truth, which, one might say, could be attributed to a number of factors, like, at first not understanding the difficulty, and later underestimating the pace of research.
  Also right, we're a lot further along now. We now have knowledge of many techniques that don't work, and a few techniques that *almost* work.
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
36. Re:great! by inode_buddha · 2012-09-18 09:03 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  There are patents that were filed by Henry Yunick among others in the early 1980's which had a working model Buick getting ~50 MPG's on the road. The patents were sold to GM which subsequently sat on them for ~20 yrs due to interlocking directorships with Exxon Mobil. They are now owned by a holding corp. I'll dig out the relevant patent numbers shortly, theyre around here somewhere...
  
  --
  C|N>K
37. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:03 · Score: 1
  
  And if you try and tell that to kids today, they won't believe you.
38. Re:great! by Algae_94 · 2012-09-18 09:05 · Score: 1
  
  hydrogen doesn't "pretty much spontaneously combust in air", unless by "spontaneous" you mean in the presence of a spark or flame.
39. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:14 · Score: 0
  
  And what does it mean for a holding corp to own a patent that would have expired ten years ago?
40. Re:great! by UnknownSoldier · 2012-09-18 09:14 · Score: 1
  
  > for the same reason you will never reach a wall by moving in increments of 1/2.
  Why are you confusing the fact that the universe is digital, aka, quantized (see Planck Length http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length ) with take-overs?
  > there is too much money to be made to have something as valuable as energy become a low-cost commodity.
  False. There are 3 ways to understand money. At its highest level Money IS simply an exchange of energy. When the ENERGY *itself* replaces the token that we call money then our paradigm of "low-cost" will be forced to shift. Free-Energy will be the catalyst in this transformation. This will eventually happen within 50 years.
41. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:21 · Score: 0
  
  I made a working engine that ran off of tap water. Then the oil companies had me killed.
  Let me guess, your cold fusion reactor blows up when it destabilizes?
42. Re:great! by Lumpy · 2012-09-18 09:21 · Score: 1
  
  Some of his designs are scary dangerous. I saw his 80mpg pontiac fiero, heating the gasoline that hot is insanely dangerous. It works but jeebus man that is some really scary tech considering how half assed low quality they build cars now days.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
43. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:26 · Score: 1
  
  The hot vapor cycle engine? AFAIK there's a remaining 'functional' prototype in Florida or somewhere, they had to use a new fiero for it though as the original was a GM test mule that had to be sent back to be destroyed.
  ~300 hp out of a carbuerated/turbocharged 4 cylinder(?) that superheated it's fuel before pumping it into the engine. Only problem with it was oil tech of the era couldn't handle it (Supposedly full-synthetics could, but at the time he was buying I think it was 90 dollar a liter(quart?) military grade lubricating oil in order to keep the engine operating smoothly.
  One of the great travesties of the 80s imho. Supposedly have much better emissions (other than some NOx) too.
  All of the abovementioned is hearsay from 3rd hand sources. Please find and interview the few remaining original sources for citation :)
44. Re:great! by phrackwulf · 2012-09-18 09:27 · Score: 1
  
  Yo, yo.. don't hate the torus, hate the game..
  
  --
  What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
45. Re:great! by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 09:27 · Score: 1
  
  Not only that, but I seem to recall that it combusts in a fairly narrow oxygen to hydrogen ratio.
  But in any case, mere combustion may be enthusiastic, but is nowhere near (by orders of magnitude) the energy of fusion. dgatwood says that fission reactors don't spectacularly detonate, and that is true. Fusion is much harder to achieve than fission, which makes it correspondingly more difficult to achieve a chain of events that would allow a reactor to detonate in the manner portrayed in bad fiction.
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
46. Re:great! by Lumpy · 2012-09-18 09:29 · Score: 1
  
  " hydrogen pretty much spontaneously combusts in air, and does so rather explosively. "
  Where did you get your chemistry education from? Because I want to go and smack your instructor really hard in the nuts.
  Hydrogen takes a large amount of added energy to combine with oxygen to create an exothermic reaction (yes kids, a match is a LOT of energy). Saying that it will start spontaneous combustion with air is Todd Akin levels of stupidity.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
47. Re:great! by azav · 2012-09-18 09:31 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Here:
  http://patents.justia.com/inventor/HENRYYUNICK.html
  U.S. Patent Number 5,645,368
  A race track is disclosed having a tri-oval banked, racing surfacesurrounded by a barrier support material delineating a race barrier support surface at a
  U.S. Patent Number 5,515,712
  An apparatus and a method for testing internal combustion engines aredisclosed. In the preferred arrangement the apparatus includes a test module supporting an electric
  U.S. Patent Number 5,246,086
  An internal combustion engine oil change system including an oil filtersupplied with a check valve fill fitting. During an oil change, new oil is
  U.S. Patent Number 4,862,859
  A method and apparatus for operating an electric ignition, internalcombustion engine that substantially improves the fuel efficiency by utilizing heat normally discharged to the
  U.S. Patent Number 4,637,365
  A method and apparatus for operating an internal combustion engine thatsubstantially improves the fuel efficiency by utilizing heat normally discharged to the ambient to
  U.S. Patent Number 4,592,329
  A method and apparatus for operating an electric ignition, internalcombustion engine that substantially improves the fuel efficiency by utilizing heat normally discharged to the
  U.S. Patent Number 4,503,833
  A method and apparatus for operating an electric ignition, internalcombustion engine that substantially improves the fuel efficiency by utilizing heat normally discharged to the
  U.S. Patent Number 4,467,752
  An internal combustion engine having a cylinder 16, a cylinder head 10, anda piston 12 slidably mounted within the cylinder for reciprocating movement towards
  U.S. Patent Number 4,068,635
  A valve is interposed between spaced valve seats of a conduit having end portions communicating with the ends of an internal combustion engine valve
  
  --
  - Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
48. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:33 · Score: 0
  
  There are other contributions to those time between shots and waiting time that wouldn't be applicable to a reactor. I've seen cases where the time between shots is bottlenecked by data acquisition and data storage (not every project can afford data acquisition as fast as the detectors on the LHC). And on larger project, those down times between run campaigns may in part be do to budget. Some projects save money by only running say 100 days out of the year (when they do run, they will run multiple shifts to maximize the time it is used).
49. Re:great! by mark-t · 2012-09-18 09:41 · Score: 1
  
  hydrogen pretty much spontaneously combusts in air
  References, please. This is not my experience when I was working with hydrogen gas in Chemistry 12.
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
50. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:45 · Score: 0
  
  Or maybe, just maybe, a single working prototype does not mean it is actually economically feasible.
  Crazy, I know.
51. Re:great! by radtea · 2012-09-18 09:47 · Score: 2
  
  You will never actually reach production with things like this, for the same reason you will never reach a wall by moving in increments of 1/2.
  You mean you won't reach production because you're too fucking stupid to realize that "an infinite number of intervals of diminishing size" is completely different from "an infinite distance", even after it's been explained to you dozens of times by multiple people over the course of more than 2000 years?
  
  --
  Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
52. Re:great! by drinkypoo · 2012-09-18 09:53 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Search for any combination of "butamax gevo patent sue suit" etc etc.
  These guys are having to fight over obvious refinements of the ABE process for making butanol, you can look it up on Wikipedia or numerous other places.
  And when I say "these guys" I mean a company that wants to actually make and sell Butanol, a "green, clean" 1:1 replacement for gasoline with lower emissions versus Butamax, which is owned by BP and DuPont, who has sued them to prevent them from producing fuel.
  I hear it is theoretically possible to get a permit to operate a still for the purpose of producing fuel, and you might even be able to use it for road fuel if you're willing to pay the taxes on it.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
53. Re:great! by rolfwind · 2012-09-18 09:55 · Score: 1
  
  Is this close enough?
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
54. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:58 · Score: 0
  
  Refer to NiMH battery usage in cars. GM bought it but the oil companies suggested what to do with it.
  Also the magnaquench battery technology that was developed with Federal Government (Air Force) dollars but then sold to China (part of the same deal).
  I guess technically these aren't "revolutionary, clean energy" technologies but just storage for the "totally impractical" solar technology that auto and oil companies were so frightened of back in the days of "Who killed the electric car?"
55. Re:great! by Shompol · 2012-09-18 09:59 · Score: 2
  
  Is there any evidence... clean energy technology" being bought out and extinguished by the oil industry?
  You are welcome
56. Re:great! by fatphil · 2012-09-18 10:04 · Score: 1
  
  /Who Killed the Electric Car/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/ expands on what you mention.
  
  --
  Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
57. Re:great! by interkin3tic · 2012-09-18 10:09 · Score: 1
  
  But it goes both ways. I pointed out in the 80's that if they made cars huge and called them SUVs, they would eat more gas and americans would buy them like hotcakes. Big oil paid for a CRAAAAAZZY weekend in Vegas for that one.
58. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 10:10 · Score: 0
  
  Luxury.
59. Re:great! by SleazyRidr · 2012-09-18 10:30 · Score: 1
  
  When you acheive practical feasibility grant money may evaporate, but money from selling energy starts to roll in, so I imagine you'd still be doing alright.
  
  --
  Is 1563649 a prime number?
60. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 10:31 · Score: 0
  
  Okay... so the patent describes the invention in enough detail for anyone to reproduce it. The patent, being from the early '80s, is expired.
  Why isn't this technology on the road today?
  Oh, right, because not everything you can build a functioning prototype of turns out to be reproducible affordably, safely, and reliably. Yunick's methods particularly seem to have issues on safely and reliably.
61. Re:great! by SuricouRaven · 2012-09-18 10:35 · Score: 1
  
  It wouldn't do a great deal for oil dependence, either. Oil is too expensive to make grid power, that comes mostly from coal and gas. Fusion would be great for reducing carbon emissions and the environmental damage from coal mines, and helping Europe with their dependance upon Russian gas, but it's not going to put petrol in the tank. Not without major advances in electric car technology, which is right now still in the 'just barely viable' stage.
62. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 10:36 · Score: 0
  
  Just because the government funded the initial research doesn't mean everyone gets a free reactor when it is done. Someone still has to construct them, and the material and construction costs alone will be far from free. And this assumes that the government research will produce a final, fully working and ready to implement design. It won't, there still will be kinks to work out to design an actual production unit, potentially with additional patentable improvements.
  There is still a big jump from the government research to actual commercial use. No one is going to tell a neighbor they can't build one for themselves... they will figure that out themselves they can't build it by themselves without access to manufacturing infrastructural, engineering and physics skills.
63. Re:great! by SuricouRaven · 2012-09-18 10:36 · Score: 2
  
  Somewhere, Zeno is crawling out of his grave, and he looks angry.
64. Re:great! by SuricouRaven · 2012-09-18 10:40 · Score: 2
  
  It combusts in almost any ratio. Watch the Hindenburg burn. But it only *explodes* in a narrow ratio. That is why the Hindenburg just burned, rather than leaving a crater.
  
  I once filled a balloon with 2:1 hydrogen/oxygen mix, and applied a candle-on-a-very-long-stick. It's great fun. Not much of a flash, but one really loud bang.
65. Re:Great! by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:47 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see why they can't recycle the beryllium liner after the implosion. Maybe not in this device, but in a fully production model, if beryllium is really scarce.
  But since it costs $25 for a gram on Ebay, I doubt it's very scarce, since there's already a substantial demand from its other industrial and military applications.
  
  --
  --
  make install -not war
66. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 10:49 · Score: 0
  
  Sigma 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ..... = 1 as any mathist knows
67. Re:great! by Nethemas+the+Great · 2012-09-18 10:59 · Score: 1
  
  You mean like this one or perhaps this one? Or maybe this one?
  
  --
  Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
68. Re:great! by elucido · 2012-09-18 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  No, see as you approach feasibility, your likelihood of being bough by a competing producer to be extinguished (see gasoline) becomes multitudes greater. You will never actually reach production with things like this, for the same reason you will never reach a wall by moving in increments of 1/2. Tee short of it, there is too much money to be made to have something as valuable as energy become a low-cost commodity.
  What about foreign countries?
  If the USA wont do it I'm sure another country will.
69. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  Not really. What we have is a lot of dogmas in the field that prevent non-"mainstream" (ie non-Tokamak) getting _any_ research funding, and politicians walking around saying we fund tokamaks to the tune of $500m per year and we get nothing, cancel all fusion.
  What we do know is that Tokamaks don't work.
70. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 11:35 · Score: 0
  
  I had an idea for a working cold fusion reactor, then I took an arrow to the brain.
71. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 11:35 · Score: 0
  
  I call foul. You just flooded your mum's basement. The oil companies had nothing to do with your lousy drainage system.
72. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 11:39 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Someone asked for evidence, not patents. People have patented the stupidest shit in the world. Furthermore, if the patents are more than 20 years-old, it doesn't matter who is sitting on them, anyone can use them (and being patents, everyone can see and read them).
73. Re:great! by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2012-09-18 11:48 · Score: 1
  
  With a cheap enough energy source you could pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and create liquid fuels. The process for doing this from more carbon dense feedstocks is well understood and has been used in the past to create various motor fuels. For referance I suggest seeing:
  1. The Fischer-Tropsch process
  2. Flash Pyrolysis
  3. Thermal Depolymerization
  4. Staged Reforming
  With really cheap (think you pay for your connection but it is all you can pull in) abundant energy lot of things are worth doing now that weren't before, like creating synthetic gasoline, synthetic liquid fuels, synthetic crude oil, water desalination from the ocean, rare earth metal extraction from the oceans, farm towers, irrigating entire deserts because we can,etc.
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
74. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 11:51 · Score: 0
  
  Why are you confusing the fact that the universe is digital, aka, quantized
  
  Planck length does not imply the universe is digital, as in the space is a giant grid like in a computer simulation. Some people have speculated about such a grid as a way to produce Planck length effects, but it is erroneous to assume the latter necessitates the former.
75. Re:great! by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 11:51 · Score: 2
  
  > What we do know is that Tokamaks don't work.
  Agreed. So a way must be found to cut funding of things that have been proven over long periods of time to not work, and start funding promising new lines of research. Good luck with that. Another part of the catch 22 is that the longer something has been funded (and not worked) the more inertia the project has.
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
76. Re:great! by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2012-09-18 11:51 · Score: 1
  
  It is actually very combustible across a broad range of mixtures. I believe that the hydrogen percentage can be anywhere from about 5% to about 95% and it will ignite.
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
77. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 12:08 · Score: 0
  
  No, the goverment owns it. The goverment is owned by by G edgar hoover. I called a guy out who was working at Sandia years ago via a subforum and they denied working on anything like this at all.
78. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 12:14 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  It will be sold, by the kindly government, on behalf of the people, for a ridiculously low price to a corporation who has spent the most money bribing politicians. The corporation will then sell it back to you for ridiculously inflated prices, and sue the shit out of any others who try to enter the market.
  God bless the free market.
79. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 12:23 · Score: 0
  
  If they're that good, and their owners are sitting on them, I'd risk the rest of my life in bankruptcy, community service and/or prison and implement them. After all, they are disclosed, I'm just not allowed to make them without getting a licence (which would be denied anyway, or be asked for a crazy amount of money that not even the FED printed throughout its existence so far). But imagine the headlines. And imagine the oil companies still not doing anything after that - if they do, conspiracy theory turns into conspiracy practice.
80. Re:great! by Chuckstar · 2012-09-18 13:40 · Score: 1
  
  Early 80s?
  Awesome... then the patents are expired and cars using the technology will be coming out ten years ago.
  Or does every car maker in the world have interlocking directorships with Exxon Mobil?
81. Re:great! by CastrTroy · 2012-09-18 14:02 · Score: 1
  
  I wonder how much energy one could garner from the water flowing out of the taps. I currently pay about $3 for 1m^3 (1000 litres) of water. Electricity costs about 10 cents / kwh. So if I could generate more than 30 kwh of electricity from 1 m^3 of water coming out of my tap, then I could get electricty for less than the cost supplied to me by the power company. You'd probably need to measure the pressure at the tap, and I assume it wouldn't be possible, but I wonder if anybody has ever ran through all the calcuations.
  
  --
  
  Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
82. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 14:18 · Score: 0
  
  All of those patents are long expired. Noone has exclusive rights to the technology; everyone is free to do whatever they want with it. So, what are the current excuses for a lack of 50 mpg Buicks? We're waiting.
83. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 14:35 · Score: 0
  
  If these were patented in the 1980s, as stated above, anyone can use them now. Patents are only for a limited time (20 years or less, depending on when filed). I suspect they turned out to have other drawbacks (safety, reliability, cost) that make them less attractive than one might think. If you disagree, patent 4,862,859 is dated 1989, the term expired in or before 2006, have at it! I expect the lower numbered ones will have even earlier dates. Don't let big oil stand in your way! The fact that no one has produced a 50+ MPG car using this technology in the last 6 years doesn't make me optimistic, but I hope you are successful.
84. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 14:37 · Score: 0
  
  Somewhere, Zeno is crawling out of his grave, and he looks angry.
  Who cares, he can't reach me!
85. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 15:20 · Score: 0
  
  how does one go about buying a national laboratory? i really am curious...
86. Re:great! by Immerman · 2012-09-18 15:36 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, from what I've heard the state of fusion research has progressed pretty much as predicted in terms of progress-per-dollar; however, since the funding levels have also been falling steadily the entire time the projected years-until-success has only been holding steady rather than falling.
  It's an unfortunate situation, but may prove to be for the best if something like Polywell reactors manage to beat them to the punch, seeing how they have far more potential for achieving aneutronic fusion practically out of the gate, as well as being a considerably lower-tech (and thus cheaper) solution. In a world were Tokamak fusion had already achieved breakeven it might well be even more difficult for more sociologically promising alternatives to get research funding.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
87. Re:great! by DavidTC · 2012-09-18 15:58 · Score: 1
  
  You're probably better off stealing power from the phone company.
  
  --
  If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
88. Re:Great! by Immerman · 2012-09-18 15:59 · Score: 1
  
  Well, since gold is going for ~$50/gram ($1600/oz)I'd say that $25/gram actually ranks up there pretty high.
  More to the point though, the current spot price for Berryllium is a much more reasonable $1/gram ( $30/oz), and that eBay seller is making a killing if they're finding suckers. Still not cheap compared to something like copper at ~$0.20/oz though, and there's phenomenal demand for copper, so I'm guessing it's still a fairly rare material.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
89. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 16:16 · Score: 0
  
  I thought it was always 40 years (roughly the time from when a fusion scientist enters the field to the time when he retires). Its always been 40 years, at least 2 and I think closer to 3 (80-120 years although its true that its only 107 years since relativity, so the third full cycle isn't done yet). *IF* they get it done, great. Its just that Tokamak reactors, and high energy physics have predicted joy for a long time.
90. Re:great! by DavidTC · 2012-09-18 16:28 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  And when did 50 MPG become some sort of incredible technological triumph in the first place?
  It's actually pretty easy to make a vehicle from the 1980s get 50 MPG via modifications. Machine the engine to incredibly tight tolerances, use super high quality oil, implement some stuff that modern cars already do via computerized fuel injection, strip out the emission controls, preheat gasoline (which is what appears to be done here)...50 MPG is impressive, but not some sort of impossible thing.
  In fact, a lot of the patents in that list appear to be carburetor tricks for creating air-fuel mixes. Anyone who thinks they are even slightly useful does not quite understand that a) we've moved past carburetors, and b) the fuel-injection systems we replaced them with already do many of those 'tricks', or don't need them. Fuel injectors are constantly adjusting based on engine temp and all sorts of things, and do not operate by by the crazy method of 'mixing air and gas by hitting a moving metal flap with gasoline' which required all sorts of odd tricks to make things work right.
  In short: The guy was right. By correctly varying the air-fuel mixture, much higher MPGs can be reached. It's how we went from 20 MPG in the 80s to 40 MPGs now. The problem is, while _he_ was working on stupid carburetor tricks, other people were inventing fuel injection operated by computers that do all this stuff magically.
  And the problem with the _rest_ of the changes, tightening tolerances and whatnot, is now you've made the car 10 times as expensive, as all that has to be done by hand...and the damn engine will blow up at the slightest piece of dirt that gets in, or when the oil pressure drops by 10%, or just rip itself apart when you run out of gas. And oil costs about fifty times what it should.
  Any idiot can get rid of a dozen 'inefficiencies' of an automobile engine that actually exist because the thing is designed to operate, and be maintained, and parts replaced, in real world conditions, not a damn clean room. Car companies do not sell cars like that, as they would not make it out of the two-year warranty.
  
  --
  If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
91. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 16:30 · Score: 0
  
  Well, if you had an engineering degree, and a degree in nuclear physics, and enough money and talent to build one, then yep, you probably could. If you had *enough* talent, you could ignore what they did and do the research and do better than what they are doing (run sparky, run!). You might try to build your own car, airplane and computer first (home built from scratch), and then tackle something more complicated, like a high energy nuclear power plant after that. Again, there is nothing stopping you from doing any of this now. Maybe do it in your spare time after work. You could dig the olympic sized kidney shaped swimming pool in the backyard, and on alternate days build the nuclear plant. Oh, and design and build spacecraft too, but maybe save that for the weekends, 'cause it takes up quite a bit of space and you might need the neighbours to help tip it up before launch. Have fun! The only thing that could slow you up is if the wife asks you to paint the spare room. Man that takes a long time!
92. Re:great! by Ultracrepidarian · 2012-09-18 17:01 · Score: 1
  
  Just like Pharma.
93. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 17:54 · Score: 0
  
  Let's see... the US NRC to begin with... given the you'll have to deal massive neutron fluxes I would think the NRC would like to have a say in it. Not to mention you could potentially breed plutonium and have to deal with the activated structures (though, no radioactive waste, per se).
  All that assuming you have the money to start your little project, which might be a bar a little taller than you think :)
94. Re:great! by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-09-18 18:07 · Score: 1
  
  Past fusion estimates were always dependent on funding remaining the same, which it didn't - it was steadily reduced over the years. The estimates were stretched out accordingly.
95. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 18:10 · Score: 0
  
  I used to spend my days building Nuclear fusion reactors ... but then I took an arrow to the knee.
96. Re:great! by dgatwood · 2012-09-18 18:36 · Score: 1
  It spontaneously combines with oxygen, but at STP it usually doesn't do so at a rate that qualifies as combustion. That said, when you're working with high pressure hydrogen, sometimes it does combust, and sometimes it does so with no obvious catalyst or ignition source. Sources:
  
  http://conference.ing.unipi.it/ichs2005/Papers/100098.pdf
  http://www.princeton.edu/mae/people/faculty/dryer/homepage/research/hydrogen-fire-safety/movies/Dryer_et_al_CST_179_2007.pdf
  Perhaps more curiously, nobody is really sure why, as far as I can tell. Either way, the point remains that you don't have to have an ignition source.
  BTW, even if you did need an ignition source, I think it's safe to say that the temperatures inside or near a fusion reactor of any significant scale would probably qualify as an ignition source....
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
97. Re:great! by dgatwood · 2012-09-18 19:25 · Score: 1
  
  Come on. You guys should know by now that I'm prone to hyperbole. :-)
  The phrase you need to reinterpret is "pretty much". By that, I mean that it is relatively unstable, and that it doesn't take much to trigger an explosion. Not nothing, but not much. It could be anything from a spark to a sudden change in pressure to a catalyst like platinum to.... You get the idea.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
98. Re:great! by jedwidz · 2012-09-18 19:38 · Score: 1
  
  Now if only someone could come up with a highly profitable (and inconspicuous) use for large quantities of running water... hmmm...
99. Re:great! by jedwidz · 2012-09-18 19:44 · Score: 1
  
  You might also be able to save a bit on your home energy costs by buying fresh packs of meat during winter, freezing them, and waiting until summer before defrosting and eating them.
100. Re:great! by dgatwood · 2012-09-18 19:52 · Score: 1
  
  But in any case, mere combustion may be enthusiastic, but is nowhere near (by orders of magnitude) the energy of fusion.
  An explosion of a fusion reactor would almost certainly be caused by a breach of containment by what is presumably high-pressure, high-temperature hydrogen gas. Once it is outside the containment vessel/field/*, it doesn't matter that it isn't as hot as the fusion process; the containment vessel is no longer between it and the outside world. :-) Even if it didn't explode at that point, a mere fire in a power plant could potentially cause millions of dollars in property damage. And at those sorts of temperatures, I'd expect something closer to an explosion than a fire. Maybe not—I mean, I've never had the opportunity to heat hydrogen up to several thousand degrees and then release it suddenly, so I'm kind of out of my element here (pun intended). :-D
  
  ... which makes it correspondingly more difficult to achieve a chain of events that would allow a reactor to detonate in the manner portrayed in bad fiction.
  How do you define "detonate" in this context? Are we talking about a building-sized explosion here (which is what I was thinking of), or are we talking hydrogen bomb test? Because the former seems quite possible even if you're just working with high-pressure hydrogen without any sort of reactor. Just release a lot of hydrogen into the air so that the concentration is anywhere from about 4% to about 75%, then let someone shuffle his or her feet across the carpet.... The latter is, of course, obviously quite ridiculous.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
101. Re:great! by dgatwood · 2012-09-18 20:27 · Score: 1
  
  (yes kids, a match is a LOT of energy)
  It takes more than an order of magnitude less energy to ignite hydrogen than to ignite hydrocarbon fuels. A match isn't necessary by any stretch of the imagination. Rubbing your feet across the carpet can produce 10-25 millijoules of energy, which is somewhere around 600-1500 times as much energy as is required to trigger hydrogen combustion in a hydrogen-air mixture, given the right concentration of hydrogen. No flame needed. I don't consider a couple hundredths of a millijoule to be a lot of energy, personally. When you're talking about explosion risk, I consider a lot of energy to mean at least kilojoules, and I'm not entirely comfortable with stuff that explodes with fewer than megajoules. :-)
  
  Saying that it will start spontaneous combustion with air is Todd Akin levels of stupidity.
  What I said was that it "pretty much spontaneously" combusts. That wording, in English, typically means that it doesn't, strictly speaking, spontaneously combust, but that it is really close. And I maintain the correctness of that statement. I mean, we're not talking Things I Won't Work With here, but you have to admit that working with it in industrial quantities wouldn't exactly be the highlight of any sane person's day.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
102. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 20:48 · Score: 0
  
  So ITER was an epsilon away from working?
103. Re:great! by BlackPignouf · 2012-09-18 22:34 · Score: 1
  
  Fun fact : "clean energy" is an oxymoron.
  "clean" means you leave a system the way it was.
  "energy" means you change the state of the system.
104. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 00:07 · Score: 0
  
  Government funded does not necessarily mean open. For example, the government funds, from the taxpayer's money, a lot of weapons development work. That does not mean that they'll give you the technology to go build a big bomb in your basement.
105. Re:great! by tehcyder · 2012-09-19 00:10 · Score: 1
  
  Do you know how much energy there is in a cubic metre of water once we just get that cold fusion thingy sorted out?
  
  Me neither, but it's a LOT.
  
  I'm surpised no one has thought of using such a cheap and easily available source of almost limitless energy before.
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
106. Re:great! by tehcyder · 2012-09-19 00:16 · Score: 1
  
  Paranoid conspiracy theory.
  What a great band they were. I wonder sometimes what happened to them?
  
  (Yeah, like we don't all know...)
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
107. Re:great! by serviscope_minor · 2012-09-19 02:09 · Score: 1
  
  > What we do know is that Tokamaks don't work.
  Agreed.
  Says AC and roc97007 the fusion plasma physicist.
  There have been a huge number of successful experiments with JET (a 30 year old piece of kit designed for research not power generation), which has produced a fusion power output of 16 MW with a Q of 0.7.
  Basically, enough has been learned that people are now pretty sure they will reach Q > 5 for ITER.
  Basically, you have no idea whether or not tokamaks work.
  Also, see http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fusion-researchers-answer-your-questions
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
108. Re:great! by marcosdumay · 2012-09-19 02:33 · Score: 1
  
  Do we realy know that?
  Tokamaks seem to work as well as theory predicts it will. And theory predicts that if you invest an absurd amount of money on them, you'll get something that works.
  Of course, it is better if we can get something that work without that absurd amount of money invested. That can only come from non-mainstream methods. But then, most of them have their own expensive problems that just aren't biting anybody yet because in a proof of concept machine you can run a single pulse and call it a day.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
109. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 02:51 · Score: 0
  
  All of that is moot anyways. If you assume the full volume of ITER were filled with peak density of hydrogen (which it is not, a lot of it will be more empty near the edges), you get a hydrogen mass of about 100 mg. This is about a liter at normal STP (since it is heavy isotopes of hydrogen). I've seen high school science demonstrations burn more hydrogen than that.
  The really sources of damage are dumping the heat load on a small spot of the wall, which would be more functional damage than a safety issue. Additionally, if the superconducting magnets quench, then it would be more like a small explosion. Otherwise, there is not enough hydrogen to cause problems unless something happens to the gas cylinder sitting somewhere in the back that supplies the fuel, on par with any other industrial setting where hydrogen is used.
110. Re:great! by dgatwood · 2012-09-19 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  Otherwise, there is not enough hydrogen to cause problems unless something happens to the gas cylinder sitting somewhere in the back that supplies the fuel
  But that was kind of my point. Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas. In the absence of equipment to detect leaks, you wouldn't know that the hydrogen levels in the air had passed the 4% threshold. Then, a small spark can turn the whole building into a larger version of your high school demonstration. And even with equipment, it doesn't take very long for a building to become dangerous if you have pipes as big around as my head filled with pressurized hydrogen gas.
  As for ITER, that's a tiny, purely experimental test reactor. It is nowhere near production scale. Basing the risk calculation on the amount of hydrogen in ITER is like computing the risk of dying in a plane crash based on the frequency of engine failures in model RC planes. At some level, small-scale experiments have similar behavior, but in practice, the safety systems required for the full-scale systems are much more significant because the damage caused by a failure would also be much bigger. (That, and they don't let rank amateurs fly jumbo jets, but that's a separate issue....)
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
111. Re:great! by GameboyRMH · 2012-09-19 03:56 · Score: 1
  
  I was just about to post this. If not for this, electric cars would have taken off a decade earlier.
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
112. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 04:15 · Score: 0
  
  This time I'm not falling for butamax...I am totally VHS.
113. Re:great! by DrStoooopid · 2012-09-19 04:17 · Score: 1
  
  They turned me into a newt.....
  
  --
  There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
114. Re:great! by roc97007 · 2012-09-19 04:55 · Score: 1
  
  Right, we are asymptotically approaching practicality.
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
115. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 05:09 · Score: 0
  
  It is entirely accurate. Please learn to read. "Most" is a critical component of that sentence, yet you seem to have entirely ignored it.
  Every machine to date has its own laundry list of pros and cons. You seem happy to ignore reality to make an invalid point. The reality is, we are a very long way away from anything close to actual fusion power for man. And short of massive changes in funding and miraculous breakthroughs in multiple science domains, saying 100-years away is polite. Everything else is bullshit for pop-science readers.
116. Re:great! by tibit · 2012-09-19 06:03 · Score: 1
  
  Pressure at the tap is, say, 2 bar or 200 kPa. I'd guess the flow at the entrance to my house is at least 10 gpm, or about 0.5 L/s (that should be very conservative). The hydraulic power is thus about 200kPa*0.5L/s = 100W. Assuming a decent turbine and generator, you could probably extract about 50 W.
  So, in an hour I trade off 600 gallons of water consumption for 0.05 kWh of electric energy. Nope, it won't work, not even close, even if my flow rate estimate was an order of magnitude too low. IIRC I pay about the same per gallon as per kWh.
  So yes, stealing power from the phone company, assuming you need to use the phone anyway, is probably better.
  
  --
  A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
117. Re:great! by tibit · 2012-09-19 06:04 · Score: 1
  
  Why are you obsessed with cold fusion? Hot fusion can be done easily in amateur conditions, although of course so far with negative energy budget, but it's not hard at all.
  
  --
  A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
118. Re:great! by tibit · 2012-09-19 06:05 · Score: 1
  
  The patents are expired by now, and you know, they are public knowledge. Go and build one yourself. Or better yet, stop spewing crap. Patent numbers or it didn't happen.
  
  --
  A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
119. Re:great! by tibit · 2012-09-19 06:08 · Score: 1
  
  How the heck will heating up gasoline improve anything? In a modern engine all of the gasoline is combusted, there's no need to heat it up. There's a misconception that somehow the gasoline droplets are too big and they don't all combust. That's bullshit. By the time the compression stroke is over, there's no liquid gasoline anywhere but perhaps on the cylinder walls, it's all gaseous. End of story. Whatever is on the cylinder walls will be reabsorbed by the oil and then will evaporate and get sucked back into the engine via crankcase ventilation system. That's like ICE 101. I'd have hoped everyone knows it by now...
  
  --
  A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
120. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 06:15 · Score: 0
  
  Early production reactors are thought to be maybe 4-10 times larger power than ITER (although only about 50% larger volume and 25% high density, so rc-plane to airliner is not comparable)... so then they would still less than a kilogram of hydrogen in a tank with a volume larger than an Olympic swimming pool. Even production size reactors would have peak hydrogen density hundreds of times smaller than what is in fluorescent light bulbs. The only place there would be pressurized hydrogen would be in the generic gas cylinder used to store the fuel, and a tiny line feeding a very low pressure regulator.
  There wouldn't be pressurized pipes the size of someone's head. Even a 10 GW power plant would only need about 0.1 L of STP hydrogen per second, which is about the flow rate used in a welding torch. If it were pressurized, even less flow would be needed. Places I've worked typically used quarter inch tubing because it was cheap and strong enough to handle being bumped and moved around, but was way overkill in terms of gas flow (you could close the cylinder and regulator, and still run for better part of a day with just the gas stored in the length of tubing).
  
  In the absence of equipment to detect leaks...
  Even the smallest plasma experiments I've worked on had hydrogen leak detectors next to the hydrogen cylinder. Although I can't say the same for hydrogen cylinders I've seen in welding shops... Anyway, having a few cylinders of hydrogen around isn't that big of a deal, something a lot of mundane industries have to deal with now. A fusion experiment or reactor would be monitoring much closer anyways for leaks, not due to flammability, but because the tritium is radioactive, and also very expensive to lose.
121. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 06:23 · Score: 0
  
  Z-pinch was around n the 1950's and coul ld have scaled nicely to continuous breakeven back then. Picked this up in scientific American back in the day. So this is nicerbut let s not call the fifty year lag a science problem .
122. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 07:26 · Score: 0
  
  You tell that to young engineers these days... AND THEY WON'T BELIEVE YOU!
123. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 07:50 · Score: 0
  
  Actually they don't even need to make it cheaper than current forms of electricity all they need to do is make it not too far off of current forms of electricity and some people will still pay money for it. I personally pay extra for my "intermittent" wind power that "doesn't work without subsidies".
124. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 08:27 · Score: 0
  
  And what do you have to back up that claim of "most"? I've worked on half a dozen different machines, and interact with people from another different dozen machines. They all have cycle times under an hour, and except for two that I know that are half an hour, the rest are under 15 minutes. These are the larger, more modern machines. Maybe there are a pile of older, slower machines from a few decades around, but those wouldn't be relevant. The only particularly slow, modern machines I know of are the Z-machine and NIF, which have lot of emphasis on non-fussion work too. Upcoming, more fusion centered projects like HiPER will be running much, much faster, while ITER is expected to be on a 30 minute between shot cycle.
  I actually agree that fusion is probably still a long ways off. But that doesn't mean you should argue that case via a statement that is not a valid.
125. Re:great! by toddestan · 2012-09-19 15:35 · Score: 1
  
  You joke, but I've known people to put jugs of water outside in the winter, let them freeze, then put them in their fridge so that it runs less.
126. Re:great! by Dabido · 2012-09-19 21:11 · Score: 1
  
  5 years away ... with our flying cars, hotels in space, warp drives, quantum computers, et hoc genus omne.
  
  --
  Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
127. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-20 05:20 · Score: 0
  
  You're so full of shit. There are several on documentaries where the people who run the fucking projects clearly state hours are required between runs so they can replace components required for their machine to function. They then go on to specifically cite the very fucking things I've said here. You lying sack of shit. Believe it or not, your washing machine is not a Mr. Fusion. You are sadly delusional.
  So given a choice between some random idiot on the Internet and the people who actually run the fucking equipment, I dunno, perhaps I'll listen to the people who actually know what the fuck they are talking about. Which means, absolutely not you...idiot.
128. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-20 08:13 · Score: 0
  A report EFDA in preparation for ITER here. It gives shot cycle times:
  
  Jet: 30 minutes
  
  DIII-D: 14 minutes
  
  ASDEX: Just under 30 minutes
  
  FTU: 20 minutes
  
  RFX: 10 minutes
  
  It even discusses replacement schedule of some equipment for ITER, with only a few blanket modules replaced per year and a complete replacement only every 10 years, for example. The time between shots is referenced as 1600 seconds here due to the limitations it places on computing requirements (so repetition rate would be ~2000 seconds since the plasma shots will be up to 400 seconds).
  The introduction in the full text of the paper here discusses how HiPER will be designed with a target of 10 Hz repetition rate for a 100 full power shot sequence.
  The report here mentions how the Omega laser system is designed around a 30 minute repetition rate.
  3 minutes for LHD
  15 minutes for NSTX
  2 minutes for MST
  5-15 minutes for TFTR
  20-30 per working day for JT-60
  Even the ones I references as being kind of slow, NIF and Z-machine, are one shot per day, not weeks and months between shots.
  The smaller projects I've worked on typically ran every 2-5 minutes when cycling during a normal day, limited by them typically using underpowered, but free (due to inheriting from previous experiment) cooling system. Their run campaigns were limited by staffing, as when the handful of people were busy analyzing data, no one was left to run the machine. Larger machines I've worked on had technicians and large teams to run 5+ shifts a week, and would run for at least a third of the year. Time not running was typically spent calibrating, repairing, upgrading diagnostics, and occasionally power supplies, most of which are components a production reactor would not have. Larger machines had a much more diverse diagnostic suite, so were much harder to organize and get things ready for a full run campaign, for reasons unrelated to plasma or neutron damage. The larger machines also could run into budget reasons running for a larger part of year due to staffing (technicians assigned to more than one thing) and power costs.
  Neutron damage, failures due to plasma damage, and over all maintenance costs and cycling are a MAJOR issue that fusion research needs to address before becoming commercial. But that still doesn't mean your "hours, days, and even weeks" accurate for anything currently or in the near future.
129. Re:great! by ceoyoyo · 2012-09-20 21:01 · Score: 1
  
  There are reports from the 70s that gave remarkably accurate timelines given different funding scenarios. Since then we have funded fusion research at less than their lowest projections and have achieved a bit more, more quickly than they estimated.
  There is no kernel of truth, unless its regarding what journalists and uninformed critics say.
130. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 02:54 · Score: 0
  
  Yep, that is the power of watching documentaries while staying at a Holiday Inn elegantly stated in such colourful language. Other ACs just waste their time reading the internet and think they've learned something because it was said on some journal or university's website. Who knows what asses those numbers came out of.
131. Re:great! by Lennie · 2012-09-23 21:32 · Score: 1
  
  I wouldn't be surprised if the government will fund the research for decades until it is almost done, then some large energy company will look at it, replicate what they've done and complete the last part and patent it.
  
  --
  New things are always on the horizon
132. Re:great! by Lennie · 2012-09-23 21:34 · Score: 1
  
  That never happend, I don't believe poeple from oil companies sing Hallelujah.
  
  --
  New things are always on the horizon
133. Re:great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-27 01:54 · Score: 0
  
  My father worked as a mechanic in Germany around the 1960's sometime, years ago he told me about a story about when he was an apprentice; There was this older guy working in the garage that claimed he was working on a new type of engine that would save on fuel. My father never saw the engine, the older guy kept it under a cover.
  Anyway, one evening this guy claimed that he was going to present the motor to some company. Come morning both he and the motor had disappeared and no one ever found out what had happened.
  Whether that's a true story or not, only my father knows ... and if it was true, there's no proof that it was an oil company. It's just an "interesting" story.
I know nothing of physics, but... by Abreu · 2012-09-18 07:46 · Score: 5, Informative

...I just want you guys to know that "Sandía" means "watermelon" in Spanish.
Oh, also: I hope this leads to a new, efficient and clean type of energy.

--
No sig for the moment.
1. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:50 · Score: 1
  
  Now that watermelon gag in buckaroo banzai makes sense. They were working on fruit-based fusion!
2. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by chemicaldave · 2012-09-18 07:52 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  The name comes from Sandia Base where the first labs were located which happened to be next to the Sandia Mountains, which, according to popular belief, got its name due to the reddish color of the mountains at sunset.
3. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by TheRealMindChild · 2012-09-18 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  Nothing new about fusion. Ask our friendly neighbor, the Sun. El Sol. Le Soleil. Die Sonne. La Suno.
  
  --
  
  "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
4. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by leromarinvit · 2012-09-18 07:54 · Score: 2
  
  So this new fusion tech is not only going to be green (at least on the outside), but also delicious? Sounds like a win to me!
  
  --
  Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
5. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by radiumsoup · 2012-09-18 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  I love it when people bring up that movie - it's one of my favorites in the SciFi genre, introduced to me by my NT4 MCSE instructor.
  Yes, it was one of the only practical things I learned in that class that I didn't already know.
6. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by crazyjj · 2012-09-18 08:04 · Score: 1
  
  That's because this project is green on the outside and in the red on the inside.
  
  --
  What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
7. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 08:13 · Score: 2
  
  "Why is there a watermelon there?"
  "I'll tell you later"
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
8. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by gestalt_n_pepper · 2012-09-18 09:21 · Score: 1
  
  A new, efficient and tastier type of energy too.
  
  --
  Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
9. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by rrohbeck · 2012-09-18 09:57 · Score: 1
  
  Oh noes! The communists are everywhere!
  
  --
  thegodmovie.com - watch it
10. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by TheInternetGuy · 2012-09-18 12:10 · Score: 1
  
  ...I just want you guys to know that "Sandía" means "watermelon" in Spanish.
  Oh, also: I hope this leads to a new, efficient and clean type of energy.
  I hope it will lead to highly energetic watermelons, might not be clean, but fun.
  
  --
  If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
11. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 12:38 · Score: 0
  
  ...I just want you guys to know that "Sandía" means "watermelon" in Spanish.
  Oh, also: I hope this leads to a new, efficient and clean type of energy.
  Well, now we know what Dr. Banzai was working on at the time of the Lectroid invasion...
12. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by freeze128 · 2012-09-18 15:41 · Score: 1
  
  If not that, I hope it leads to a delicious summertime snack that is cheap and clean.
13. Re:I know nothing of physics, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 16:31 · Score: 0
  
  I hate that bastard.
  That jerk gives me searing migraines with his continual radiation spewage. That prick has been solely responsible for each and every one of the most painful moments in my life.
  Then he pontificates about me leeching off of him and how I should be grateful for his patronage.
  He's like a petty little warlord, hurting scores of innocent people, and yet has the gall to say we should be grateful to him.
  I really wish I could see the day that his lies collapse on him and crush him into oblivion; but that day, sadly, will never come.
  What a bastard...
Beryllium? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:46 · Score: 0

Sphere? Cmdr. Peter Quincy Taggart would be proud.
1. Re:Beryllium? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:56 · Score: 0
  
  Would someone please think about the minors.
2. Re:Beryllium? by oodaloop · 2012-09-18 08:04 · Score: 1
  
  Miners, not minors!
  
  --
  Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Great! by Type44Q · 2012-09-18 07:47 · Score: 3, Funny

Practical applications are now only fifty years away! :p
Financing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:48 · Score: 0

Must be time to renew a budget..
1. Re:Financing by jamstar7 · 2012-09-18 08:24 · Score: 1
  
  Or a reaction to the upcoming budget sequestering.
  
  Newton was right. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Not to worry, citizens, fusion is still $DECADES away!
  
  --
  Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Energy Independence by Vintowin · 2012-09-18 07:48 · Score: 1

Only when fusion is realized will we gain energy independence... Very positive news..
1. Re:Energy Independence by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  Thus creating an internal energy monopoly. Somehow I doubt it'll be a win-win.
2. Re:Energy Independence by lobiusmoop · 2012-09-18 08:13 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  You are American, yes? If you all drove small 1 litre 50 horsepower cars instead of 6-litre 400 horsepower SUV monstrosities, you could also gain energy independence that way. (just a wild out-there blue-sky suggestion.)
  
  --
  "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
3. Re:Energy Independence by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:22 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Wait a sec.... so american "engineers" can manage to get 400 BHP out of a six liter now?
  Another few decades of practice and they might make a car worth owning.
4. Re:Energy Independence by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:32 · Score: 0
  
  We can get 1,000 hp per liter, no gasoline needed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Fuel#Performance
5. Re:Energy Independence by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:33 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah given that nissan was making stock 2.0-2.6 liters that could to that in the late 80s early 90s :D
  RBs for the win :)
6. Re:Energy Independence by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:53 · Score: 0
  
  If you want to avoid looking like a fool in the future, you may wish to consider meeting some actual Americans instead of assuming that cartoons about them are factually correct.
7. Re:Energy Independence by zwede · 2012-09-18 10:00 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah given that nissan was making stock 2.0-2.6 liters that could to that in the late 80s early 90s :D
  RBs for the win :)
  Eeh, no. Top fuel engines make 1,000 hp per liter. Nissans made 100. That's, you know, a factor of 10.
  Top fuel FTW.
8. Re:Energy Independence by freeze128 · 2012-09-18 15:43 · Score: 1
  
  But then the terrorists would win.
9. Re:Energy Independence by prefec2 · 2012-09-18 19:39 · Score: 1
  
  I bet we can achive a sustainable energy supply without fusion or fission.
Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

All the previous vaporware and false claims about fusion are about "cold fusion". This is not the same thing. Accusations of being vaporware would only be valid if the word "cold" appeared in the summary, which it does not.
near end of 2013? by gl4ss · 2012-09-18 07:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

so uhh.. call us in a year if it works, ok? that the parts which are known to work do work isn't really news you know.

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
1. Re:near end of 2013? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:50 · Score: 0
  
  The parts that were *simulated* to work, have been *confirmed* to actually work. BIG distinction.
  In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, not so much...
can we do this again -- without the wordsmithing? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:50 · Score: 1

The last sentence of the summary could be interpreted by a cynic to mean that the current state of the art is (1000 - epsilon), and they've just found a way to "potentially" increase by epsilon to reach 1000.
What is the current state of the art? How much more efficient is the new technique.
Repost the summary with the details everyone actually cares about.
Tubes Eaten Away by bazald · 2012-09-18 07:51 · Score: 5, Funny

How much energy goes into the production of the liner tubes, which are apparently eaten away throughout the course of the fusion reaction? Obviously this is all preliminary research, but I still think I'm missing something.

--
Insert self-referential sig here.
1. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by P-niiice · 2012-09-18 07:59 · Score: 1
  
  Make the liner tubes out of used 20oz water bottles
2. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 08:06 · Score: 1
  
  We're saved!!
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
3. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by slashmydots · 2012-09-18 08:08 · Score: 1
  
  Dude, it's magnetic containment. That's kinda the point. It keeps the really hot particles from ever touching the tube. It takes a buttload of energy to run but compared to fusion, not that much.
4. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by Daetrin · 2012-09-18 08:14 · Score: 2
  
  Read the article. The liners are being crushed by the magnetic field. The whole point of this experiment is that they've found a thickness of liner that will last _just_ long enough to finish crushing the fusible elements together before being completely destroyed itself.
  
  And presumably they can construct the liners for less (both in terms of money and energy) than they feel they will eventually be able to get out of the fusion reaction. It's not like every other method of producing energy doesn't have some kind of upfront cost that needs to be paid. Just as one example, look at how much infrastructure it takes to get a train car full of coal to a coal plant
  
  --
  This Space Intentionally Left Blank
5. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by vlm · 2012-09-18 08:20 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Time for a world famous /. vlm engineering estimate.
  The tubes are vaporized by the magnetic crunch. Optimistically they're getting a thousand times the power out as in, or far more than a thousand times the power it takes to vaporize the tube (because most of the power is going into squashing the contents, otherwise whats the point...).
  I'm sure they're using beryllium because of its legendary stiffness, not because they love toxic dust. Lets say they use aluminum in a later model. Both light low Z metals of decent strength although beryllium is better. If beryllium oxides were not so toxic we've have airplanes made out of it, not just space satellites and the occasional exotic RF transistor ceramic heatsink. But I digress. Off the top of my head it costs about 5 KWh as an order of magnitude engineering estimate to electrorefine a pound of aluminum. It takes immensely more energy to vaporize a pound of aluminum. An hour in a 5 KW ceramics kiln might melt a pound aluminum... but vaporization is much harder. I'll estimate incredibly low and say you can vaporize a pound of aluminum with only 5 KWh. LOL this is probably 1 or maybe even 2 orders of magnitude low, but its best to be extremely pessimistic... I'm not counting the machining energy or transport, both of which will be much smaller.
  So I'd feel fairly confident that a pound or so of aluminum tube, costing about 5 KWh to refine, should generate about 5000 KWh when the deuterium inside the tubes gets squooshed. Not bad.
  Another crappy engineering order of magnitude estimate is you gotta burn a pound of coal to make a KWh. And you can earn a tidy profit burning coal to make electricity, for better or worse... WRT materials handling transport and mining/ore/coal processing and storage standpoint, those are not an issue as long as you can get more than one KWH out of a pound of the "stuff", since it's clearly no issue with coal at a pitiful KWh per pound. This thing is getting 5000 KWh out of a pound of aluminum tubes (well, once they're filled up with D2).
  No as a first approximation I'm not seeing any fundamental issues with the tubes. This isn't like using up 2 barrels of crude oil to grow and refine 1 barrel equivalent of ethanol. The tubes will be a substantial fraction of the operating expense. Not as significant as jetfuel to a airline, or coal to a powerplant, but more significant than say, the cost of in flight cookies to a airline.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
6. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by somersault · 2012-09-18 08:31 · Score: 1
  
  You should read the article. Passing such a high current through the tube causes it to ionise.
  
  --
  which is totally what she said
7. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by Turminder+Xuss · 2012-09-18 10:16 · Score: 2
  
  They're using beryllium for the plasma facing walls at ITER because of its nuclear properties, as well as its mechanical stiffness. Plasma facing components are exposed to constant neutron bombardment resulting in formation of radioisotopes. Beryllium forms radioisotopes with a short half life (so obviously not 10Be, which is 2+M years, probably 8Be and 7Be) and which have manageable decay paths. The modular shields are replaced when they get too "hot". They are low level waste for 200 years, after which you can put them back in or do whatever else you like to do with beryllium (not breathing it's dust is good). Beryllium can also release a neutron under alpha decay, which is sometimes used in bomb trigger mechanisms. Not sure if that is useful in the tubes. Aluminum is so much cheaper that there would have to be a very good reason not to use it. Maybe it results in a lot of 26Al with a half life of 7.2*10^5 y.
  
  --
  You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle.
8. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by fatphil · 2012-09-18 10:49 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  That was a fun estimate - thanks! I notice that it's much easier to melt aluminium than your wild stab in the dark. Aluminium's LHoF is only 399 kJ/kg and LHoV is 10,530 kJ/kg. Your 5kWh/lb = 5*3600*2.2 kJ/kg ~= 40000 kJ/kg. So you've not underestimated by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude, you've actually slightly overestimated.
  
  --
  Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
9. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 11:39 · Score: 0
  
  But presumably the tubes are just the start of the process. You didn't take into account the cost of the deuterium production, etc. Assuming you only need the tubes to start the process, then you would have a constant feed of hydrogen into the reaction (how does that work?), which implies an infrastructure behind that as well. Will this plant need a fission reactor to supply startup power and a constant feed of electrolyzed hydrogen?
10. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by slashmydots · 2012-09-18 12:25 · Score: 1
  
  Well how the hell did they do it at the LHC? Just build another one of those, lol. I know, I know, probably less particles involved but still, nothing ever touched the tube and they didn't crush (except once when it blew a hole out the side).
11. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 13:04 · Score: 0
  
  Beryllium is often used for acting as a neutron reflector.
12. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by humanrev · 2012-09-18 13:12 · Score: 1
  
  [SCIENCE!]
  Prof. Farnsworth: "Yeees. I see. Something involving that many big words could easily destabilize liner tubes themselves."
  
  --
  Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
13. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by freeze128 · 2012-09-18 15:49 · Score: 1
  
  So they're using fusion to make cookies now? That's cool!
  
  Sorry, I didn't read the article, I didn't read the summary, and I just skimmed your post.
14. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by SecurityTheatre · 2012-09-18 16:17 · Score: 1
  
  The "liner" in this example is just a beryllium cylinder. It's essentially the "bullet casing" for the "slug" that is the fissile material.
  I don't remember if this article mentions it or not (and i don't really want to read it again), but they are hoping that the existing z machine will be able to handle a new "bullet" every 100 seconds or so. A theoretical practical reactor could do it once every 10 seconds or so.
  It's roughly the equivalent of firing a canon, with an auto-loading mechanism. Charge up the capacitors, pulse the equipment, get the output, discharged the spent cartridge (or what's left of its plasma) and move on to the next one.
  Cool idea, poorly described in this article, I think. Keep in mind they're hoping to use lithium or boron in the future, because those can be fused with light hydrogen in a reaction that does not produce stray neutrons. It's the neutrons that degrade the lining of the reactor itself.
  But apparently there is some confusion in the word "lining"...
15. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by SecurityTheatre · 2012-09-18 16:21 · Score: 1
  
  From what I"ve seen of the demos, the "liners" are about the size of a 50-cal bullet and produce on the order of megawatts of power.
  Seems alright with me.
16. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by CnlPepper · 2012-09-18 23:41 · Score: 1
  
  Actually the beryllium is primarily used for another purpose. It is a low Z material which means that when it gets into the plasma (via wall ablation) and ionises, it only has a few electrons to lose. Lots of electrons = lots of bremsstrahlung = significant energy loss. Also very high Z impurities which don't fully ionise lead to even more significant loses through line emission. High Z pollution of the plasma can lead to a radiative collapse of the plasma. For more info see here:
  http://www.carolusmagnus.net/papers/2005/docs/koslowski_operational_limits.pdf
17. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 06:46 · Score: 0
  
  Given:
  Specific heat capacity = 0.90 kJ/kg
  LHoF = 397 kJ/kg
  LHoV = 10896 kJ/kg
  melt temp = 660.3C
  Boiling temp = 2518.9C
  and assuming that the aluminum starts just below the melt point:
  1 kWh = 3.6 MJ
  1 kg aluminum requires ~13 MJ = ~3.6 kWh to vaporize.
  1 kg = 2.2 lbs
  1 lb requires only ~1.6 kWh to vaporize.
18. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 07:56 · Score: 0
  
  Completely different devices doing completely different things...
  That is like asking why aren't missiles reusable when planes can be flown more than once.
19. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by Deliveranc3 · 2012-09-20 03:08 · Score: 1
  
  He was estimating how much energy would be needed to turn it into a gas. Not a liquid. I think you can agree it takes A LOT of energy to evaporate aluminum
20. Re:Tubes Eaten Away by fatphil · 2012-09-20 09:18 · Score: 1
  
  Quite a lot, yes, but not as much as he imagined. That's why I made explicit mention of his LHoV estimate being too high. His ratio was quite accurate, but his starting point, the LHoF (or LHoM, if you prefer) was way too high.
  
  --
  Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Finally a chance to play god by partyguerrilla · 2012-09-18 07:52 · Score: 2

Take that, Sol! Now we don't need you for anything!
Betteridge's Law of Headlines by iamjonah · 2012-09-18 07:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no".
1. Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines by esldude · 2012-09-18 07:58 · Score: 2
  
  A simulation shows that experiments scheduled for next year could work. And if they do work, they would maybe be a breakthrough. Yes, I think the proper answer to the query posed by the headline is clearly....NO! Get back to us with breakthroughs once you have actually done it for real one time.
2. Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines by P-niiice · 2012-09-18 08:02 · Score: 1
  
  And it can't start with How or What
3. Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines by maxwell+demon · 2012-09-18 08:02 · Score: 2
  
  I hereby introduce Maxwell Demon's Law of Headlines: Whenever a headline ends in a question mark on Slashdot, there will be no shortage of comments mentioning or implicitly referring to Betteridge's Law Of Headlines.
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
4. Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines by Chris+Burke · 2012-09-18 08:14 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  A simulation shows that experiments scheduled for next year could work.
  Not exactly. This was an actual experiment showing that previously done simulations were correct. They needed to figure out the correct thickness to make the liners to balance implosion speed with vaporization due to extreme current, the simulations said this was a sweet spot, and the experiment said that indeed this would work.
  Of course this is just one more step in the design - simulate - experiment cycle, but still, at least it is about a real result.
  Also, I'm just glad to be hearing about further progress from the Z-Machine folks at Sandia since I hadn't in quite a while. So even though it's not the final goal, it's still good news.
  
  --
  
  The enemies of Democracy are
5. Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines by mister_playboy · 2012-09-18 08:21 · Score: 1
  
  Are we trying to make a meme out of this?
  Or vagina?
  
  --
  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
"breakthrough near" my ass by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:53 · Score: 0

tell me when it's done
1. Re:"breakthrough near" my ass by punker · 2012-09-18 08:06 · Score: 2
  
  tell me when it's done
  I expect you'll know when it happens.
2. Re:"breakthrough near" my ass by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:46 · Score: 1
  
  "breakthrough near" my ass
  I'd see a proctologist about that.
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Ragzouken · 2012-09-18 07:54 · Score: 1

Even warm fusion has fun poked at it for being constantly "fifty years away".
Recycling thinking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:55 · Score: 0

Is this story: 10, 20, 30, or 50 years old?
I knew.... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:55 · Score: 0

MILF fusion. I knew it worked.
It's "MLIF", not "MILF" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 07:59 · Score: 0

Although both terms are hot... one is several million degrees hotter than the other
1. Re:It's "MLIF", not "MILF" by vlm · 2012-09-18 08:29 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Although both terms are hot... one is several million degrees hotter than the other
  Both take 40 years to begin production.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
2. Re:It's "MLIF", not "MILF" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-20 19:02 · Score: 0
  
  Don't forget that the greenies will be against fusion because (and the science is not proven but most celebrity seeking scientists will be too scared to dispute this 'undisputable fact') by converting mass to energy you are actually decreasing the weight of the earth.
  If you convert enough mass to energy over a long enough time period you will actually reduce the weight of the earth such that the gravitational force between the earth and the sun becomes weaker and so the earth will tend to move away from the sun. This could screw up everything (including the calendar).... but wait... being further away it would mean the earth would be cooler... so cold that we would have to burn more fossil fuels just to create enough of a CO2 layer in the atmosphere to create an more intense green house effect to keep the earth warm enough to support life.
  Equilibrium - it's an amazing thing ;)
3. Re:It's "MLIF", not "MILF" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 00:56 · Score: 0
  
  The energy liberated by the fusion reaction would still mostly be on Earth, so the mass of the Earth would not change, just move around a tiny, tiny bit.
  Many environmentalist organizations do oppose fusion research. A few because they associate it with fission, or because they don't want even a low radiation energy source. Many do so because they complain we need a solution ASAP and don't want to spend limited research money on long to very long term goals. I sometimes wonder if the latter is used as a safer statement to both appease and hide members that think the former, i.e. try to sound a little more reasonable and prevent members from loudly demanding nothing nucular should be allowed.
Re:No? by bbecker23 · 2012-09-18 08:00 · Score: 1

captcha: thighs
I think you're doing that wrong.

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cat /dev/random > sig.txt
Tubes? You mean the Interwebs? by stevegee58 · 2012-09-18 08:01 · Score: 1

Oh. Never mind.
The most beautiful science by conorpeterson · 2012-09-18 08:02 · Score: 5, Informative

The photos of the Z machine have to be seen to be believed, and even then, it is grade A sci-fi: http://www.sandia.gov/z-machine/ The "Z pinch" is an alternative method of containing the hot plasma. Tokomak reactors use magnetic confinement of a continuous plasma, while the Z machine uses inertial confinement for shorter lived plasmas. IIRC the web of lightning shown in Sandia's publicity photos is produced when thousands of tungsten filaments are vaporized in order to generate x-rays. The fuel pellet sits in the center and the X-rays compress it into criticality -- if it sounds like an H-bomb, that's because it probably is.
1. Re:The most beautiful science by TheSwift · 2012-09-18 08:30 · Score: 2
  
  The photos of the Z machine have to be seen to be believed, and even then, it is grade A sci-fi: http://www.sandia.gov/z-machine/
  
  Middle right photo - Pretty sure I've seen that room before. Shortly thereafter I was hitting head crabs with a crowbar.
  
  --
  "With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone."
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by i+kan+reed · 2012-09-18 08:03 · Score: 4, Informative

Which it hasn't really been for a decade now, and wouldn't have been like that if fusion had been receiving the funding it deserves. Of all non-service industries energy has the lowest research funding to revenue ratio, and super-majority of that has been towards fracking and ethanol.
This is a self-perpetuating myth if ever there was one. My money's on FocusFusion to beat sandia to net+ though.
obligatory xkcd by NikeHerc · 2012-09-18 08:03 · Score: 2

Go to http://xkcd.com/678/, pick your own time line.

--
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Great! by 32771 · 2012-09-18 08:05 · Score: 1

Now I don't have to start becoming a farmer after all. Not that it is a bad thing but starting it at mid 30 seems late in the game.
Considering that factor of 1000 sounds like a great EROI should be possible, much better than this puny cold fusion stuff.
Now if they could get rid of this metallic liner they are talking about made out of a potentially scarce resource the whole thing
could look perfect once they get beyond the simulation stage.

--
Je me souviens.
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by oodaloop · 2012-09-18 08:05 · Score: 1

That's really unfair. Warm fusion is probably only constantly 20 years away.

--
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
And we should have it working... by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 08:05 · Score: 1

...in only 50 years.

--
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:07 · Score: 0

All the previous vaporware and false claims about fusion are about "cold fusion".
No they are about commercially viable hot fusion being persistantly the same multiple of decades away.

This is not the same thing. Accusations of being vaporware would only be valid if the word "cold" appeared in the summary, which it does not.
Considering we currently have no commercially viable fusion cold or hot and no idea when if ever this will change they are both vaporware.
Fusion is a series of tubes by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:08 · Score: 0

Fusion is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.
Close, but no cigar by srussia · 2012-09-18 08:09 · Score: 2

You will never actually reach production with things like this, for the same reason you will never reach a wall by moving in increments of 1/2.
Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox has a resolution. This is more like the Rockefeller Contraction (apologies to Hendrik Lorentz).

--
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Muahhhh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:10 · Score: 0

This is just the standard press release blub stuff those labs put out. This is not going to change our lives anytime soon.
The real question is: why did this blub end up on slashdot?
1. Re:Muahhhh by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:31 · Score: 1
  
  1. This is a very major milestone.
  2. Depending on what you mean by "soon" (10 years, after waiting 50, for a change that will affect the next 100-100 years?), it looks like it will.
  3. "Change our lives soon" is not a necessary standard for "news for nerds".
  4. The word is "blurb".
  5. You are a fool.
  
  --
  --
  make install -not war
Scientific Breakeven, not Fiscal by rahvin112 · 2012-09-18 08:11 · Score: 4, Interesting

The Tokamak's have been scientific breakeven for more than a decade, ITER is supposed to achieve fiscal breakeven. What's the difference? Scientific breakeven means you extract more energy than you put into it, but you don't actually try to collect any of the energy. Fiscal breakeven is that added step where you actually try to collect the energy and use it.
See Fusion has this problem in that it's pretty easy to trigger fusion, it's not easy to keep it going and it's damn near impossible to collect any energy from it because all the stuff you have to start the fusion is in the way of collecting any of the energy and all the neutron and alpha particle emissions tend to destroy any materials you put in there to collect the energy.
This is EXACTLY the point of ITER, it's supposed to test the actual engineering of real world (not laboratory) fusion at an economic scale. This testing is costing a lot of money (US contributions are in the $2 Billion dollar range, total economic input from all the partner nations is 25X that amount).
1. Re:Scientific Breakeven, not Fiscal by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:28 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Tokamak's have just reached Q~1 if J-60 were to switch from deuterium to a D-T mix. This is to say that the amount of fusion power being generated is on par with the amount of heating power applied. This is a little short of the "scientific breakeven" you describe, as it does not include power for magnets (and other equipment, but that is much smaller). A more useful goal is a Q~5, since the neutrons carry away about 80% of the power, a Q~5 is would mean the alpha particles left behind in the plasma will be providing about as much as heat as external sources. To account for other inefficiencies, a more practical Q would be a little higher.
  ITER's goal is to achieve a Q of 10 for shorter duration plasmas, and to get a Q of 5 for long durations that would be more indicative of a steady state reactor continuously running. These are all in terms of fusion power within the reactor vs. heat applied. ITER will not produce any electricity from the fusion power, it will not be a test of "fiscal breakeven" as you describe it. The plan would be for the successor to ITER, potentially DEMO, to actually produce electrical power and work towards determining economic feasibility and dealing production issues in an actual industrial, instead of research, setting.
2. Re:Scientific Breakeven, not Fiscal by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:32 · Score: 1
  
  Should have looked at preview more closely... J-60 should be JT-60, as in Japan's leading Tokamak.
3. Re:Scientific Breakeven, not Fiscal by rahvin112 · 2012-09-18 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  Hey it's possible the goals have changed since I last looked at the project, but when I did look last time it was clear that they intended to test (possibly not actively use) the heat extraction layers that would make up the power generating core. I know they haven't solved the main issue that the alpha and neutron emissions cause and the damage they will do to those layers nor how they can even get those layers working properly with all the magnetic containment.
  But it was my understanding that one of the project goals of ITER is to actually industrial test some of the theorized energy extraction methods to determine if they are even feasible or if the neutron emissions will destroy them.
4. Re:Scientific Breakeven, not Fiscal by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:00 · Score: 1
  
  From what I remember, the plan for ITER to not produce electricity and for that tests to be done by the successor go back at least to the 90s, and that detailed specs and design goals of ITER were set just after 2000. Because of concerns ITER won't address some of the material science issues, another project, IFMIF, is also being constructed with a timeline to contribute to either ITER upgrades or post-ITER reactor designs. The only potential confusing factor I can think of and am not familiar with is that for a while the US considered building its own reactor before getting involved with ITER. That was canned before I got into the field, so I don't know many details about what it was planning to do.
5. Re:Scientific Breakeven, not Fiscal by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 13:48 · Score: 0
  
  If that's called fiscal breakeven, what do they call it when they reach the point where the market value of the energy collected equals the amortized cost of production?
6. Re:Scientific Breakeven, not Fiscal by ssam · 2012-09-18 22:37 · Score: 1
  
  $2 Billion is pretty small on scale of what the planet spends on energy. For rough maths a GW of power, for 1 year at 10c/kWh is ~ $1Billion ( http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+GW+*+1+year+*+(0.1USD+%2F+kWh) ).
  ITER is a prototype for a 0.5GW machine. Now first of their kind machines cost stupidly more than general production machines (R&D is not cheap). So the hope would be that you can one day build a 1GW reactor for something less than $10 Billion. Then it is cost effective even if you are paying interest at 10%. (for nuclear (and renewables) you can neglect fuel costs).
7. Re:Scientific Breakeven, not Fiscal by eriqk · 2012-09-22 00:11 · Score: 1
  
  "Party time".
The apparatus works by Hentes · 2012-09-18 08:13 · Score: 1

But why is that news? They tested it empty, fuel won't even be added until 2013, and analyzing the results of the actual experiment might take even more.
1. Re:The apparatus works by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:25 · Score: 2
  
  Because they exceeded the breakeven point with fusion, which is the second most important achievement other than eventually achieving huge energy returns on energy invested. That's the biggest news in fusion since the hydrogen bomb generations ago.
  
  --
  --
  make install -not war
2. Re:The apparatus works by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 10:41 · Score: 0
  
  GP says it was unfueled, you say "they exceeded the breakeven point with fusion". If it's unfueled, there's no way they fused enough Be for breakeven, so your statement is flat-out wrong. TFS supports this with "the Z-pinch driven MagLIF fusion could reach 'high-gain' fusion conditions" and saying nothing about what it has done.
  Or GP is wrong and it was fueled, and got >breakeven, and they hope to go to 1000. In which case why didn't TFS mention this, which as you say, is a fucking enormous milestone?
  What I'm saying is, one of you is wrong and I suspect it's you, but I don't really know because I didn't RTFA.
3. Re:The apparatus works by Hentes · 2012-09-18 10:46 · Score: 2
  
  RTFA, please:
  
  In the dry-run experiments just completed, cylindrical beryllium liners remained reasonably intact as they were imploded by huge magnetic field of Sandia’s Z machine, the world’s most powerful pulsed-power accelerator. Had they overly distorted, they would have proved themselves incapable of shoveling together nuclear fuel — deuterium and possibly tritium — to the point of fusing them. Sandia researchers expect to add deuterium fuel in experiments scheduled for 2013.
  “The experimental results — the degree to which the imploding liner maintained its cylindrical integrity throughout its implosion — were consistent with results from earlier Sandia computer simulations,” said lead researcher Ryan McBride.“These predicted MagLIF will exceed scientific break-even.”
  A simulation published in a 2010 Physics of Plasmas article by Sandia researcher Steve Slutz showed that a tube enclosing preheated deuterium and tritium, crushed by the large magnetic fields of the 25-million-ampere Z machine, would yield slightly more energy than is inserted into it.
  A later simulation, published last January in PRL by Slutz and Sandia researcher Roger Vesey, showed that a more powerful accelerator generating 60 million amperes or more could reach “high-gain” fusion conditions, where the fusion energy released greatly exceeds (by more than 1,000 times) the energy supplied to the fuel.
Just in time for the Warp drive by si3n4 · 2012-09-18 08:15 · Score: 2

it's all coming together http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/17/2229257/warp-drive-might-be-less-impossible-than-previously-thought I know when it finishes - about 10 min after I die . Oops - should have done this as anonymous
1. Re:Just in time for the Warp drive by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 16:53 · Score: 0
  
  Hah, maybe the combination of warp drive + fusion power is the "great awakening" that the 2012 nuts are always referring to.
  Instead of the world ending, we'll get STARSHIPS and CLEAN ENERGY.
2. Re:Just in time for the Warp drive by Neil+Boekend · 2012-09-18 19:06 · Score: 1
  
  No the world will still end, but after we have left.
  
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
I believe by mark99 · 2012-09-18 08:17 · Score: 1

because I am an idiot and a slow learner.
1. Re:I believe by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:23 · Score: 1
  
  No, you don't believe, because you're an idiot and a slow learner. Achieving breakeven is the watershed. If you don't learn to accept change now, it's probably too late for you.
  
  --
  --
  make install -not war
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Vintermann · 2012-09-18 08:17 · Score: 2

Nuclear energy research has been funded the same way the internet was funded, the usual way research gets publicly funded in the US (or for that matter, elsewhere): The promise of military applications.

--
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Energy and..... defence? by gallondr00nk · 2012-09-18 08:19 · Score: 1

an achievement that would have extraordinary energy and defense implications.
Says a lot about the times we live in (or the short sightedness of TFA) when the second biggest benefit of a breakthrough in fusion would be fucking weapons.
I'd be looking forward to a revolution in energy usage and a massive increase in living standards for the entire planet myself, but hey.
1. Re:Energy and..... defence? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:32 · Score: 0
  
  What's your point? You think the USA should abandon its national defense, sit down and sing Kumbayaa? Prepare to learn Chinese, or convert to Islam, or eat bacon and wear hats with furry ear flaps (that last one is if Canada invades, and it actually doesn't sound so bad now that I think about it).
2. Re:Energy and..... defence? by Iberian · 2012-09-18 09:39 · Score: 1
  
  Well once the population is reduced to 1/1000 of its current number your standard of living will be way higher*.
  
  *Standard of living increases are measured numerically and are not based on percentages. Individual results may vary.
Types of fusion and funding by Twinbee · 2012-09-18 08:20 · Score: 1

There are about 36 types of fusion being explored (of which "Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion" is just one), categorized roughly into 6 main types. Here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Fusion_methods

'Unlimited' energy would be such an amazing thing (eclipsing even say lithium-air battery tech, 200" OLED screens, super conductors, or cheap-as-peanuts aerogel) by an order of magnitude or two. If a quarter of the money that went into the Defense budget went into fusion, we'd all be laughing by now.

--
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
1. Re:Types of fusion and funding by elucido · 2012-09-18 11:36 · Score: 1
  
  There are about 36 types of fusion being explored (of which "Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion" is just one), categorized roughly into 6 main types. Here's a list:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Fusion_methods
  'Unlimited' energy would be such an amazing thing (eclipsing even say lithium-air battery tech, 200" OLED screens, super conductors, or cheap-as-peanuts aerogel) by an order of magnitude or two. If a quarter of the money that went into the Defense budget went into fusion, we'd all be laughing by now.
  What if China or Russia does it instead?
2. Re:Types of fusion and funding by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 11:46 · Score: 0
  
  Here's a question that I don't hear anyone asking, maybe because it's a dumb question, I'm not sure.
  If we get "free" energy from fusion, then we can wean ourselves from greenhouse-gas producing carbon fuels, yahoo!
  However, we're still introducing "unlimited" amounts of heat into the environment. Does that not also contribute to global warming?
3. Re:Types of fusion and funding by Twinbee · 2012-09-18 11:48 · Score: 1
  
  That'd be great too. I don't imagine their defense budgets are so high, but I could be wrong.
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
4. Re:Types of fusion and funding by Twinbee · 2012-09-18 12:41 · Score: 1
  
  Apparently not, and I have heard it asked at least twice in various places. Apparently, the amount of heat that the sun alone provides would dwarf anything we would ever give out.
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
5. Re:Types of fusion and funding by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 13:31 · Score: 0
  
  Humans currently use about 16 TW of power, while the Earth receives as a whole about 160 PW of power from the sun. That is a factor of 10,000 difference. It is not to say we can't make an impact, but just that it will take a while to catch up with variations in the Sun, let alone the full heat fluxes Earth deals with.
Nope, False Alarm by phrackwulf · 2012-09-18 08:20 · Score: 1

This is actually the denoument of the final season of "Breaking Bad." An multi-million anonymous donation from a mysterious "Senor Heisenberg" leads to sustainable fusion research all to late to redeem the hapless Walter White and his family.

--
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
The key to Fusion has been right in front of us! by kybur · 2012-09-18 08:21 · Score: 1

You just need a series of tubes!
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Chris+Burke · 2012-09-18 08:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

Yeah, I remember when we had the MIT fusion research Slashdot Interview, and they showed the graph that was presented in the 70s showing how soon they could have fusion given various funding levels.
The saddest part was of the various scenarios like "fusion in 10 years", "fusion in 20 years", there was a "fusion never" line where funding was never sufficient to yield breakeven fusion, and then there was overlaid a new "actual funding" line which was significantly lower than that. :(
P.S. Personally my money is on Sandia, but that's just because the old Z-Machine was the most fucking awesome thing ever. EVER. I admit this is not a rational scientific argument, and that a working Z-pinch fusion device would not look like that at all, but come on!

--

The enemies of Democracy are
Slashdot take seems a little too forward looking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 08:26 · Score: 0

The Slashdot take on it:
"An achievement that would have extraordinary energy and defense implications might be near at Sandia National Laboratories"
From the actual article at Sandia:
"“This work is one more step on a long path to possible energy applications,” said Sandia senior manager Mark Herrmann."
I enjoy the science coverage on Slashdot, but would prefer a less hyperbolic intro.
But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by swb · 2012-09-18 08:26 · Score: 3, Interesting

And how low cost will it be actually?
Let's assume that the Sandia technique/technology results in sustained net-positive fusion by the end of 2013. The results are so positive that a small-scale concept plant that will push to the grid gets built, by, say 2020.
This works well enough and there's enough refinement that a full-scale 8 GW plant can be built. By what, 2035? This plant is so successful that by 2050 there are maybe 4-5 more built an in operation.
So we have a lead time of 2050 for less than 50 GW of power. Considering total production is something like 1300 GW, it hardly seems like a threat to anything or a source of the vaunted "free" energy.
Even if you manage increase production by a factor of 10 to 500 GW capacity, what will fund the grid expansion to deliver all this free energy? Will the cost of electrically powered stuff go down -- or up, now that "everything" is made to run on electricity and the demand for rare earths, copper and other related materials goes way up?
1. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by Lumpy · 2012-09-18 09:23 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Large scale is very dumb. Make 25KW units and put thousands of them across the city. Cheaper, easier, and reliability of the grid goes up dramatically.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
2. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by rrohbeck · 2012-09-18 09:55 · Score: 1
  
  You forgot the fact that by 2030 oil will be so scarce and expensive that major construction projects will hardly be feasible any more.
  That's the "energy trap."
  
  --
  thegodmovie.com - watch it
3. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by fatphil · 2012-09-18 09:58 · Score: 2
  
  > Let's assume that the Sandia technique/technology results in sustained
  
  Stop right there!
  
  The word "sustained" appears neither in the summary or the article.
  
  Anyway, I think it's best to talk about the implications of their experiments only after they've been done.
  
  --
  Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
4. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by SuricouRaven · 2012-09-18 10:33 · Score: 1
  
  If they need the Z machine just to run the tests, you can forget about minaturisation. That is the most powerful machine ever constructed, with the exception of nuclear bombs.
5. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 10:55 · Score: 1
  
  That would only work if such small units were anywhere near as efficient as larger units. With pretty much every fusion technique reasonably demonstrated so far, there are massive economies of scale that make such a plan far from "cheaper and easier."
6. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2012-09-18 11:35 · Score: 1
  
  25KW is pretty useless considering that you can cheaply buy home gasoline generators that produce 6-7KW already. I have seen some larger construction site diesel generators that are in the 10-15KW range but even that is still pretty puny as they could easily be transported by a truck and often have a built in stick or wire feed welder and compressor. When talking thousands put into a metro area you will want generators in the 1-5MW range if not larger unless you want everyone to have their own generator in which case a 25KW one would power a few houses.
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
7. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 13:37 · Score: 0
  
  Because finding thousands of suitable sites is easy.
  In big cities, it can take years for the bureaucracy to allow a new cell tower. You expect cell towers to be tougher to add than fusion power plants?
8. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by chrismcb · 2012-09-18 13:56 · Score: 2
  
  Let's assume that the Sandia technique/technology results in sustained
  Stop right there! The word "sustained" appears neither in the summary or the article.
  Hence starting with "let us ASSUME ..."
9. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by SecurityTheatre · 2012-09-18 15:57 · Score: 2
  
  "Large scale is very dumb"
  Well, small scale units are just big magnets with a cold beryllium cylinder at the centre. They're not power plants.
  In order to get this type of fusion to work, you have to input a few dozen times the world's power output for a few nanoseconds, contain the core as it is heated to 6 billion degrees kelvin in under a microsecond, manage 2.7 megajoules of xray radiation, contain an atomic-bomb scale EMP, shape one of the strongest magnetic fields in the galaxy as it collapses and ensure that a neutron pulse doesn't destroy the reactor lining in the process.
  If you think you can design one to fit on your power pole outside, I encourage you to talk to Fermilab or Sandia, because they want to talk to you. :-)
10. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by flyingfsck · 2012-09-18 17:23 · Score: 1
  
  'fact' - haha, snort, uhmm, sorry... We have enough oil, gas and coal to last for hundreds more years of fusion research.
  
  --
  Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
11. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by Neil+Boekend · 2012-09-18 18:33 · Score: 1
  
  Yes but we aren't using it for fusion research, we're using it to pump in hummers and light our incandescent bulbs.
  
  Snarkiness aside: I don't know how much oil we have left. It's a bit fuzzy to me what's beneath that 10km thick layer of FUD and overestimating (or even boasting to increase share value).
  
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
12. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 19:49 · Score: 0
  
  The optimium scale depends greatly upon the economics of the engineering. Many power generating devices have economies of scale, at least to a certain point.
  As this technology will use a large heat turbine, skilled staff, hard-to-handle and store fuel, a small contamination hazard, and esoteric technologies, I'm going for "large scale dominates distribution costs".
13. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by L4t3r4lu5 · 2012-09-18 22:03 · Score: 1
  
  Large scale is very dumb. Make 25KW units and put thousands of them across the city. Cheaper, easier, and reliability of the grid goes up dramatically.
  "Ye wanna put a nuculer bomb in my back yard?!" says the city-dweller. Good luck explaining the difference to a lay man.
  
  --
  Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
14. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by tehcyder · 2012-09-19 00:27 · Score: 1
  
  "Ye wanna put a nuculer bomb in my back yard?!" says the city-dweller. Good luck explaining the difference to a lay man.
  A good start would be to ensure full transparency about potential risks and benefits, and to ban any profit-making party from having anything to do with their construciton or maintenance.
  
  The reason that lay people mistrust nuclear energy so profoundly is because it was initially bound up entirely with the production of fuel for nuclear weapons, with the peaceful use just a cover (at least here in the UK). The resulting military levels of secrecy meant that any whiff of an accident was covered up under the guise of National Security, so that when the truth finally emerged, people knew they had been lied to.
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
15. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by tehcyder · 2012-09-19 00:29 · Score: 1
  
  'fact' - haha, snort, uhmm, sorry... We have enough oil, gas and coal to last for hundreds more years of fusion research.
  Well thank the Sweet Lord Baby Jesus for that! And here was everyone worrying about things unnecessarily.
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
16. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by Lumpy · 2012-09-19 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  "Because finding thousands of suitable sites is easy." The find millions of suitable sites for Power poles and Cable TV boxes. I think they will have zero problems with this.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
17. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 06:38 · Score: 0
  
  Lets assume that 25kW generators are able to be mass produced cheaply, cheap as in under $5000 or so, so they can be locared virtually anywhere. Another assumption is that they are a reasonable size, perhaps about twice as large as a gasoline generator.
  One thing that can be done with so many generators is that the concept of an electric grid could be redesigned, or perhaps even gotten rid of. If every building and vehicle were self-sufficent when it came to having power, a complete infrastructure could either be gotten rid of, or fundamentally changed so Bob keeps Jim's house online while Jim's generator is being serviced.
  It will cost cities revenue not having electric, but that would be more than made up by a complete infrastructure that isn't needed anymore, be it substations, step-up transformers, and step-down transformers.
18. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 07:53 · Score: 0
  
  Meh. So American centric. If the Chinese can build a skyscraper in a month they can build a nuclear plant reasonably sharply too. Just need rid of those pesky regulations.
19. Re:But what's the timeline for "low cost" energy? by rrohbeck · 2012-09-19 10:50 · Score: 1
  
  Ah yes, of course there's infinite fossil fuel in a finite Earth.
  Available Net Exports or crude oil have been falling by 2% per year recently. Saudi Arabia will be an oil importer by 2030. The US passed Peak Coal in 1998.
  Whoever told you that "hundreds of years" lie was a fossil fuel company. Of course their stock prices hinge on these lies.
  
  --
  thegodmovie.com - watch it
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by i+kan+reed · 2012-09-18 08:33 · Score: 1

We got some VERY big bombs out of that deal.
Science by Atyq · 2012-09-18 08:36 · Score: 0

Hi, No, see as you approach feasibility, your likelihood of being bough by a competing producer to be extinguished (see gasoline) becomes multitudes greater. You will never actually reach production with things like this, for the same reason you will never reach a wall by moving in increments of 1/2. Tee short of it, there is too much money to be made to have something as valuable as energy become a low-cost commodity. Hope that this answer to this post is helpful for most of you ;). Best regards, Atyq
1. Re:Science by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 09:36 · Score: 1
  
  > Hi, No, see as you approach feasibility, your likelihood of being bough by a competing producer to be extinguished (see gasoline) becomes multitudes greater.
  I've seen this twice now. I'm not aware of any oil company buying out promising fusion research and killing it, but I'm always willing to entertain evidence. Do you have any?
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
2. Re:Science by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:18 · Score: 1
  
  And that's why we don't have natgas cheaper than oil in this country. Wait...
  
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  make install -not war
Invader Zim by stevegee58 · 2012-09-18 08:39 · Score: 1

It's been bothering me all day but I finally remembered: this reminds me of Professor Membrane's Perpetual Energy Generator.
1. Re:Invader Zim by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:17 · Score: 0
  
  Because you don't know the difference between perpetual motion and transforming matter to energy?
  
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Headline: Is Betteridge's Law Always True? by cervesaebraciator · 2012-09-18 08:41 · Score: 1

Tune in tonight to find out.
You think someone will buy Sandia? by Sycraft-fu · 2012-09-18 08:52 · Score: 2

Do you know who they are? The .gov address might give you a clue but it is Sandia National Laboratories. They are one of the DoE's research labs. It's where they do research relating to nuclear weapons, among other things. This isn't something the oil companies have any sway over or ability to grab.
1. Re:You think someone will buy Sandia? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 12:06 · Score: 0
  
  No it was lobbied for funded by the military industrial complex and as soon as they reach success the patents and all information will go top secret and go into a special folder in the back room. Because god for bid the enemy get their hands on any of this....
2. Re:You think someone will buy Sandia? by kj_kabaje · 2012-09-18 13:45 · Score: 1
  
  Not oil companies... just Defense contractors... Lockheed, I think is the current major player running the show there.
3. Re:You think someone will buy Sandia? by tehcyder · 2012-09-19 01:13 · Score: 1
  
  Do you know who they are? The .gov address might give you a clue but it is Sandia National Laboratories. They are one of the DoE's research labs. It's where they do research relating to nuclear weapons, among other things. This isn't something the oil companies have any sway over or ability to grab.
  You appear to be unfamiliar with the term "military-industrial complex".
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In Soviet Sandia ( Score: +5, Helpful ) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:00 · Score: 0

Fusion breakYOU !
1. Re:In Soviet Sandia ( Score: +5, Helpful ) by GodfatherofSoul · 2012-09-18 10:46 · Score: 1
  
  +5 helpful...wtf?
  
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  I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
might, could, concept by slashrio · 2012-09-18 09:13 · Score: 1

"would have"
"might be"
"concept"
"might reach"

I rest my case

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"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Re:brain power by slashrio · 2012-09-18 09:15 · Score: 1

As in 'Reagan'? (No pun intended!)

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"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
I don't see what is so difficult here. by conspirator23 · 2012-09-18 09:25 · Score: 3, Funny

Simply scale up the reaction to a level where it is self-sustaining on the ambient hydrogen in space, and then collect the resulting photon emissions with an array of photovoltaic converters.
1. Re:I don't see what is so difficult here. by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:26 · Score: 1
  
  You mean like PV panels orbiting the Sun? That's a terrific idea, and without having to build the fusor.
  
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Getting the energy out is still an issue by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:27 · Score: 0

They have to keep it in to get it to fuse, but once it ignites, they have to get it out in a usable form.
IE electricity without destroying the apparatus for the next ignition.
The thing needs to radiate EM fields that can be captured.
Not nasty particles that eat the containment equipment.
Still a ways to go before a useful gadget.
1. Re:Getting the energy out is still an issue by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:14 · Score: 1
  
  No, it'll just heat water, pressurizing it, that'll turn turbines that generate electricity. Like any large power plant, nuclear or otherwise.
  
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  make install -not war
for some values... by roc97007 · 2012-09-18 09:33 · Score: 1

...of "near"...

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Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Re:can we do this again -- without the wordsmithin by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 09:53 · Score: 0

Current state of the art is roughly breakeven, maybe 1.5-2x input at best.
This is 500x-1000x as good.
Answer: No. by viperidaenz · 2012-09-18 09:56 · Score: 1

... why? because you asked the question as a headline.
It's a pulsed system by Animats · 2012-09-18 10:09 · Score: 1

This is a pulsed fusion system. That's technically interesting, but it's a lab apparatus, not a basis for a power plant.
1. Re:It's a pulsed system by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 10:58 · Score: 0
  
  If you mean the current one is a lab instrument, designed with no means to usefully capture the energy... well, duh. same goes for all the other fusion projects at this point. So I assume that's not what you meant.
  If you mean no pulsed fusion system can be the basis for a power-plant... well, that's just bullshit. There's no fundamental reason an eventual pulsed system can't be a basis for a powerplant -- it just makes it a messier problem in a lot of ways, but assuming the energy is extracted by heating a working fluid to run a turbine, it's not fundamentally problematic to convert a train of heat pulses to a more-or-less steady heat flux -- that's just a regenerator, more-or-less -- a heat-exchanger with high thermal mass.
2. Re:It's a pulsed system by SecurityTheatre · 2012-09-18 16:36 · Score: 1
  
  A practical system would be a rapid-fire pulse system, firing every 10 seconds.
  This has already been simulated, although there are plenty of practical issues, it seems pretty reasonable to me, and might even be possible to do without subjecting the machinery to neutron bombardment throughout the process.
Signs there are no news by Yvanhoe · 2012-09-18 10:11 · Score: 1

If your title has a question mark and your summary is written in the conditional tense, you can move along, there is surely nothing to see there...

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The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
How to Make Deuterium? by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:13 · Score: 1

How much energy does it take to make the deuterium (heavy hydrogen) required for this fusion? Less than the surplus in the 1000x 60GA device? Maybe just the average energy to filter it from seawater? How much is that, compared to the fusion energy released from that deuterium?

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make install -not war
1. Re:How to Make Deuterium? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 12:30 · Score: 1
  
  As a rough estimate: you can get deuterium gas now for about $1/L (although price varies a lot with purity). If all of the fusion power were extracted, you would get about 400 kWhr. So fuel would cost you about $0.0025 per kWhr, minus inefficiencies (which wouldn't really be captured by that 1000:1 power ratio they are talking about). Most fusion reactors would probably end up using deuterium-tritium reactions though, and the tritium is much trickier to get. However, tritium can be created by bombarding lithium with neutrons (from say a fusion reactor...) and the DT reaction produces almost three times as much energy as DD. So the price of lithium might be more relevant. Using half a liter of deuterium, you would then need only an eighth a gram of lithium, which even at $100/kh would only add a few more cents onto to 50 cents for the deuterium, while producing closer to 1200 kWhr of energy.
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 10:13 · Score: 4, Informative

Here is the interview,, and Here is the graph.
Funding fusion power is probably the best thing we can do for the environment right now.
The reason is... by Randwulf · 2012-09-18 10:20 · Score: 1

Early fusion research was performed there by Gallagher with his Sledge-O-Matic.
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Chris+Burke · 2012-09-18 10:20 · Score: 1

Thanks!

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The enemies of Democracy are
Re:Slashdot take seems a little too forward lookin by Doc+Ruby · 2012-09-18 10:21 · Score: 1

No, you're just equating Slashdot's "implications" to "end of the path". The implications are extraordinary, because the critical milestone is sustained production in excess of consumption, which seems to have arrived. The path from the breakeven milestone to the implied 1000x production rate is long, but far more certain than before breakeven is reached. Because breakeven is the threshold set by the laws of thermodynamics, the difference between just a big machine that's highly efficient, and a big machine that leaves more energy than when it started.

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make install -not war
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by SuricouRaven · 2012-09-18 10:42 · Score: 1

Russia still had the biggest though. Not that it was much use - a bomb that heavy would pose serious difficulties just getting to a target.
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by SuricouRaven · 2012-09-18 10:44 · Score: 1

I gather it doesn't do that any more. All those sparks were wasted energy, after some efficiency upgrades it stopped making them.
Just let me know by onemorechip · 2012-09-18 10:45 · Score: 1

when I can buy a Mr. Fusion.

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But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
1. Re:Just let me know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 04:15 · Score: 0
  
  when I can buy a Mr. Fusion.
  So you already have a working flux capacitor?
No No No You Fools! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 11:00 · Score: 0

You need a beryllium sphere!!!
Dense Plasma Focus by trout007 · 2012-09-18 11:08 · Score: 1

In case you haven't seen it
http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62&Itemid=80

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I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
1. Re:Dense Plasma Focus by SecurityTheatre · 2012-09-18 16:39 · Score: 1
  
  It's cool, but irritating when they show an animation of fission in a video about fusion...
2015 by mcswell · 2012-09-18 11:14 · Score: 1

Is this how Mr. Fusion works?
1. Re:2015 by mcswell · 2012-09-18 11:14 · Score: 1
  
  oops, someone beat me to it (I searched for "Mr Fusion", but he had a period after "Mr.")
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Chris+Burke · 2012-09-18 11:23 · Score: 1

Yeah, one of the last things I heard out of Sandia on the subject some years ago (maybe '08? Nope, actually all the way back in 2007) was them turning the electrical pulse circuitry into a "lunchbox"-size unit that could be stacked in parallel with others, and rapid fired. And it was like "yeah, yeah, road to economical fusion power blah blah blah where are the sparkies?"
I'd suggest that they should keep the old Z-machine running for tourists to ooh and ahhh over on tours of the production fusion reactor (it's not like they won't have the power to run it), but as the world's largest source of X-rays that's probably not a good idea either.

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The enemies of Democracy are
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 11:27 · Score: 0

The problem with vaporware is in the definition. Presumably "cold fusion" indicates fog, or to use a metaphor, unclear thinking.
Warm fusion, on the other hand, indicates steam, which would be a metaphor for much more energetic thought processes, unfortunately occluded by their by-product. On the plus side, large-scale production of steam could be used in a modern Watt Engine, so maybe useful power, 18th-century style, is much less than 50 years away with warm-fusion vaporware?
Re:near end of 2012? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 12:30 · Score: 0

FTFY.
The energy industry will suppress this. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 12:40 · Score: 0

Big Whaling will make sure that this invention never sees the light of day, just like they did with those upstart gasoline engine producers.
Look around some more... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 13:05 · Score: 0

What we have is a lot of dogmas in the field that prevent non-"mainstream" (ie non-Tokamak) getting _any_ research funding
This is flat out false. While there is a lot of debate about how much to fund such projects and how much to diversify research versus trying to concentrate on pushing harder with a small selection of ideas, there is still continued research and development of alternative designs. Even sticking to magnetic confinement fusion, and ignoring inertial variants like this story, we still have ongoing work in stellarators, FRCs, RFPs, mirror machines and others. I've worked on three different such designs over the last ten years, and while like most projects they always could find use for more funding, they are moving slowly forward with what they have now.
One critical line in the story by Grayhand · 2012-09-18 13:16 · Score: 3, Informative

"beryllium liners remained reasonably intact"
That line gave me pause. To make it it practical it would have to operate for at least 6 to 12 months before the lining was changed since you'd have to go into cold shutdown and be off line for weeks. It doesn't sound like they are even close to that kind of durability. This type of issue is what has kept fusion in the lab. They passed break even a long time ago but they only got slightly more power than it took to sustain the reaction so it'd be like building a nuclear plant to power a house. They've really got to get the durability of the liners to exceed 12 months and the lasers to last even longer or the amount of energy you get out won't justify the expense. I'm a big fan of fusion I'm just also a skeptic, I've been following since the 70s. One added benefit of fusion would be an attractive waste bi-product, Helium.
1. Re:One critical line in the story by SecurityTheatre · 2012-09-18 16:50 · Score: 2
  
  When they talked about "liners" they are talking about the material that is crushed by the magnetic fields. It's the "bullet casing" to the nuclear slug.
  I suspect they're talking about something like this:
  http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/100128-coslog-hohlraum-466px-10a.jpg
2. Re:One critical line in the story by phantomfive · 2012-09-18 18:01 · Score: 1
  
  It might not actually be a problem to be offline for a few weeks, depending on the cost. If you can get it cheap enough, you can build two side-by-side, and when one is in repairs, turn on the other one. If it ends up like Mr Fusion, well, then just buy a new one every few months, no problem.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Chuckstar · 2012-09-18 13:55 · Score: 1

I'm laughing really hard right now. How do they have any idea how long it would take to develop fusion power? Or how much money it might take? It's entirely possible that you could draw the "never" line on that graph at $100 billion a year. We just don't know.
Remember, at the time they thought we just needed to refine magnetic confinement. That's been an interesting scientific problem, but even more problematic than anyone expected. IIRC, it's now been shown mathematically that you cannot fully confine plasma into a toroid using magnetic fields. So you have to work the reactor design such that the leaks are confined to areas with extra shielding.
ITER will cost EUR15 billion, and maybe will lead to a much more expensive follow-on plant. The follow-on plant would still only be a commercial pilot plant (best case).
(In fainess, though, a nuclear aircraft carrier costs $10 billion, so we're still not talking about budget-breaking projects if the U.S. were to throw all-in.)
2050 by Joe_Dragon · 2012-09-18 14:13 · Score: 1

will come out in 2050.
1. Re:2050 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 22:53 · Score: 0
  
  I hope so, this coal fired plant is going to blow up in 2052 and Microwave keeps destroying my best Heavy Industry areas!
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 14:54 · Score: 0

How do they have any idea how long it would take to develop fusion power?

Previous experiments establish scaling parameters that demonstrate how power and confinement change as you improve various aspects of the machine. There is no guarantee these scalings will work at all sizes, but they do give an estimate of how much power a better built or larger machine can produce, and can at least identify some red flags that would indicate when a larger machine would be useless. Theory and computer modeling have also advanced to give estimates of performance. Based on this, scientists work out roughly how many steps would be needed to a final production machine. They of course don't assume their estimates are perfect, which is why they don't just jump to the final size/configuration.
Also, the "fusion never" line was never meant to imply fusion was guaranteed if you exceeded it, just that below it there is no foreseeable way for results to be achieved (at least until we teamed up with other countries). In other words, fusion might not work if you try, but it definitely will not work if you don't try.

IIRC, it's now been shown mathematically that you cannot fully confine plasma into a toroid using magnetic fields. So you have to work the reactor design such that the leaks are confined to areas with extra shielding.
Diverters were state of the art ... in the 70s. For tokamaks at least, they are a pretty well understood component (for stellarators, there are still some major work to be done). Although there is still room for improvement, they are not as big of an issue as first wall materials, as there is a bit more freedom and control in design of the diverter.
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by c0lo · 2012-09-18 15:35 · Score: 1

Nuclear energy research has been funded the same way the internet was funded, the usual way research gets publicly funded in the US (or for that matter, elsewhere): The promise of military applications.
Fortunately, the internet brought a thing called Kickstarter... anyone willing to start a campaign?

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Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Expendable, not supposed to last months by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 17:16 · Score: 0

The liner is expected to be destroyed each shot and to be a consumable in the process that would have to be factored in with fuel costs. When they talk about it lasting long enough, they mean long enough to crush and burn the fuel before vaporizing in the pulse. So they are not expected to or supposed to last months.
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by SuricouRaven · 2012-09-18 18:04 · Score: 1

My little one-kilojoule capacitor bank for exploding fruit is quite capable of crashing a mobile phone placed nearby with the mini-EMP it produces. A problem that ruined a few recordings before I got a camera with a zoom. The Z machine must be quite a bit worse in that regard. Anyone with an electronic medical implant would have to be excluded from the demonstrations.
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-09-18 18:11 · Score: 1

The saddest part was of the various scenarios like "fusion in 10 years", "fusion in 20 years", there was a "fusion never" line where funding was never sufficient to yield breakeven fusion, and then there was overlaid a new "actual funding" line which was significantly lower than that. :(
The saddest part to me is that their estimate for funds needed to do it in shortest terms possible is $80 billion - which is about one year of war in Afghanistan. Even if they're off by an order of magnitude, US alone could still fund fusion power to completion solely off the money it has pissed off into the wind in the last decade.
The real news by Neil+Boekend · 2012-09-18 19:12 · Score: 1

The most interesting thing is that they have found a way to do something useful with that massive defense budget.

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Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
They better give it away..... by Desmoden · 2012-09-18 19:44 · Score: 1

If they sell it the run the risk of creating jobs...which the government is never suppose to do ;-)
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 20:02 · Score: 0

New Kickstarter project, anyone?
By the way by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-18 20:14 · Score: 0

I have a bridge to sell you. As well as a cure for cancer, the common cold and Alzheimers.
I wish I had a cent for every breakthrough that was made in these areas in the last 20 years. I would have lots of cents and the world would still not be any closer to solving any of these problems.
Sigh...
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Vintermann · 2012-09-18 20:53 · Score: 1

I didn't say it was a false promise. The thing about the arpanet being able to function after a nuclear exchange, however, was pretty suspect.

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xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
To infinity and beyond! by Julz · 2012-09-18 22:31 · Score: 1

Pair this with http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/17/2229257/warp-drive-might-be-less-impossible-than-previously-thought and we might just get the attention of the passing star cruiser ;-)

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When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Chuckstar · 2012-09-19 01:44 · Score: 1

Many a budget has been busted by orders of magnitude using those types of assumptions.
Sandia National Laboratories = SNL ????? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 03:17 · Score: 0

Am I the only one that noticed Sandia National Laboratories stands for SNL?
Re:Stop hating. "cold fusion" != "fusion" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 03:37 · Score: 0

And many have been reasonably accurate. It is no different than any other budget proposal for building something not built before or for building a larger version of something. R&D in just about any field have to propose timelines and budgets for research of uncertain topics, and evaluators have to take into consideration the risk of those estimates being wrong. It is pretty rare for research to be risk free.
In my experience, grants for fusion topics have actually been far more strict about demanding evidence that upgrades/new experiments will have a chance of working compared to other fields. Some of this is because bigger grants require more scrutiny, but the mentality even seems to extend down to the smaller grants.
Fusion Reactors by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-19 03:46 · Score: 0

The energy of tomorrow.. and it always will be. :)
It's just around the corner! by Chiminea · 2012-09-19 04:35 · Score: 1

Oh yeah this means fusion power is just around the corner (again). Bitch has more corners than a broken Rubick's cube...
Has Betteridge's Law of Headlines been overused? by Twisted64 · 2012-09-19 18:47 · Score: 1

n/t

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Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.