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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?

#181

Post by Rhinobird »

wtracy wrote: post #170
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…

> The fifth step is to attach it to power generating equipment The part that jumped out at me as strange is that they claim their process generates electricity "directly" without having to drive a turbine. Supposedly they produce helium cations, and that can drive a circuit. Can anybody comment on whether that makes sense?

The main Proton-Boron reaction produces charged particles instead of neutrons. You can capture the charged particles directly as a source of voltage with no intermediate step. Just stick a piece of metal in the way and hook up wires.

Conventionally, neutrons are used to generate heat which is then used to drive steam turbines.

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

#182

Post by jsilence »

melling wrote: post #21
tartoran wrote: post #16

This proves once again what could happen if one is not to follow the herd.

“He called this in the 70s, he said this would be possible. It's only possible now because these brand new lasers are capable of doing it.“ He knew it would work 50 years ago. I imagine there are ideas being discussed today that will come to fruition 50 years from now. ... or 30 years. Our choice.

Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage come to mind.

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

#183

Post by hinkley »

eveningcoffee wrote: post #23

Cool thing about this is that it will be a direct energy capture if I understand it correctly. "The hydrogen/boron fusion creates a couple of helium atoms," he continues. "They're naked heliums, they don't have electrons, so they have a positive charge. We just have to collect that charge. Essentially, the lack of electrons is a product of the reaction and it directly creates the current."

This doesn't sound like it would be more energy-dense than a chemical reaction. How much power can you extract - electrically - from two alpha particles?

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

#184

Post by acidburnNSA »

Accujack wrote: post #147
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…

Love the user name. I always thought that movie was amusing, and so is the NSA :)

Ha thanks. I kind of made it before I knew Hacker News was more or less a serious place. And snowden was in the news at the time.

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

#185

Post by cfv »

On paper, this sounds absolutely awesome and a huge game changer.

I'm super concerned about the military applications tho. Giving functionally endless, mostly free power to warmonger countries with the ability to field drones is something extremely concerning for me.

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

#186

Post by 1958325146 »

sam wrote: post #156
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…

Thank you!

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

#187

Post by NortySpock »

Rhinobird wrote: post #181
wtracy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fifth step is to attach it to power generating equipment The part that jumped out at me as strange is that they claim their process generates electricity "directly" without having to drive a turbine. Supposedly they produce helium cations, and that can drive a circuit. Can anybody comment on whether that makes sense?

The main Proton-Boron reaction produces charged particles instead of neutrons. You can capture the charged particles directly as a source of voltage with no intermediate step. Just stick a piece of metal in the way and hook up wires. Conventionally, neutrons are used to generate heat which is then used to drive steam turbines.

Wouldn't it produce high-velocity charged particles?

Thus you would capture the energy with a "reverse coilgun", "regeneratively braking" the particles down to a non-relativistic speed, rather than just using them to charge a capacitor plate.

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

#188

Post by philipkglass »

ncmncm wrote: post #145
anonuser123456 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I got into nuclear technology because of ITER back in the early 2000s. Worked on it continuously (mostly in advanced fission) ever since. What is your opinion on SPARC and tokamak energy?

There is no actual expectation of ever getting useful power generation from magnetic confinement fusion (ITER, Tokamak): it has always been, instead, a jobs program for high-neutron flux physicists, to maintain a population to draw on for weapons work. p-boron fusion is interesting as a possibly practical energy source. The hurdles are a matter of engineering and finance, not fundamental design flaws. But it's useles…

I think that you have that backwards. It's the laser driven inertial confinement fusion approach that is useful for weapons insights. The very low density and slow kinetics of fusion in a tokamak are much less like weapon fusion reactions.

Lawrence Livermore -- a nuclear weapons lab -- has studied inertial confinement fusion for decades. They don't have a tokamak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

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

#189

Post by thescriptkiddie »

nnq wrote: post #131
DeusExMachina wrote: post #103

Can somebody with more understanding tell me if this idea I had is stupid or has some merit? Fusion will deliver an incredible amount of energy, making it cheap. Everybody then turns up their energy consumption since it costs nothing. Raise heating in houses, use AC everywhere, longer showers, more transportation, etc. All this energy eventually becomes heat. Can it get to a threshold where it can influence temperatu…

> energy [...] costs nothing. Raise heating in houses, use AC everywhere, longer showers, more transportation Yey, can we get to this future faster ?! Joking aside, all the current eco-friendly tech diminishes comfort by a loooot ... we need low-energy habitats that are actually comfortable ffs. For example, traveling around Europe, I see that the new trend in the developed/western part is to shiver you ass out durin…

I have never understood this. Why keep indoor temperatures so warm in the winter? Everyone is already wearing warm clothes when they come in from outside, so why make it like a sauna inside? I'm already sweating before I can get my coat off.

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

#190

Post by strbean »

jabl wrote: post #17
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"

The big problem with H-B11 and other heavier fusion processes is that the energy radiated away as brehmsstrahlung is greater that the energy gain from the fusion. This was worked out by Todd Rider in his 1995 PhD thesis. Yeah, in theory it might be possible to capture the brehmsstrahlung and pump it back into the reactor with sufficiently high efficiency, but we're pretty far away from that. That being said, all thes…

Wait... Todd Rider the DRACO guy?
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