News: Compact Fusion Reactors?

[clsage]

This potential development has uses in other genres (such as a maguffin for a Dark Champions scenario...or as a power source for a hero in Champions...etc) but I suspect that it belongs here. Thus...the posting:

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/us-lockheed-fusion-idUSKCN0I41EM20141015

 

(The first three paragraphs of the article follow...)

 

(Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

 

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

 

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire told reporters. ...

[Zeropoint]

Hugely important, game-changing news, if it's true. I'm looking forward to hearing more on this.

[megaplayboy]

Fusion power plants, assuming they are 1) practical, 2) cost-effective and 3) safe, would, in conjunction with electric cars:

1. Resolve the climate change issue within a generation.

2. Essentially put the fossil fuel industry out of business before the end of the century(and seriously reduce its geopolitical influence within 10-20 years of introduction).

3. Have a destabilizing effect on fossil fuel autocracies(like much of the Mid East, Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, et al).

 

If I'm Elon Musk, I am all over this as an investor.

[megaplayboy]

It sounds like they have proof of concept but want major investment in order to attempt a working prototype. IF that works, and fulfills the 3 criteria I mentioned above, it's arguably the biggest advancement since the steam engine.

[L. Marcus]

We likee.

[BlueCloud2k2]

SWEET!!!

[BlueCloud2k2]

I just thought of this, this puts us one step closer to Colonizing space!

[L. Marcus]

*does not do joke that reverses word order*

[Zeropoint]

In post-Soviet Russia, SPACE explores YOU!

 

Wait, didn't I do this joke already?

[Old Man]

I'm skeptical, but it would be nice if true. I can't find any detailed articles online but just looking at the diagrams that I can find, I don't see how it could possibly work. You can't put a superconducting magnet inside the plasma chamber, and what's stopping the neutron flux?

[pinecone]

A wizard did it?

 

If this works out, it really will be the 21st century to me.  I guess it's "wait and see". If they are asking for research funds, I am assuming that they have enough math to answer questions.

[Lawnmower Boy]

The Lockheed-Martin fusion initiative was the subject of a pretty skeptical article by Charles Seife at Slate this week. I don't want to be Mr. Party Pooper, but given the amount of money already spent on fusion, I have a hard time seeing how its going to be a private sector play. Fusion pretty clearly needs a spend-like-a-drunken-sailor budget and a smile-graciously-at-Aunt-Mabel's-ugly-sweater attitude to the (interim) product it produces. That's the kind of approach we haven't seen since the space race. It would be nice to see it back. 

[Armitage]

At least "10 years away" is better than the "20 years away" we've been hearing every few years since the 1950s. 

That's progress, sort of.

[Tom Carman]

Fusion pretty clearly needs a spend-like-a-drunken-sailor budget and a smile-graciously-at-Aunt-Mabel's-ugly-sweater attitude to the (interim) product it produces. That's the kind of approach we haven't seen since the space race. It would be nice to see it back. 

Maybe, maybe not. The reason they think that they can get results in a decade is that the reactor is small enough to build, test, repeat on a not-ridiculously-long schedule. The necessary budget may also scale down in similar fashion.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Maybe, maybe not. The reason they think that they can get results in a decade is that the reactor is small enough to build, test, repeat on a not-ridiculously-long schedule. The necessary budget may also scale down in similar fashion.

People often talk about radar as some awesome idea that somebody had one time, and the British got hold of it, and developed it all secret-like, and BAM, Battle of Britain!

 

In reality, no-one had to be told that radio waves might let you see in the dark, as it were. In fact, steam foghorns had been used that way for almost half a century when the earliest experiments with radar began. In 1924, an American engineer at Bell Labs announced a "radio altimeter" that would let airplanes see the ground in the dark. The need was well-established. IN 1937, a sufficiently-powerful emitter, the klystron, was developed and matched to the concept. In 1938, Bell Lab placed a few "radio altimeters" in Western Airlines aircraft, but the results were underwhelming due to difficulties in what we would now call the "user interface." A radio altimeter  was finally installed in military aircraft in 1941. Seventeen years. That's a fusion timescale! What's the hold up here? 

 

"Submarines? The Germans have submarines now? When did that happen? More importantly, where are the convoy escorts going to come from?".

"Five years ago, Bill. We told you at the time. We said we needed to build more "

-"Sure you did. You also told me that they had diesel-powered flying boats that catapulted from merchant raiders. You said we needed more battleships, more cruisers, more aircraft carriers. You said we needed more effing floating docks! Anyway, past is past. How about we build some modified whaling ships. Did that in the last war. Subs are kind of like whales."

-"And those "corvettes" were useless in the last war for convoy escort, George. Little boats rolling around at night so the only thing the crews could see was water. You remember, George."

-"What's that new thing you've got, radar? Stick one of 'em on."

-"Little ship, small mast, George. Why, the radar would need to be a 10cm wavelength to spot a sub. And--"

-"10cm radar. Got it. Put out a call for tender."

-"George, do you have any idea how hard that is--"

"No, and I don't care, either. Just put together a circular and send it out to the usual suspects. Radio companies, electrical instrument companies. Hey, remember how Barr and Stroud got started? Pair of physics profs stuck at some community college? Ask 'em to name their price and see how much they want to get out of Wolverhampton."

 

Less than a year from announcing a need as quotidian as a surface search radar for the new "whale catcher" corvettes, a university lab in Birmingham announced a breakthrough in high frequency radio wave production, the magnetron. 

 

The difference? i) Money, ii) Usage. First, you have to be prepared to pay for the scale of research required. Second, usage. The klystron has a wide range of applications, while the magnetron did not. 

 

Now, this is an argument from analogy. I do not know what secrets Lockheed-Martin might be sitting on. Maybe there has been one of those miracle breakthroughs. But most people are skeptical, and skeptical for a reason. What I do know is that the history of technology  is littered with private developers promising breathtaking breakthroughs on a "real soon now" timeframe that peter out on closer inspection. There's a reason for that. They're looking for funding. 

 

I'm saying that of you want to solve this problem, solve the funding problem first. The recent history of fusion research is one of projects petering out at the $20-billion-and-five-years-overdue mark because the funders (usually governments for fairly obvious reason) look at the prospect of dropping another $20 billion to fund another five years of work on what was originally supposed to be a five year project because $20 billion is just too much money given all of the other Very Important Priorities, and, after all, the thing that the fusion scientists are by now promising is a sad shadow of their original vision.

 

So I'll reiterate that fusion may come to us as a result of a miracle breakthrough at a private lab on a shoestring budget. But to me that looks a lot like people who are twenty pounds overweight and decide that instead of not having donuts for breakfast and working out every day, they're going to click on the link for that one strange fruit that melts fat.  

[Old Man]

Hey, can you shoot me that link when you get a chance?

 

From what research I've done into the Lockheed-Martin project, there seems to be some deliberate ambiguity built in to the technical information that has so far been released.  Which makes sense from an intellectual property perspective.  It doesn't help us from an is-this-another-military-industrial-complex-boondoggle perspective, though.

 

It looks as though the containment configuration they have can work, perhaps with a small amount of leakage, but I still don't see how they're going to make it all work at the proposed scale.  The magnets will have to be shielded from the neutron flux, and the only way you can stop neutrons is with thick masses of water, lithium, or beryllium.  There just isn't space for that in the diagram. 

[Lawnmower Boy]

Here's the Seife article.  It's an old Slate article --in a series funded by Statoil, no less!-- on the Princeton Plasma Laboratory's 2012 announcement that it had Korean "angel investors." It cycled back up onto the front page because of the Lockheed announcement, and the action is in the comments:

 

Curvefitter says: "A lot of the Lockheed Martin press release read like the MIT Tokomak guys's spiel to incoming physics grad students back in the day:  They were working on adaptive magnetic confinement so the fields got stronger in response to plasma instabilities.  They had a small reactor so could iterate quicker to solve the few remaining engineering problems.  Any day now.  Maybe a couple of years, tops!  That was in the late 1980's.

The generous reading here is that they started working on this in earnest about five years ago.  They made a lot of progress real fast (these are smart guys, they built the SR71 after all).  The few remaining problems look small enough to be winnable.  But those last few problems always turn out to contain show stoppers.  "

 

etc. It looks like I'm going to get pretty ugly formatting if I go on excerpting from the Slate comment thread. I'm not sure that random Slate commenters are worth that.

 

And since I'm diving into horrible comment threads anyway, from the Yahoo story,

 

Vern says: These two fusion energy announcements were primarily hype to attract investment funding.

The following is an abstract of the University of Washington design. It appears that this is a rehash of their patent application. It appears to revolve around a reactor concept, not a breakthrough in achieving evidence of a fusion reaction, let alone a reaction that generates more power than it consumes.

The dynomak: An advanced spheromak reactor concept with imposed-dynamo current drive and next-generation nuclear power technologies
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920379614002518 

The following article provides some technical details regarding Lockheed Martin’s announcement. After reading through it it appears to be mostly a new plasma confinement concept and associated engineering of the construction materials. The article shows no evidence that any breakthrough was achieved showing evidence of a fusion reaction, let alone a reaction that generates more power than it consumes.

Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details
Lockheed Martin aims to develop compact reactor prototype in five years, production unit in 10
http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details


Scientists Are Bashing Lockheed Martin's Nuclear Fusion 'Breakthrough'
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-bashing-lockheed-martins-nuclear-232518813.html?bcmt=1413438197265-6bfd75f2-c126-4eb7-a488-6a11e353de3d&bcmt_s=u#mediacommentsugc_container

 

Ten years to see how this breaks.

[Christopher]

At least "10 years away" is better than the "20 years away" we've been hearing every few years since the 1950s. 

That's progress, sort of.

"Could be ready in a decade" is a very, very ambiguous claim. If it takes them 100 instead, it would still be technically right

It is the kind of stuff you want to use the xkcd neutrino bet on:

http://xkcd.com/955/

 

Thier immediate milestones are "build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year, and build a prototype in five years."

I guess we have to wait if that goes anywhere.

 

It seems like one of that things that are "too good to be true". Like they skipped way ahead to the miniaturisation phase, when we still have not even made reactor that gives us a net positive energy output.

While the idea of faster development due to shorter build time is promising, I doubt we understand the physics far enough.

[Hyper-Man]

smells of advertising to get more investors.  still a necessary step before moving on to the real prize...

 

re: neutron flux

 

Whoever obtains a working supply of Helium 3 (next space-race to the Moon between China & US) will be able to produce reactors that don't produce free neutrons as a byproduct.  Instead, the byproduct is a proton flux (high speed charged particles whose capture creates a NET energy gain when combined with a magnetic reactor containment field). THIS is the real prize - a fusion reactor that will really change things.  It doesn't need a mechanical (inefficient) heat exchange system (ex: steam engine) to produce electricity. 

[BlueCloud2k2]

Sounds to me like using both systems (Proton Flux) and the thermal exchange would be optimal.

 

Waste not, want not. *shrug*

[Hyper-Man]

Sounds to me like using both systems (Proton Flux) and the thermal exchange would be optimal.

 

Waste not, want not. *shrug*

 

Sure for traditional sized power plants.  But removal of those moving parts is key to true miniaturization of the technology.

[BlueCloud2k2]

Hrm... need some sort of heat sink... maybe a heat pump with the cooling pipes underground (for non-mobile platforms)?

[Tom Carman]

D-T fusion is way easier than D-He3. I would be fine with a D-T reactor barely reaching (or even a bit under) breakeven, burning up "spent" fuel. Inherently safe with no self-sustaining fission chain reaction, and waste disposal for the existing LWRs.

[Lord Liaden]

I'd be more optimistic if it was Stark Industries instead of Lockheed Martin.

[Old Man]

I'd be more optimistic if it was LexCorp instead of Lockheed Martin.

 

I followed this for a little while after the initial announcement.  The fusion community is skeptical based on what information has so far been released, but it's not impossible that LM has come up with some novel configuration or other development that is being deliberately withheld for reasons of IP.  It does appear that they plan to use a hybrid geometry that combines cusps with magnetic mirrors, but it would require superconducting magnets that can survive close proximity to the plasma, which to my understanding is impossible.

 

http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2014/10/lockheed-looks-partners-its-proposed-fusion-reactor-0

 

http://talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5643&view=unread#p117159