191–200 of 285 posts
> "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."
I love the work, I love that they have exploited the fact that we can build things (lasers) now that we could not economically build before. But the fact is that so many many things die on the aforementioned step from the article.
That is the step wherein the science doesn't give you a way to engineer a reactor, instead it illuminates something you didn't know before and so that you now realize you can't ever build a reactor that way.
So when I read these papers and the science isn't all figured out, I temper my enthusiasm. High hopes, low expectations, that's a good motto here. Unlike the stellerator where all the science is "known" and they are engineering an implementation step by step by step.
I've added it to my fusion project collection under "interesting long shots", check back in 5 years to see what the science taught them.
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The HB11 reaction doesn't produce neutron radiation. I've seen claims that there would be side reactions, generating neutron radiation totaling under 1% of the energy output, but the only source of that I can think of is if deuterium isn't removed from the hydrogen, and we could do that if necessary. It might not be, since neutrons from deuterium fusion are a lot less energetic than D-T neutrons. The energy output of…
It’s not that simple. 1% of even 1MW is a lot of radiation so it comes down to what the walls are made of more than the total neutron flux. ITER style lithium blankets would be recycled for tritium without producing much net waste. Light water nuclear reactors have several feet of water to absorb fast neutrons, which makes a huge difference. The walls of this are a more open question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Boron
Neutron energy would be a bit under 3 MeV, comparable to fast fission neutrons but in much lower quantity for the power output.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_temperature
Interestingly, that page says the thermal neutrons in a conventional nuclear reactor are better at activating materials than fast neutrons.
According to a presentation I saw by the leader of MIT's fusion program, the inner wall of a D-T tokamak would be activated by the neutrons, but would only need to be stored for a few decades. D-T releases 80% of its energy as 14 MeV neutrons.
According to LPP, which is working on a different boron fusion design, a 20MW reactor would activate the walls with short-lived radiation, but it could be safely opened for maintenance after about twelve hours (iirc).
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…
If you energy production solution can achieve a lower TCO in an existing market segment, steps six and seven (production and supply chain) take care of themselves. The poster child for this was 'on premise PV generation.'
Once a nuclear technology demonstrates a lower TCO for baseline power generation, its game on.
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.
You know what's amazing? Heinrich is old, he's 84 or so. 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. That, in my mind, is awesome.
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> 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?
Huge if true. Most fission plants throw away about two-thirds of their energy output as waste heat (according to: https://www.answers.com/Q/How_much_of_the_heat_generated_in_... ), and their cooling towers are so much bigger than the reactor itself that they've become a symbol of the plants as a whole.
The cooling towers? The photographs in the news commonly show huge clouds of water vapor escaping from the tops of the towers with a picture caption about "nuclear" power or some such.
So, the suggestion is that nuke plants generate huge clouds of dangerous radioactive byproducts.
Such news content is easy: (1) Suggest that the cooling towers are the nuclear reactors and (2) don't mention that what is coming out is just water vapor, from water recently in some river or lake. Now the news people have their audience by their eyeballs for ad revenue and/or politics as in
https://www.peakprosperity.com/2019-year-in-review-part-1/#c...
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
~ H.L. Mencken
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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.
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 imagine most software is tied to the specific devices they run on, but perhaps there's coupling or analytical software that could be better geared towards the problem domain. Is there any fundamental issue that is waiting for a good software solution?
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Why not?
I don't know why, but AFAIK there are no countries investing heavily in fission to make that happen.
I have heard of efforts in India and China to develop and build out nuclear fission plants, though I do not know the scale of these plans. However, even ITER (the largest fusion project right now) has a budget of only $10-20 billion. I have high hopes for ITER, but even that has been protested by anti-nuclear organizations such as Greenpeace. I worry that fusion, despite its many advantages, may be stalled or stopped in the same way fission has been. If we cannot solve this issue with a currently-available zero-emission power source, I just cannot see how a new one based on the same principles can succeed.
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…
Off-topic question: is there some software part in nuclear energy systems that is restricting plants or research? I'd like to contribute to the industry as a non-physicist, but it's hard for me to imagine what kind of software might be missing or is being sold by too expensive specialist companies. I imagine most software is tied to the specific devices they run on, but perhaps there's coupling or analytical software…