I wonder if I'll ever see a self-sustaining reaction in my lifetime:

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015...tellarator.html?intcmp=hpffo&intcmp=obnetwork

“If fusion research goes according to plan then a power plant can be expected in the middle of the century,”

 

1970 was the date we were given by the boffins at the PPA (Princeton Pennsylvania Accelerator) when our Boy Scout troop visited the facility.

 

A friend is fond of saying: "Controlled fusion is only 25 years away -- always has been and always will be."

 

I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my dad as we'd have a snack and a Coke (the real stuff, from a returnable glass bottle). Sometimes he'd read his Scientific American, and I remember once he commented that fusion had been "ten years out" as long as he could recall. He passed away 33 years ago.

I think for any chance of progress, ITER needs to fail, or at least quick sucking up all of the funding. There's actually some interesting stuff going on. A good review.

 

I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my dad as we'd have a snack and a Coke (the real stuff, from a returnable glass bottle). Sometimes he'd read his Scientific American, and I remember once he commented that fusion had been "ten years out" as long as he could recall. He passed away 33 years ago.

I think for any chance of progress, ITER needs to fail, or at least quick sucking up all of the funding. There's actually some interesting stuff going on. A good review.

Yes, I've heard all the fusion jokes myself too. But I think there are two ways of looking at something like this.

• You're right until proven wrong
• You're wrong until proven right

Given the stakes. I always choose the former. (that is, until the founds run out... LOL! )

Q: what's the difference between a stubborn and a perseverant person?
A: the end result

 

Being one step closer and reality in a lifetime is the number of steps.

 

Apparently, a successful second test of the german device has been completed.

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/germanys-fusion-reactor-creates-hydrogen-plasma-world-first

But I wonder, how is the energy (heat) supposed to be extracted from the device and put to practical use if the thing is surrounded by "425 tonnes (470 tons) of superconducting, super-cooled magnets"?

 

Apparently, a successful second test of the german device has been completed.

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/germanys-fusion-reactor-creates-hydrogen-plasma-world-first

But I wonder, how is the energy (heat) supposed to be extracted from the device and put to practical use if the thing is surrounded by "425 tonnes (470 tons) of superconducting, super-cooled magnets"?

That's not that hard to deal with -- the magnets have to be cooled, not what is inside of them. Imagine an MRI machine at a hospital -- the magnets are at liquid helium temp (~4 K) but the patient is at room temp. It wouldn't be overly challenging (in comparison to other hurdles) to have the magnets surrounding a superheated steam region.

 

Q: what's the difference between a stubborn and a perseverant person?
A: the end result

Yes!

 

The main problem is creating a self-sustainable fusion reaction.

Once that's done, the next problem is extracting power from it. However the efficiency is much, much less than 1 so keeping the reaction going requires more power input than what is released.

Also, the generator would consist of magnetohydrodynamic process rather than a conventional steam turbine and a rotating machine. Incidentally, Hans Alfen presented a theoretical model of a fusion power plant based on the flow of hot plasma like the sun. The old fashioned magnetic confinement and current pulse technique utilized Alfen's theory. However, that's as far as it progressed.

 

I think a better approach to nuclear fusion electrical energy is a pulsed plasma approach such as from Tri Alpha Energy or LPP Fusion. The intent of these systems is to create multiple short bursts of hydrogen-boron fusion, whose byproducts are helium and energy. This reaction generate no damaging neutrons, as the deuterium-tritium fusion process used by the tokamak, stellerator and Lockheed designs does, which requires extensive shielding and generates radioactive waste.
The pulses plasma devices are relatively small, inexpensive systems, requiring no superconducting magnets, as compared to the huge, multi-billion dollar, continuous plasma machines such as the ITER tokamak, or the German stellerator. I don't see those very expensive devices with their huge superconducting magnetics ever beinging an economic source of fusion power.

 

I think a better approach to nuclear fusion electrical energy is a pulsed plasma approach such as from Tri Alpha Energy or LPP Fusion.

I like their chances, too. I looked into investing in LPP but I didn't care for the arrangements. But their approach is interesting and I tend to think they're closer than anyone else.

 

I like their chances, too. I looked into investing in LPP but I didn't care for the arrangements. But their approach is interesting and I tend to think they're closer than anyone else.

I just looked at the website. Pretty cool stuff but it looks like they don't know diddley about real world ultra high vacuum systems.
http://lppfusion.com/ff-1-moves-toward-goldilocks-bake-out/
5 day bakeouts limited to 150C to remove water vapor because of poor UHV vacuum materials like Mylar is just bad engineering.

 

They're a very small group, so a lack of expertise in many areas is expected. I noticed they got their beryllium. That's a big step.

 

Yet another step in the right direction:

https://futurism.com/scientists-tripled-record-fusion-power/amp/

Now, laser scientists say a machine learning breakthrough has smashed the standing record for a fusion power yield. It doesn’t mean fusion power is practical yet, but the prestigious journal Naturecalled the result “remarkable” and wrote that it has “major implications”

 

I much prefer the hydrogen-boron fusion reaction that the pulsed plasma and some laser systems are working towards as opposed to the deuterium-tritium fuel that the Tokamak (ITER) uses (which I think is a dead end).

The deuterium-tritium reaction produces a large amount of high energy neutrons which require heavy shielding and which tend to make many materials radioactive (and dangerous) over time leading to a waste disposal problem, which already is the bane of fission reactors.
And the only practical way to capture this neutron energy is to convert it to heat in the shielding to run a turbine generator, with its poor thermodynamic efficiency.

The hydrogen-boron reaction produces energic alpha particles (helium nucleus) and few neutrons, which do not generate any significant radioactivity in the shielding, and since the particles are charged, their energy can be extracted directly into an electrical current with relatively high efficiency.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53573294
​

Interesting to note how Brexit has somewhat affected the project.

The world's biggest nuclear fusion project has entered its five-year assembly phase. After this is finished, the facility will be able to start generating the super-hot "plasma" required for fusion power. The £18.2bn (€20bn; $23.5bn) facility has been under construction in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, southern France.

 

Validating the physics behind the new MIT-designed fusion experiment
Seven studies describe progress thus far and challenges ahead for a revolutionary zero-emissions power source.

https://news.mit.edu/2020/physics-fusion-studies-0929

Some physicists, including Cary Forest, at the University of Wisconsin, were more skeptical. Forest told the New York Times that Sparc's estimates for when their reactor would be ready were probably off by at least a factor of two."Reading these papers gives me the sense that they're going to have the controlled thermonuclear fusion plasma that we all dream about," said Cary Forest, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin who is not involved in the project. "But if I were to estimate where they're going to be, I'd give them a factor of two that I give to all my grad students when they say how long something is going to take."

 

Let me guess... we're just ten years away!

 

Let me guess... we're just ten years away!

At least 10 years of fund raising.

https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/new-scientific-papers-predict-historic-results-for

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...to-commercialize-fusion-energy-300875732.html
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...-raises-84-million-in-a2-round-301064766.html