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Two-Laser Boron Fusion Lights the Way To Radiation-Free Energy

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-love-it-when-energy-doesn't-try-to-kill-me dept.

ananyo writes "Fusion unleashes vast amounts of energy that might one day be used to power giant electrical grids. But the laboratory systems that seem most promising produce radiation in the form of fast-moving neutrons, and these present a health hazard that requires heavy shielding and even degrades the walls of the fusion reactor. Physicists have now produced fusion at an accelerated rate in the laboratory without generating harmful neutrons (abstract). A team led by Christine Labaune, research director of the CNRS Laboratory for the Use of Intense Lasers at the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, used a two-laser system to fuse protons and boron-11 nuclei. One laser created a short-lived plasma, or highly ionized gas of boron nuclei, by heating boron atoms; the other laser generated a beam of protons that smashed into the boron nuclei, releasing slow-moving helium particles but no neutrons. Previous laser experiments that generated boron fusion aimed the laser at a boron target to initiate the reaction. In the new experiment, the laser-generated proton beam produces a tenfold increase of boron fusion because protons and boron nuclei are instead collided together directly."

8 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Hooray for fusion! by lgw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hooray! Fusion power is now only 20 years in the future! The absence of fast neutrons really is a breakthrough, though: the less radioactive a reactor itself becomes over time, the easier the cleanup at the end of its life.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    1. Re:Hooray for fusion! by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As long as we don't run out of the other stuff, anyway. The Earth's crust contains about 5x as much Boron as Uranium, but we already use quite a lot of it for other applications and are extracting it at almost seventy times the rate.

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    2. Re:Hooray for fusion! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Too bad we can't get fusion energy from morons instead, we would have unlimited energy...

    3. Re:Hooray for fusion! by AnotherBlackHat · · Score: 5, Informative

      If I'm crunching the numbers correctly, 1 gram of Boron produces 25,000 kWh of electricity - assuming perfect capture, 100% boron-11 and no other loses. (Granted, all unrealistic assumptions, but it's a starting point.)

      If we replaced all electric generation on the planet (about 20 trillion kWh / year) it would take 800 tonnes of boron per year.

      Turkey has the largest known Boron deposits at over a million tonnes or 1,200 years worth. And there are several other countries with large (thousands of tonnes) deposits as well, and that's just the Boron we know about.

      All really rough estimates, but I don't think will run out of Boron fuel any time soon.

    4. Re:Hooray for fusion! by Xyrus · · Score: 5, Funny

      Too bad we can't get fusion energy from morons instead, we would have unlimited energy...

      Scientists have tried moron-moron fusion, but it simply takes more energy to fuse two morons than the reaction produces. Worse, moron fusion by-products are inherently unstable and result in dangerous moronic radiation. There is no known shielding that can prevent moronic radiation from escaping into the environment. At best, you can only hope to slow it down. But eventually, it finds a way to break out of even the most solid, fool-proof containment.

      If your unfamiliar with what moronic radiation is capable of, there are some well-known cases. These days though we have better equipment and facilities to ascertain and study this form of radiation. In fact, there is an ongoing experiment at the Washington, D.C's Large Moron Collider inside the Capitol Building Research Facility. There they often collide long lived moronic particles called Senators and short lived moronic particles called Representatives, producing all kinds of particles ranging from the softer ignorance particles to the elusive yet massive stupid particles.

      The unique rotunda design of the top shield was supposed to contain reactions and radiation from the moronic collisions. Unfortunately it seems that despite their best efforts moronic radiation still escapes into the environment.

      Some scientists have apparently found a way to at least channel and control the radiation. The research group at the Fox Institute of Truth, for example, has found that they can channel the moronic radiation from the LMC by converting it into electromagnetic radiation in the television spectrum where it harmlessly dissipates into the environment.

      However, new research indicates moronic radiation is not so easily defeated. A growing body of research shows that even though you convert moronic radiation into another form, it still retains it's dangerous properties. This hints at deeper mysteries behind the nature of moronic energy.

      --
      ~X~
  2. Re:Er, wait, what? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, nuclear reactions that we can turn off like laser-initiated fusion are a lot nicer than the alternatives. The inside of your car engine is a raging inferno shot with electric sparks and compressed with inexorable steel cylinders. That doesn't keep you from going on a nice drive with your sweetie.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  3. Proton-Boron Fusion is what Bussard was working on by syukton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Robert Bussard's fusion project at Energy Matter Conversion Corporation was aimed at investigating Proton-Boron fusion, because it is clean and produces no high-energy neutrons. I was really hoping this was a follow-on to that work. The device Bussard called a Polywell actually shows some serious potential to revolutionize nuclear power globally. It even shows enough promise that the US Navy has been funding some small-scale experiments. It's unfortunate that Bussard died before he could see the potential of the Polywell realized, but it would be nice to see it succeed none the less.

    --
    Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
  4. Re:New "traditional" energy source by thesupraman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You need a translation not a citation..

    'After huge effort to drown nuclear energy in red tape, escalating build costs to many times their real cost - while at the same time
    stopping any form on innovation in cleaner/safer/more efficient forms, we have finally achieved the point where its price/performance
    does not wipe the floor with everything else'
    And for bonus points throw in a little 'while of course ignoring the actual ecological and human damage of competing generation methods
    as those are OBVIOUSLY clean, since they dont use evil nasty RADIATION (and where they do, we will ignore it)'

    Make a little more sense now?