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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?

#151

Post by Accujack »

1958325146 wrote: post #129

I am just learning about this reaction, but can anyone explain what is wrong with the following naive idea? - Fire a stream of hydrogen ions with a particle accelerator at a chunk of Boron 11. - The hydrogen and boron combine and release heat and helium. - Use the heat from that to run a turbine and keep running your particle accelerator. It seems like you would be ending up with lower-energy collection of atoms. Doe…

>fire a stream of hydrogen ions with a particle accelerator at a chunk of Boron 11.

This is what's wrong. The energy required to accelerate the ions is much higher than the energy which can be harvested this way.

The concept under discussion substitutes a simpler setup that accelerates particles using laser induced plasmas from a very small table top laser. The thing could "almost" be battery powered.

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

#152

Post by naiveprogrammer »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #76

Always happy to see people doing new and interesting stuff with fusion. I got into nuclear technology because of ITER back in the early 2000s. Worked on it continuously (mostly in advanced fission) ever since. > "The timeline question is a tricky one," he says. "I don't want to be a laughing stock by promising we can deliver something in 10 years, and then not getting there. First step is setting up camp as a company…

I don't know whether this is a legit breakthrouhg. But technological progress is often a sigmoid (S-shaped) growth curve, it may take a while to get past certain steps but once you are through, money flows and more people devote time to that technology which accelerates the process. It is not hard to imagine, say, 20 years from now, we have power plants running on fusion given the interest we have in solving the climate crisis.

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

#153

Post by Accujack »

detritus wrote: post #2

This seems.. too good to be true? I don't have the Physics chops to untangle the likelihood of this tech and the credibility of the process and its authors, so I'm hoping the HN crowd will be able to pad out the story behind this. Certainly, from my layperson's perspective, their website isn't exactly encouraging... https://www.hb11.energy/ - ed re: last line - "books and covers, and all that"

Do a google search for "laser induced fission". Generating plasmas with CPA lasers is becoming more common, but isn't widespread yet because the technology is very new.

These plasmas can be the source for all kinds of particles and energy in particular forms, so they may have lots and lots of uses.

One person in particular is proposing to use a CPA laser to accelerate nuclear decay, to allow radioactive waste to decay faster and become less toxic more quickly.

Of course, my own concern would be that being able to induce fission with a table top laser means that the tech may eventually exist to create a fission or fusion bomb without a nuclear trigger....

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

#154

Post by kbenson »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #146
ccleve wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A number of these steps become easier if the reactor is physically small. A plant that fits in a shipping container has a way easier path to commercial viability. Small plants require less capital. They're easier to manufacture. They can iterate faster. They have less environmental impact, and therefore fewer regulatory hurdles. They require less labor to build and a smaller supply chain. I expect that the engineerin…

I expect that you lose efficiencies with respect to security. I.e., it's not easy to secure one large nuclear reactor (fission or fusion), but it's a lot easier than securing dozens of small reactors.

There might also be less security needed if you have dozens of smaller reactors. You have to secure the one because losing it affects so much. If losing a couple is not as big a problem, you an rely more on the redundancy of the system than on the redundancy of the component.

This depends on the threat model to some degree, but there's security in knowing that it's vastly harder for a threat to affect multiple targets at once, no matter the threat.

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

#155

Post by pas »

andreiklochko wrote: post #109

To shed a different light on this: think of temperature as walking through mud. Your legs lose energy trying to slowly pull a lot of mud behind you. Now think about skiing. A lot less snow is dragged with you but it flies fast. Here, what is interesting is if one fusion reaction does happen, then the alpha (helium) particles leave at 2.9 MeV. After two collisions with protons, if the second proton they have hit hits…

Is there any description of how the "hit a capacity coil with a laser to generate a magnetic field" thing works?

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c... I found this overview a bit confusing and sort of low quality, but at least it references a lot of papers. (But haven't started hunting down any of them.)

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

#156

Post by sam »

1958325146 wrote: post #129

I am just learning about this reaction, but can anyone explain what is wrong with the following naive idea? - Fire a stream of hydrogen ions with a particle accelerator at a chunk of Boron 11. - The hydrogen and boron combine and release heat and helium. - Use the heat from that to run a turbine and keep running your particle accelerator. It seems like you would be ending up with lower-energy collection of atoms. Doe…

The problem with firing a stream of hydrogen ions at a chunk of Boron 11 is that most of the collisions between the hydrogen and the Boron are glancing blows that will dissipate the energy very quickly. Only a small fraction of the collisions result in a fusion reaction.

This is the reason why most fusion approaches rely on thermal systems. In a thermal system, the ions have a bell-shaped distribution of energies and undergo many collisions before they leave the region in which they are confined and their energy leaves the system.

To achieve net gain, the temperature, density and energy confinement time must be above a certain threshold. If the system is non thermal, like a stream of hydrogen ions where the distribution of energies is a spike, the energy in the hydrogen ions that are deflected by glancing blows must be recaptured somehow.

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

#157

Post by goda90 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #146
ccleve wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A number of these steps become easier if the reactor is physically small. A plant that fits in a shipping container has a way easier path to commercial viability. Small plants require less capital. They're easier to manufacture. They can iterate faster. They have less environmental impact, and therefore fewer regulatory hurdles. They require less labor to build and a smaller supply chain. I expect that the engineerin…

I expect that you lose efficiencies with respect to security. I.e., it's not easy to secure one large nuclear reactor (fission or fusion), but it's a lot easier than securing dozens of small reactors.

Nuclear fission reactors need more security than other power plants because of the implications of stolen fuel/waste, or fallout from sabotage. A fusion reactor like the one this group is working on probably doesn't have as high as security concerns. In fact the only concern might be that it is critical infrastructure(like our entire power grid), and a distribution of smaller reactors would be better for reliability anyway.

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

#158

Post by sf_rob »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #76

Always happy to see people doing new and interesting stuff with fusion. I got into nuclear technology because of ITER back in the early 2000s. Worked on it continuously (mostly in advanced fission) ever since. > "The timeline question is a tricky one," he says. "I don't want to be a laughing stock by promising we can deliver something in 10 years, and then not getting there. First step is setting up camp as a company…

Tangent, but assuming fusion energy generation will be a reality in the next 30 years, what do you believe the price/KWH will be? I am not knowledgeable enough to parse the estimates I've seen and want to believe in the post-energy-scarcity future.

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

#159

Post by jacobedawson »

kbenson wrote: post #154
throwaway894345 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect that you lose efficiencies with respect to security. I.e., it's not easy to secure one large nuclear reactor (fission or fusion), but it's a lot easier than securing dozens of small reactors.

There might also be less security needed if you have dozens of smaller reactors. You have to secure the one because losing it affects so much. If losing a couple is not as big a problem, you an rely more on the redundancy of the system than on the redundancy of the component. This depends on the threat model to some degree, but there's security in knowing that it's vastly harder for a threat to affect multiple target…

Isn't this just the same scenario as we currently have, just with different underlying technology? Do coal-powered plants have additional security outside of a few private guards?

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

#160

Post by malux85 »

sf_rob wrote: post #158
acidburnNSA wrote: post #76

Always happy to see people doing new and interesting stuff with fusion. I got into nuclear technology because of ITER back in the early 2000s. Worked on it continuously (mostly in advanced fission) ever since. > "The timeline question is a tricky one," he says. "I don't want to be a laughing stock by promising we can deliver something in 10 years, and then not getting there. First step is setting up camp as a company…

Tangent, but assuming fusion energy generation will be a reality in the next 30 years, what do you believe the price/KWH will be? I am not knowledgeable enough to parse the estimates I've seen and want to believe in the post-energy-scarcity future.

I doubt we are even anywhere near close to being able to calculate that because there’s still too many unknowns with regards to materials required to build, their rate of depreciation, and other things we discover in the scaling/commercialisation phases, and also exactly how much net energy will be produced!
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