Do you think we'll ever see Nuclear Fusion power stations in our lifetime?

[Chester Copperpot]

I was watching that Horizon program about fusion on iplayer last night and found it fascinating. There was a guy on there talking about alternative power like wind, solar, bio fuels etc and his calculations shower that at current consumption levels they will never be the answer to our needs - not ever with drastic reduction in use. Sure they help contribute but it looks like we're completely fucked basically and nuclear fusion if possible is the only get out of jail free card for the human race.

They showed several different projects currently under way but the overall message is we're years and years away. At the end they asked all the people interviewed how far they thought we were from introducing fusion power to the grid and the the views ranged from 2030 to 2050. These are all people who are working on project so they're all going to believe it will happen one day but it may never happen.

What do the good people of Urban think?

 

[Crispy]

I think the Horizon program missed the dark horse of fusion, the Polywell. It was invented by Rob Bussard, who started the mainstream fusion research on tokamaks back in the 70s. Wikipedia explains it well. The short explanation is that instead of trying to herd a million degree plasma with magnets (really really hard), you herd a cloud of electrons (much much easier). Positive ions of your reactant whizz back and forth through the electrons - if two ions collide, they fuse and give off energy. It might even be possible to extract that energy with solid-state electronics. No steam. No messy neutrons. No radioactive waste. 100MW from a machine no bigger than a house. The work is currently funded on a shoestring by the US navy, they're just validating the physics right now.

Oh, and it looks cool

 

[kyser_soze]

Didn't Mr Bussard also come up with the basic idea of the ramscoop for interstellar spacecrafts?

That looks like a balloon sculpture!!

 

[Crispy]

Yep, that's the guy. He was a bit embaressed to be remembered for it tbh!

 

[kyser_soze]

That's actually one of the coolest pages of tech I've read on Wiki. I love the guys' confidence:

"Somebody will build it; and when it's built, it will work; and when it works people will begin to use it, and it will begin to displace all other forms of energy."

In fact, this is the first time I've actually been excited about something fusion-related (other than the childish excitement of seeing the inside of the K-Star or JTER when they turn them on), because if it can work it looks like the kind of engineering that could be easily scaled up to industrial requirements. I've always thought that the tokamak design, and stuff like the K-Star and that laser thing have too much precision engineering to make mass production an easy thing.

 

[Crispy]

Exactly my thoughts. I'm amazed there hasn't been any university or even privately funded research into this. China should at least give it a go. Just a few million quid to start a research program. Compared to the 10s of billions being spunked on ITER, it's nothing!

 

[kyser_soze]

The other thing as well, and this is really irrational, is that it's the US Navy that's been backing it. While there is tremendous bloat in US military spending, the USN has as deep an understanding of nuclear physics as any top academic institution, and I have no doubt that for them fusion represents a huge boon - especially if this can generate energy in solid state; think about how much quieter a nuke sub would be without having to rely on a fission reactor!

I dunno - this is being built to an operational spec, rather than an academic research spec IYSWIM (not that there's anything wrong with the latter, but I get the feeling that ITER is 50/50 politics/research...

 

[Crispy]

Fingers crossed there's enough sense in the Navy to let this technology out in the wild if it works.

 

[Jonti]

More about the Bussard Reactor ...

Robert W. Bussard may have recently created knowledge that could lead to a rapid (15 years) development and deployment of large scale commercial generation of electricity by nuclear fusion.

A safe and economical way of producing electrical energy from nuclear fusion would mitigate two of humanity's fateful dilemmas: the approaching rapid decline of oil and natural gas, and the need to eliminate the production of atmospheric greenhouse gases by human activity. Inexpensive fusion energy would eliminate any need for energy from fossil fuels or nuclear fission.

Nuclear fusion, unlike nuclear fission, produces almost no waste products, and produces no long lived radioactive waste at all.

 

[Crispy]

For your hardcore physics fix, and any latest breaking news, there talk-polywell forums. Lots of very knowledgeable people on there, including Dr Nebel (who's in charge of the current research).

Sample post:

Let's start putting this together. What I want is lambda, the line density of charge.
lambda = n*e*A
= n*e*(4*R*rho_e)
= 2*n_0*e*(R/rho_e)*rho_e^2
= 2*(R/rho_e)*e*( B^2/(2mu_0)/(e*phi) )*( 2*m_e*e*phi / (e^2*B^2) )
= 2 * (R/rho_e) * m_e / (e*mu_0)
= 2 * (R/rho_e) * (m_e*c^2/e) * epsilon_0
= (1 MV) * (R/rho_e) * epsilon_0

The last step follows from the fact that the rest mass of the electron in 500 keV in energy units. (If you get a queasy feeling at this point, seeing 1 MV showing up as a characteristic voltage, I understand completely.)

Thanks for your understanding doc!

 

[kyser_soze]

You could also use this to power spacecraft. W00T!!!

 

[Jonti]

Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really)

Dr Bussard (that's "Boo-sard") gave a talk at Google about this technology. There's a long video, about 90 minutes, here.

The technology is "out there". This is science, it's not secret, so anyone can verify things for themselves. But it is patented, for what that's worth.

 

[Crispy]

You could also use this to power spacecraft. W00T!!!

Yep Single stage to the moon and back, with powered landing so no need for atmospheric re-entry. It would truly open the solar system
*sex wee*

 

[kyser_soze]

This is the interesting bit about funding:

The secrecy of the recent work seems not to have resulted from concern for national security, but from concern about the politics of funding. Bussard's project was run as a skunk works on tiny funding from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA). DARPA is not supposed to have responsibility for fusion, and it was thought by the DARPA contract officer that knowledge of the work by heavily funded competing projects would result in cancellation of the work.

 

[kyser_soze]

Yep Single stage to the moon and back, with powered landing so no need for atmospheric re-entry. It would truly open the solar system
*sex wee*

Platform + Cable + fusion rocket into high orbit = space elevator

Could open up the asteroid belt for mining ops too, especially if an elevator was in place to take the material down the well...

Anyway, nothing like getting over hopeful on Thursday morning...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

p + 11B !

That is cool (well, actually very hot, but you know what I mean)

 

[kabbes]

Yep Single stage to the moon and back, with powered landing so no need for atmospheric re-entry. It would truly open the solar system
*sex wee*

Does getting out of our atmosphere still not fundamentally depend on thrust, though? So we will still need to burn some shit and throw it out the back door, no?

 

[jimadore]

HI The doctor, I dont' watch T.V. are you on about , cold nuclear fusion? its is very very damaging ,dont' go there, the best system for power is what you call Metamaterials, with time in a few years maybe, your research scientist will know how it works.

 

[Crispy]

Does getting out of our atmosphere still not fundamentally depend on thrust, though? So we will still need to burn some shit and throw it out the back door, no?

No need to burn things when you can either a)use the reaction products as a direct exhaust for some serious Specific Impulse(requires a slightly diffent magnet arrangement), or b)use the reactor to heat a propellant far above that of mere combustion for some serious Thrust

 

[Crispy]

Does getting out of our atmosphere still not fundamentally depend on thrust, though? So we will still need to burn some shit and throw it out the back door, no?

No need to burn things. You have 2 options:

a) Direct the reaction products straight out the back of the reactor. Only works in a vacuum, but you get incredible Specific Impulse. Far better than Ion engines.Great for interplanetary cruise.
b) Heat a working fluid directly with the reactor heat. Water/ammonia/hydrogen, depending on what sort of thrust/weight you're after. Much much hotter than mere combustion. Great for jumping 30,000 miles in a single vertical leap

 

[teqniq]

I dearly wish they would get this sorted......

 

[Jonti]

It is difficult to really comprehend how much a clean, cheap source of energy would change things.

Even so, any way to get to even the nearer stars and back would have to accelerate every particle of the ship at the same rate. There's no other way to get to the velocities needed quickly enough, without smearing the astronauts into a thin bloody film at the back of their space vehicle.

It takes a 1g thrust about 4.5 years to get a mass up to c/2 speed. But if every particle of that mass could be accelerated at once, one could get to c/2 (or even closer to c) in an instant, and for the same overall expenditure of energy. And live, which would be the neat part!

 

[Crispy]

nobody's flying to other stars any time soon, even with this technology.

 

[Jonti]

Well, then it's no bloody use is it?

Back to the drawing board, chaps!

 

[derf]

nobody's flying to other stars any time soon, even with this technology.

Hang on to that and look back at it in 30 to 40 years.
OK, maybe not the stars but I expect to see a couple of planets or moons with bases of sorts

Too many bright people out there to dismiss it too easily. .

 

[Crispy]

planets and moons - yes
stars - no
they really are far too far away

 

[kabbes]

No need to burn things. You have 2 options:

a) Direct the reaction products straight out the back of the reactor. Only works in a vacuum, but you get incredible Specific Impulse. Far better than Ion engines.Great for interplanetary cruise.
b) Heat a working fluid directly with the reactor heat. Water/ammonia/hydrogen, depending on what sort of thrust/weight you're after. Much much hotter than mere combustion. Great for jumping 30,000 miles in a single vertical leap

That's interesting, ta!

 

[kyser_soze]

planets and moons - yes
stars - no
they really are far too far away

Besides, plenty of stuff to keep us busy and occupied in the home system.

If the tech ever becomes available tho, I think some kind of deep-space unmanned stuff, not so subject to acceleration issues and whatnot, would be ...

 

[sus]

I was watching that Horizon program about fusion on iplayer last night and found it fascinating. There was a guy on there talking about alternative power like wind, solar, bio fuels etc and his calculations shower that at current consumption levels they will never be the answer to our needs - not ever with drastic reduction in use. Sure they help contribute but it looks like we're completely fucked basically and nuclear fusion if possible is the only get out of jail free card for the human race.

They showed several different projects currently under way but the overall message is we're years and years away. At the end they asked all the people interviewed how far they thought we were from introducing fusion power to the grid and the the views ranged from 2030 to 2050. These are all people who are working on project so they're all going to believe it will happen one day but it may never happen.

What do the good people of Urban think?

Didn't see the horizon programme. Did they go into the National Ignition Facility (NIF) due to be completed this year?
https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/nif/ . One way or another, it looks like net gain fusion is going to be here pretty soon. Let's just hope it's soon enough.

 

[Meltingpot]

I think the Horizon program missed the dark horse of fusion, the Polywell. It was invented by Rob Bussard, who started the mainstream fusion research on tokamaks back in the 70s. Wikipedia explains it well. The short explanation is that instead of trying to herd a million degree plasma with magnets (really really hard), you herd a cloud of electrons (much much easier). Positive ions of your reactant whizz back and forth through the electrons - if two ions collide, they fuse and give off energy. It might even be possible to extract that energy with solid-state electronics. No steam. No messy neutrons. No radioactive waste. 100MW from a machine no bigger than a house. The work is currently funded on a shoestring by the US navy, they're just validating the physics right now.

Oh, and it looks cool

Looks good, I'm checking it out now.