FUSION...IS...COMING. (courtesy of that darned ol' Skunkworks)

originally posted by: subtopia
Has anyone actually looked into this form of energy, the magnetic shielding within the torus becomes radioactive, which then needs to be replaced.

The sort of radioactivity you get from neutron activation of metals is generally short-lived and low level. It's not like you're storing used fuel rods. That's also assuming you're going to be running D-T forever. Hint, hint...SW would really like to run p-B11, which is aneutronic.

Thus NOT clean energy unless of course your happy to have your children live near a radioactive waste storage facility. There is no 'cold fusion' thus it still needs to be cooled, the energy to cool it, basically negates the energy it creates...

Oh, bull#. The heat it produces IS the output. You use it to create steam and run a turbine. Like you do with pretty much any generating setup outside of hydro.

eta: of course, if you DID manage to run p-B11, you don't need the turbine or much in the way of cooling, either. They produce electricity directly.

So they think they can generate around 100MW in a 7'x10' reactor setup? If so then this has submarine application written all over it, not to mention surface vessels. That means you could run fusion powered subs easily down to the size of the Euro littoral's like Scorpene or Type 212. Very, very interesting.

LEE.

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: mbkennel
Unfortunately I'm more skeptical now.

The actual announcement is that they are now seeking partners in academia and government labs.

If they really, truly, had a 5 year timeline to a fully working reactor (as was the original promise), they wouldn't be looking for partners. The CEO, not the techncial lead, would showing off results to boost the share price.

Most aerospace companies do this for every project they run. It's pretty rare that the prime does the entire project in house. Especially it would be rare for SW, because they don't have a huge amount of personnel or project development room. They contract # out all the time.

That's the point. If it were really as close as the hype, corporate would elevate & fund it far beyond just the regular SW business model. Not just the usual idea of 'contracts'---but a serious capitalist commercial business.

None of other fusion startups, all far smaller and lower resourced than LM [except perhaps Tri-Alpha], have publicly said that they're looking for partners yet.

A contract with a known $ amount from government is very different from a high-risk but potentially enormously scalable business.

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: subtopia
Has anyone actually looked into this form of energy, the magnetic shielding within the torus becomes radioactive, which then needs to be replaced.

The sort of radioactivity you get from neutron activation of metals is generally short-lived and low level.

What about making Pu-239 from dirt cheap U-238? That's a sort of neutron activation to be concerned about.

I don't know the details (energy spectrum??), but naively I'd guess no better and no worse than fission reactors for breeding.

Not sure I'd want to sell & ship them to random ebay bidders....

originally posted by: mbkennel

What about making Pu-239 from dirt cheap U-238? That's a sort of neutron activation to be concerned about.

I don't know the details (energy spectrum??), but naively I'd guess no better and no worse than fission reactors for breeding.

Not sure I'd want to sell & ship them to random ebay bidders....

The neutrons are pretty energetic. You'd want to slow them a bit.

However, a veritable #heap of very energetic neutrons lets you do other things that you might also want to control. Oddly enough one of which also uses U238 (at least in some designs), and that's a really studly x-ray laser.

originally posted by: mbkennel
That's the point. If it were really as close as the hype, corporate would elevate & fund it far beyond just the regular SW business model. Not just the usual idea of 'contracts'---but a serious capitalist commercial business.

None of other fusion startups, all far smaller and lower resourced than LM [except perhaps Tri-Alpha], have publicly said that they're looking for partners yet.

Maybe they're down to the engineering. The other startups are not.

originally posted by: thebozeian
So they think they can generate around 100MW in a 7'x10' reactor setup? If so then this has submarine application written all over it, not to mention surface vessels. That means you could run fusion powered subs easily down to the size of the Euro littoral's like Scorpene or Type 212. Very, very interesting.

LEE.

Even more so if you can run p-B11 in it. That's one reason why Naval Weapons wanted the polywell reactor from EMC2. And is still funding it.

a reply to: jaffo

"Fusion power" has been ten years away for the past fifty years. It is unlikely that it will ever be possible to get more energy out than is put in to the system, and the gamma radiation it produces is worse than conventional nuclear plants. It has been said that the only purpose of "fusion research" is to insure that there are always a few people who know how to design nuclear weapons around.

originally posted by: DJW001
a reply to: jaffo

"Fusion power" has been ten years away for the past fifty years. It is unlikely that it will ever be possible to get more energy out than is put in to the system, and the gamma radiation it produces is worse than conventional nuclear plants. It has been said that the only purpose of "fusion research" is to insure that there are always a few people who know how to design nuclear weapons around.

"Cynicism" is neither a synonym for "solution" nor an effective rebuttal of facts. Just saying...

originally posted by: jaffo

originally posted by: DJW001
a reply to: jaffo

"Fusion power" has been ten years away for the past fifty years. It is unlikely that it will ever be possible to get more energy out than is put in to the system, and the gamma radiation it produces is worse than conventional nuclear plants. It has been said that the only purpose of "fusion research" is to insure that there are always a few people who know how to design nuclear weapons around.

"Cynicism" is neither a synonym for "solution" nor an effective rebuttal of facts. Just saying...

The fact is, people have been claiming that fusion is ten years away for the past fifty years. The fact is, high school students have created fusion devices, but they require more energy than they produce. This is just thermodynamics at work. Stars fuse elements because their mass is so large that gravitation provides the energy necessary to convert mass into energy.

Even if it were possible to create a self sustaining nuclear fusion reaction, the only way to utilize the energy would be to use the heat to boil water (or other "working fluid") to turn a turbine. Not nearly as efficient as, say, using a solar collector to heat the water.

And then there's the question of the gamma radiation rotting the equipment and creating radioactive waste. Don't believe the hype. Nuclear fusion will be neither clean nor safe. A much better option is thorium fission, which is cleaner and safer than even the 3G nukes currently in production.

originally posted by: DJW001

originally posted by: jaffo

originally posted by: DJW001
a reply to: jaffo

"Fusion power" has been ten years away for the past fifty years. It is unlikely that it will ever be possible to get more energy out than is put in to the system, and the gamma radiation it produces is worse than conventional nuclear plants. It has been said that the only purpose of "fusion research" is to insure that there are always a few people who know how to design nuclear weapons around.

"Cynicism" is neither a synonym for "solution" nor an effective rebuttal of facts. Just saying...

The fact is, people have been claiming that fusion is ten years away for the past fifty years. The fact is, high school students have created fusion devices, but they require more energy than they produce. This is just thermodynamics at work. Stars fuse elements because their mass is so large that gravitation provides the energy necessary to convert mass into energy.

Even if it were possible to create a self sustaining nuclear fusion reaction, the only way to utilize the energy would be to use the heat to boil water (or other "working fluid") to turn a turbine. Not nearly as efficient as, say, using a solar collector to heat the water.

And then there's the question of the gamma radiation rotting the equipment and creating radioactive waste. Don't believe the hype. Nuclear fusion will be neither clean nor safe. A much better option is thorium fission, which is cleaner and safer than even the 3G nukes currently in production.

Sometimes there are so many wrong assumptions in a post that it just isn't worth addressing them all. This would be one of those times.

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: mbkennel
That's the point. If it were really as close as the hype, corporate would elevate & fund it far beyond just the regular SW business model. Not just the usual idea of 'contracts'---but a serious capitalist commercial business.

None of other fusion startups, all far smaller and lower resourced than LM [except perhaps Tri-Alpha], have publicly said that they're looking for partners yet.

Maybe they're down to the engineering. The other startups are not.

That would be great.

Though fusion is always a real bitch: you're trying to make particles do things that they really really don't want to do, and there's always some new instability and collective behavior that results in confinement loss, they just keep on popping up (like evolution, almost) after you plug all the old ones you knew about.

originally posted by: DJW001
a reply to: jaffo

"Fusion power" has been ten years away for the past fifty years. It is unlikely that it will ever be possible to get more energy out than is put in to the system,

bikini atoll has a different opinion

and the gamma radiation it produces is worse than conventional nuclear plants.

But the gamma radiation locally is irrelevant--- high-output long-lived radioisotopes [fallout in a can] are the nasty.

It has been said that the only purpose of "fusion research" is to insure that there are always a few people who know how to design nuclear weapons around.

Which research? Are you talking about the NIF laser? Yes, that's a nuclear weapons project, not an energy project, no matter how much they launder it.
Just this year Livermore canceled the small energy research program. with NIF. scitation.aip.org...


The rest of these other contained fusion experiments have no bearing whatsoever on technology for nuclear weapons design.

My objection is the scale of funding for NIF vs innovative non-tokamak power fusion: probably 25:1 ratio, when it should be at least 1:1.

And even the NIF, after spending many billions (compare to these small startups) failed to reach ignition.

a reply to: jaffo

Sometimes there are so many wrong assumptions in a post that it just isn't worth addressing them all. This would be one of those times.

You cannot name a single one, can you?

a reply to: DJW001 Actually I agree with you about the potential of Thorium cycle/ trans-mutter reactor systems. The potential is enormous on a whole host of levels, not just power generation but also converting current nuclear waste and no longer wanted products like weapons grade Plutonium into something a lot less harmful and further useful.

LEE.