27 comments and not one hit of the word “inertial”! The line about not being thermonuclear and the description of the device in question (a sphere with lasers) points towards an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) device. Most of the fusion research eggs are in the thermonuclear basket, specifically magnetic confinement fusion. It is good to research a diverse set of approaches, but there are more engineering challenges to ICF reactors than there are to MCF reactors. Pulses on the order of 1-2 Hz requires a mechanical system that can cycle out the exhaust and replace the pellet in that time. Going to reactor scales also requires high load thermal cycles. MCF ain’t easy, and brings it’s own engineering challenges. The ones I always hear are things like wall materials and fuel recycling, but these are largely solved or in the process of being solved. The engineering challenge I see as the most difficult for MCF are related to steady state operation. Tokamaks have no way of being steady state. Stellarators do, but now the next problem is wall conditioning. Wall materials outgas in hot plasma. A lot. Like more than the fuel puffed in. The way this is handled in science machines is with glow discharges of various species: plasma just below the temperature to cause wall sputtering, coating the wall with carbon and boron for their absorptive properties, etc. No one’s run a steady state hot plasma before, so no one knows if these will be a non issue in reactors. Keeping the plasma clean may be a challenge to keep the plasma from terminating. Aside from that MCF is ready for prime time. It needs a big reactor for scaling laws to make it energy profitable (and potentially money profitable). We just need some very expensive test reactors to smooth out these issues.
Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
61–70 of 285 posts
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#62So is there a way to invest in this?
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#63There 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…
Yeah, I thought the electrical output seemed fishy too. Why are the electrons stripped from the helium? And is that actually due to the energy of the fusion reaction? And how much of the fusion energy is left after? These are IMO the fundamental questions.
Only the helium nucleus is formed as part of the fusion reaction, so it starts off being positively charged, and not later stripped of its electrons. That, in principle, creates a current which can be used almost directly.
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#64Earlier 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…
Thanks to yourself and randallsquared below for your responses - I'd since posting read the following Abstract by the authors, which hinted that the underlying science was viable: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/laser-and-particle-b... , however my only awareness of existing 'laser fusion facilities' was the American National Ignition Facility ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility ) , whi…
That purpose isn't covert, it is funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration(NNSA) under the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which built the facility to mimic fusion conditions to assure the viable of the US nuclear weapon stockpile. From time to time other scientist get to use it for other fusion experimentation.
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Except steam generators are pretty cheap - they're off the shelf, and will be a drop in the ocean compared to the total costs of the first fusion plants.
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#66> First milestone is demonstrating the reactions, which should be easy. They haven’t even demonstrated the reaction? What’s all the talk about results being “billions” of times better than expected?
As someone who works on a stellarator: no plasma experiment in fusion research is easy to do.
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#67Earlier 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…
One of the reasons that it is difficult to predict power output exactly is not knowing exactly how much will be lost down to Bremsstrahlung, (ELectromgnetic Braking Radiation).
In any event, ultimately practical proven results will always trump whatever the current theory may suggest.
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#68So... what is their Current Q number?
“The fusion energy gain factor, usually expressed with the symbol Q, is the ratio of fusion power produced in a nuclear fusion reactor to the power required to maintain the plasma in steady state.” [1]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#69> 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
I think they might be thinking of the corona of the sun > The temperature in the corona is more than a million degrees, surprisingly much hotter than the temperature at the Sun's surface which is around 5,500° C https://scied.ucar.edu/solar-corona
Fusion happens in the core of stars but is powered by gravity. “Temperature” in this case is individual particle speed (in eV) because the particle speed distribution is not necessarily Boltzman. Higher particle speeds are needed because our confinement fields are weaker than the force of gravity inside a star.
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#70Here's a video explaining the reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy0kHQASsX8
Upvoted — the first minute or so of the video is very helpful; it shows (what looks like) PowerPoint slides with drawings of a proton (1H nucleus) hitting a boron nucleus (5B11); the proton fuses into the boron nucleus to create what presumably is a single carbon nucleus (6C12), which then splits into three helium nuclei (each 2He4) without emitting free neutrons.
(The very-crude video technique was fascinating to this non-artistic person: Create PowerPoint slides, add subtitles for "narration" that float in and out, and finally add stock music for background. That might be useful for flipped-classroom courses.)