https://www.techexplorist.com/scientists-create-new-method-fusion-energy/19762/amp/

Hydrogen-boron fusion is created by two powerful lasers in rapid bursts, which produce precise non-linear that compress the nuclei together. This procedure does not generate any neutrons and thus – no radioactivity.

 

If that can easily be duplicated, without special requirements, it should have great promise.

What could be better than electrical output? And with a pulsed control, not only fine, quick control, but it should be scalable. Factory units perhaps.

What would we do with all the oil?

 

Fusion would be a quantum leap for humanity. Let's hope that this method succeeds.
Cheap energy, environmentally friendly, no radiation. What more can you ask for?

 

https://www.techexplorist.com/scientists-create-new-method-fusion-energy/19762/amp/

Trillionth-of-a-second from a petawatt-scale laser pulse, must generate continuous pulses at the required duty cycle for years in a commercial setting.
The conversion of the output charged alpha particles directly to electricity, requires 8.7 MeV pulse conversion to DC with a reverse linear accelerator (X-ray and possible gamma generation under fault conditions) and then to utility grade AC.
Temperature required to fuse 1.6BK, with continuous pulse duty cycle containment periods to extract energy.
https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/24/028/24028563.pdf

The difference between what's possible and what's practical is wide.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5007923

 

I think these guys are much further ahead.
https://lppfusion.com/looking-back-2018-highlights/

 

I think these guys are much further ahead.
https://lppfusion.com/looking-back-2018-highlights/

Like most of these projects, it will be 10 years away for just about forever.

 

I think these guys are much further ahead.
https://lppfusion.com/looking-back-2018-highlights/

We expect that this mixture will lead to higher fusion temperatures than with pure D, as the heating mechanism involves the viscosity of the plasma, which also increase with atomic charge. These experiments will be a bit trickier to optimize, as too much higher-z mixing gas will cause the filaments to blow up again. So we will need to get to the “Goldilocks” point here. If we can, we expect fusion yields to rise above 10 J.

Our further plans, for the second half of 2019, include upgrading our switches to improve our peak current, again increasing fusion yield. We can now do this without opening up our redesigned vacuum chamber. Then, in the fall or beyond, we will start introducing our experiments with hydrogen-boron, pB11 fuel. Since this fuel burns faster and more energetically than deuterium, that will again boost our fusion yields and put us on the track to our goal of getting more energy out of the device than we put into it—net energy.

Promising...

kv

 

Fusion would be a quantum leap for humanity. Let's hope that this method succeeds.
Cheap energy, environmentally friendly, no radiation. What more can you ask for?

For it not to sound like a 'free lunch' in a few years. To me this research proves one thing, it's clear that we don’t even yet know what we don’t know about practical fusion reactors using this or any process.

“I don’t think we’re at that place where we know what we need to do in order to get over the threshold,” says Mark Herrmann, director of the National Ignition Facility in California. “We’re still learning what the science is. We may have eliminated some perturbations, but if we eliminate those, is there another thing hiding behind them? And there almost certainly is, and we don’t know how hard that will be to tackle.”

 

I think these guys are much further ahead.
https://lppfusion.com/looking-back-2018-highlights/

Yes, I've been following their progress.
And they've been working on a shoestring budget.
If they got a fraction of the amount we spend on the ITER monstrous white elephant in France (which will likely be entirely obsolete by the time it is completed) they could likely significantly speed up its development.

 

That ITER experiment machine was intentionally designed as a monstrous white elephant and was expected to be entirely obsolete by the time it is completed. They are doing the basic science of controlled fusion with little thought of commercial success with the current version. That science might allow guys like LPPFUSION the theoretical background need to continue moving ahead around future problems.

 

I think these guys are much further ahead.
https://lppfusion.com/looking-back-2018-highlights/

Very interesting:

The DPF has been in existence since 1964, and many experimental groups around the world have worked with it. LPPF’s unique theoretical approach, however, is the only one that has been able to fully explain how the DPF works, and thus exploit its full capabilities.

https://lppfusion.com/fusion-power/dpf-device/

 

That ITER experiment machine was intentionally designed as a monstrous white elephant and was expected to be entirely obsolete by the time it is completed. They are doing the basic science of controlled fusion with little thought of commercial success with the current version. That science might allow guys like LPPFUSION the theoretical background need to continue moving ahead around future problems.

In other words, it's a machine used for learning the science ... pretty much like a particle accelerator ... ?

 

Very interesting:



https://lppfusion.com/fusion-power/dpf-device/

I wish them luck.
Creating and controlling a Boron-11 plasma is easy, fusing a dense Boron-11 H plasma is at least 100x harder than fusing D-T fusion fuel used in the ITER Tokomak..
https://www.impedans.com/why-lawren...-results-are-not-even-wrong-detailed-analysis

On March 23rd, 2012, we published in the journal Physics of Plasmas a report of the confinement of plasma with ion energy equivalent to 1.8 billion degrees C for a period of tens of nanoseconds using a dense plasma focus device. This achieved two out of three conditions—temperature and confinement time—needed not just for fusion energy, but for fusion energy using advanced, aneutronic fuels that have long been considered out of reach. We did all this with an innovative device costing less than one million dollars. If we are able to achieve the third condition, density, we could be on track to commercializing fusion within five years.

 

In other words, it's a machine used for learning the science ... pretty much like a particle accelerator ... ?

Exactly. It will also give us expertise at designing and engineering the components needed in a 'real' full scale fusion reactor of any design.

 

It will also give us expertise at designing and engineering the components needed in a 'real' full scale fusion reactor of any design.

I doubt that.
Leaning more about doing continuous hydrogen-tritium fusion in a Tokamak is unlikely to tell us much about how to do pulsed-plasma boron-hydrogen fusion, such as LPP and some others are attempting.
I think the Tokamak "experiment" is a complete waste of a huge amount of money, especially considering how large they would have to be for a commercial design.

General Fusion is someone working on a more practical (if somewhat Rube Goldberg) H-T reactor.

 

I doubt that.
Leaning more about doing continuous hydrogen-tritium fusion in a Tokamak is unlikely to tell us much about how to do pulsed-plasma boron-hydrogen fusion, such as LPP and some others are attempting.
I think the Tokamak "experiment" is a complete waste of a huge amount of money, especially considering how large they would have to be for a commercial design.

General Fusion is someone working on a more practical (if somewhat Rube Goldberg) H-T reactor.

You can doubt all you want but I've been studying this for a while and once felt like you do about ITER.

Nobody seriously thinks a Tokamak will be the final fusion design. Obviously the problem is not creating a fusion reaction by X method, it's controlling the reaction and extracting energy greater than input. This is a general problem common to all fusion power methods. The continuous hydrogen-tritium fusion Tokamak process gives us the most likely way to understand how all controlled fusion processes work by studying the perturbations of a continuous dynamic fusion process in detail using extensions of conventional nuclear physics. The idea that we are a few years away from cracking the fusion reactor problem if we only had more money for projects like LPP is nonsense.

 

Well, I appreciate your opinion, but I still think ITER is an expensive boondoggle.
But I'll be happy to be proved wrong if it's finally built (after huge cost overruns) and actually provides useful data for the design of a practical fusion reactor other than a Tokamak.

 

Well, I appreciate your opinion, but I still think ITER is an expensive boondoggle.

Welfare for PhDs. I actually considered investing money in LPP. In the end I wasn't comfortable doing that but there's no way in hell I'd invest in ITER if my government wasn't forcing me to.

 

Welfare for PhDs. I actually considered investing money in LPP. In the end I wasn't comfortable doing that but there's no way in hell I'd invest in ITER if my government wasn't forcing me to.

Money well spent if it never generates a watt of power over input during the experiment but gives us the knowledge to understand the needed close to scale theoretical background for operational fusion power. I don't think the small scale projects will every be capable of sustained power because the density and mass of the plasma will be insufficient for reliable control. The rate of change across small volumes and the peak power required for fusion using pulse lasers will generate chaotic perturbations cascading in nanoseconds across the plasma causing uneven ignition and loss of fusion condition confinement. The tokamak is an experimental machine that indeed would be a huge boondoggle in a 'real' reactor but for experiments it's really the only way to get stable continuous conditions for long pulse ignition testing.

 

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-stabilizes-fusion-plasmas.amp

The overall impact of this process creates what is technically called "RF current condensation," or concentration of RF power inside the island that keeps it from growing