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Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

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Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

#51

Post by skykooler »

yufeng66 wrote: post #36

There is a warning sign. Without actually running the number, I believe the energy generated by the proposed HB11 fusion should be several order of magnitude higher compared to the electric energy alpha particle can carry. So extreme hot temperature will be created regardless. Edit: actually read the paper :) From the paper: H + 11B = 3 x 4He + 8.7 MeV when alpha particle absorb the electron to become helium, it can…

Much of the difficulty with fusion is getting the fuel to the temperatures needed to sustain fusion - so that's actually a good thing.

Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

#53

Post by DennisP »

scythe wrote: post #47
DennisP wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check the publications page for the encouraging part. They might be wrong but they're doing real science. I've personally spoken to a fusion scientist who thought they might be on to something. Exponential progress does sometimes have results that seem too good to be true. In this case the progress has been in picosecond lasers, which for a while have been getting ten times more powerful every three years or so. What…

>Check the publications page for the encouraging part. They might be wrong but they're doing real science. I've personally spoken to a fusion scientist who thought they might be on to something. I checked the publications page and so far I'm not seeing any real theory here. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but it certainly feels weird. The most in-depth equation I saw in any of their linked papers is the definition of t…

I think the factor of a billion relates to the expectation for boron fuel with spherical compression. See for example their latest paper, page three, right column.

They do seem to be making quantitative predictions based on simulations. I don't think I've seen them boil it down to a simple scaling law though.

Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

#54

Post by SamBam »

dmos62 wrote: post #41
penetrarthur wrote: post #28

> and most rely on a deuterium-tritium thermonuclear fusion approach that requires the creation of ludicrously hot temperatures, much hotter than the surface of the Sun, at up to 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit). Surface of the Sun - 6000 C Center of the Sun - 15000000 C

It's not often that the child in me goes "that's awesome!", but this is one of those times.

Assuming you're talking about the temperature, it's always been a source of human pride to me that the hottest place in the entire universe, as far as we are aware, has been created at the LHC on Earth.

Barring other species as intelligent as ours elsewhere (which is of course possible, but unknown), the very hottest thing in the entire unimaginably-large universe full of exotic stars and black holes and supernovae, was created by a tiny group of apes on a minuscule planet orbiting a smallish, boring star on the unfashionable side of a galaxy.

Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

#55

Post by londons_explore »

lab-notes wrote: post #10
saagarjha wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a physicist, but I thought it seemed fishy as well. I’m curious how they plan to sustain a reaction, since their setup didn’t seem to be useful for more than a single shot…

This reads like a type of ICF which normally has a stream of pellets being fed in after the initial pellet has reached a hot enough temperature to sustain the fusion reaction.

I don't think the goal is to sustain the reaction here... I think the goal is to make a pulsed reactor, where you start the reaction on each pellet in turn. You could imagine a laser firing at 1000 pulses per second, and firing a stream of 1000 pellets per second into the reaction vessel that each pulse hits.

Pellets could turn out to be the size of a grain of sand.

Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

#56

Post by SamBam »

escape_goat wrote: post #39
Throwaway984332 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit weird to say we're running out of He, not unless we're running out of CH4. Which, theoretically we are. But practically, with CH4, our modern concern is not running out of it, but the associated GHG emissions of producing and burning it. So we won't run out of He, so much as stop producing it.

It might be less confusing to refer to 'natural gas' in this context, rather than CH4.

'Natural gas' and not 'cow burps'?

Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

#57

Post by wokkel »

What i find disturbing is when I start looking for other sources, google gives me a news item on https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/pioneering-te... but there the article has been retracted? Also another one that is behind a paywall it seems (cannot tell as the paywall is broken). So I have 1 story on 1 website and the company website itself. The news-site claims on their about page that they value old-school journalistic values (I assume they mean, they investigate a story before publishing) but it's hard to take that claim seriously without more credible sources. For me this is interesting technology to keep an eye on, but without more confirmation and research, this is cold-fusion for now.

Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

#58

Post by londons_explore »

yufeng66 wrote: post #36

There is a warning sign. Without actually running the number, I believe the energy generated by the proposed HB11 fusion should be several order of magnitude higher compared to the electric energy alpha particle can carry. So extreme hot temperature will be created regardless. Edit: actually read the paper :) From the paper: H + 11B = 3 x 4He + 8.7 MeV when alpha particle absorb the electron to become helium, it can…

The whole "electrical energy directly so no steam generators necessary" part of the discussion is fairly irrelevant.

Steam generators might have fairly low efficiency, but if hydrogen fusion works at all it'll use so little fuel and have such a low marginal cost that we can just do more of it to make up for any efficiency losses.

Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

#59

Post by DennisP »

wokkel wrote: post #57

What i find disturbing is when I start looking for other sources, google gives me a news item on https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/pioneering-te... but there the article has been retracted? Also another one that is behind a paywall it seems (cannot tell as the paywall is broken). So I have 1 story on 1 website and the company website itself. The news-site claims on their about page that they value old-sc…

For the credible sources look at their publications in scientific journals. They might be wrong but this is nothing like cold fusion.

Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?

#60

Post by DennisP »

londons_explore wrote: post #58
yufeng66 wrote: post #36

There is a warning sign. Without actually running the number, I believe the energy generated by the proposed HB11 fusion should be several order of magnitude higher compared to the electric energy alpha particle can carry. So extreme hot temperature will be created regardless. Edit: actually read the paper :) From the paper: H + 11B = 3 x 4He + 8.7 MeV when alpha particle absorb the electron to become helium, it can…

The whole "electrical energy directly so no steam generators necessary" part of the discussion is fairly irrelevant. Steam generators might have fairly low efficiency, but if hydrogen fusion works at all it'll use so little fuel and have such a low marginal cost that we can just do more of it to make up for any efficiency losses.

It's not so much about efficiency as capital cost.
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