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Fusion Progress: Superheated Gas Kept Stable For 5 Milliseconds
An anonymous reader writes: A company called Tri Alpha has successfully kept a ball of superheated gas stable for a record time, 5 milliseconds, putting them closer to producing fusion power. "'They've succeeded finally in achieving a lifetime limited only by the power available to the system,' says particle physicist Burton Richter of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who sits on a board of advisers to Tri Alpha. If the company's scientists can scale the technique up to longer times and higher temperatures, they will reach a stage at which atomic nuclei in the gas collide forcefully enough to fuse together, releasing energy.
Importantly, the Tri Alpha machine may be able to operate with a different fuel than most other fusion reactors. This fuel-a mix of hydrogen and boron-is harder to react, but Tri Alpha researchers say it avoids many of the problems likely to confront conventional fusion power plants." The article does not say how much this success cost the privately-funded Tri Alpha, but it certainly wasn't in the billions of dollars.
Importantly, the Tri Alpha machine may be able to operate with a different fuel than most other fusion reactors. This fuel-a mix of hydrogen and boron-is harder to react, but Tri Alpha researchers say it avoids many of the problems likely to confront conventional fusion power plants." The article does not say how much this success cost the privately-funded Tri Alpha, but it certainly wasn't in the billions of dollars.
Expect 24/7 operation in 30 years.
Some company managed to heat up some gas to a temperature not high enough, for not long enough to even consider nuclear fusion.
And apparently it's a big deal.
I don't understand the difference between this record compare to current record of holding plasma, which is about 16min.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So I wish them luck, but to do what they want means they need 3 billion degrees to ignite and they are at 10 million. Over two orders of magnitude seems difficult. I like that their reaction is not radioactive though. It means if they ever do hit the 3 billion, the reaction will not destroy the equipment from the radiation.
Not when... but if.
So, basically, not in anyone's lifetime that is alive right now.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
He's the Chief Science Officer at Tri Lambda.
We have been expecting cold fusion in 30 years for about 50 years now.
Actually it's HOT fusion we've been expecting in 30 years for a long time. (Cold fusion, other than the apparently useless muon-catalyzed form, was a "maybe it's possible - no apparently not" flash in the pan)
But THIS one is big: It's not that it lasted 5 ms. It's that it lasted 5 ms WITHOUT DECAYING. That almost certainly means that:
- either they've completely solved the instability issues and it's just a matter of scaling up (and using superconductors or adequate cooling so they can run continuously),
- or they've solved them well enough to hold the plasma ball together until it's paid for itself several times over, then make another one (repeat continuously) and it's just a matter of scaling up (and using superconductors or adequate cooling so they can putt-putt-putt continuously).
Now if other problem show up (but aren't a fundamental refutation of this indication of stability) we might end up expecting fusion in five years for another fifteen or so. But I think the "30 years forever" thing has just been evicted from fusion and is living with its brother in copyright extension.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We're only 20 years away from fusion now! Sweet!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Tri-alpha's tech is really amazing, it really is. I've read a couple of their papers. They are a talented group and they've got the funding as well.
But let's not kid ourselves here. Fusion is not going to be a realistic energy source any time soon. Further, even if we had fusion power, we probably wouldn't use it, as we already have far cheaper sources of clean power available: http://reneweconomy.com.au/201...
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
I'll believe it when I see it.
...but then I broke wind during a quiet pause in the party.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I'll give it 20 years.
to do what they want means they need 3 billion degrees to ignite and they are at 10 million
Each electronvolt is equivalent to 11,500 degrees Kelvin. So they need to run at about 200 kV instead of 870V. Piece of cake.
This is whyFarnsworth fusors are tabletop "gassy vacuum tubes" and the issues with polywell machines are things like geometry and electromagnet wiring rather than applying excitation energy.
Kelvin is the same size degree as celsius but offset by a couple hundred degrees so zero is absolute zero. At 3 billion degrees the difference between water freezing and absolute zero is noise. If TFA's degrees are fahrenheit the offset is still noise but scale the voltage back to 144 kV.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
5 milliseconds of power? Hook that up to my TV and that will be just long enough to see all the good parts from the Fantastic Four movie.
Wheee - yet another team using the promise of Aneutronic (but not really) fusion to build hype and probably bilk the uninformed out of donations. Boron / Proton fusion is literally 500 times harder than D + T fusion. D + T fusion is by far and away the easiest target for achieving fusion, but we haven't even been able to do that to the degree needed for useful power generation.
Walk before you run, or in this case, walk before anti-grav-hover boot soccer tournaments.
Forget power production, Fusion power will give us the stars. We would do our local planets with fission, but environmental impact is too costly.
As far as I can tell from the article this looks familiar from 37 years ago.
Check out the Trisops project.
Disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia article and a co-author on the cited paper.
CORRECTED LINK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Ok, so I've got a huge interest in fusion research. But as a lot of people in /., I don't have enough knowledge to understand how big of a deal it is.
First, 5ms look kinda small, especially when we got no reference as comparison. What was the precedent record? What was the longest fusion was kept "stable" before? Or is it the first time fusion are reached something that could be called a "stable" stabe for "x" time?
Elok
Personally though, I think the LED lightbulb is a better replacement for Edison's bulb. This sounds like a bit of a step back in terms of efficiency and longevity. Plus it can't fit on a garage much less on top of a bed stand. No change of reaching the break even point with a 60W bulb, but it's easier to turn on and you can buy 'em real cheap.
Clearly, warp drive is just around the corner. I'm preparing my bug-out bag for Andromeda, for sure!
This is may why we may never achieve it: contrarily to fission, fusion must first overcome a huge potential barrier to bring nuclei close enough for it to happen. It means first giving a huge amount of energy to start it, and then you want it to be controlled enough to not have an hydrogen bomb in the lab.
Seriously, other govs are putting their scientists and even their money into projects here in the states. They will walk off with the technology from all of this.
Just as O and the dems did his AE subsidies , right now, the GOP should be working with O to re-start American nuclear R^D and esp. the Development.
WIth a 5B / year fund for say the next 4-6 years, invested into a number of start-ups, we could have multiple companies trying various approaches.
At the same time, we need to deal with the waste and old reactors that exists. Trans Atomic and Flible could have new reactors within 6 years, if funded.
CONgress needs to quit being the worst session EVER and start doing something.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So they're making a sun in a lab.
Fusion based in part on the ideas of the Australian Sir Mark Oliphant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The name 'Mr. Fusion' is already registered.
You must be flying one; I missed the announcement.
If this will ever become competitive with other sources, given that it will require a large amount of equipment and a lot of staff to run it and long transmission lines, etc., vs. hills full of windmills and rooftops full of PV panels feeding right into homes and stores. "Too cheap to meter....?" We've heard that before.