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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?

#201

Post by ttul »

tinco wrote: post #198
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…

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…

I'm not an expert at all, but I follow news about fusion energy with keen interest. Getting to conditions where fusion reactions can take place requires modeling the physics with supercomputers. I think the physicists have a handle on the software required to do that modeling; they also have access to the computers.

I think if you have a software background and want to contribute, you should consider applying for a job with one of the projects themselves. General Atomics lists 135 software jobs (https://www.ga-careers.com/search-jobs/software/499/1) for instance.

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

#202

Post by dctoedt »

jobseeker990 wrote: post #169
dctoedt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Why would the carbon split? Why not stay carbon? And wouldn't this technically be fission energy then?

> Why would the carbon split? Why not stay carbon?

Don't know — I'm not knowledgeable enough in this area to do more than take WAGs about it. The sequence might be different: For example, the 1H proton might not ever fuse with the 5B11 to form 6C12; instead, the fusion reaction might be that the 5B11 fissions into two 2He4 and one tritium 1H3, after which the 1H proton fuses to the tritium to form the third 2He4.

> And wouldn't this technically be fission energy then?

See the explanation in this thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22383199 — it makes as much sense as anything.

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

#203

Post by freeopinion »

njarboe wrote: post #128
acidburnNSA wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High temperature superconductors are absolutely an interesting pathway to make magnetic confinement fusion significantly easier than the big tokamaks like ITER. I have friends working at Commonwealth Fusion who are good people and I wish them much success. That said there are still a lot of phases to go through, from physical viability at stage 1 to scaled commercial fleet at stage 7, and that pathway is impossible t…

I really hope that fusion power can become a major power source in the future and humanity really needs it to expand off planet, but like you said above, nuclear fission power got to stage 7 and then stalled. I think the nuclear fusion community should drop the word nuclear completely from their vocabulary or they are likely to end up with the same fate, if they ever get to stage 7.

How about "Smart Plant"©™?

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

#204

Post by LaMarseillaise »

ttul wrote: post #201
tinco wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not an expert at all, but I follow news about fusion energy with keen interest. Getting to conditions where fusion reactions can take place requires modeling the physics with supercomputers. I think the physicists have a handle on the software required to do that modeling; they also have access to the computers. I think if you have a software background and want to contribute, you should consider applying for a j…

I think it must be mentioned that in addition to fission and fusion (ITER) work, General Atomics is the creator of the MQ-9 Reaper, which is commonly used for drone strikes. A software job at this company may involve work on these aircraft.

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

#205

Post by freeopinion »

joshvm wrote: post #165
sf_rob wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Price per kwh is not solely about generation efficiency, it's also about distribution and infrastructure. There will always be a cost associated with that which will rise with inflation. Even if we went totally renewable and all your electricity was "free" then you'd still have to account for on demand storage and infrastructure costs. The main benefit of nuclear is its relatively low carbon footprint and in theory l…

What's the fun of tech forecasting if you don't over-promise?

A fusion reactor the size of a shipping container? Plop one down between my neighbor's house and my house. Right where our backup generators now sit. It's about the same footprint.

No more distribution costs. Well, except for Amazon's fees to drop off the uranium now and then. :)

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

#206

Post by Zardoz84 »

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.

Interesting... I remember reading about fusion on the high school, and I thought that must be a way to collect the energy directly.

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

#207

Post by microtherion »

lallysingh wrote: post #163
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.

If these reactors are low heat, not radioactive, and use plentiful fuel, what's the threat model? Is it just worried about availability of power?

According to the article, the energy is generated by alpha particles, which are in principle a very dangerous form of radiation. It's not clear to me, though, whether the radiation stops as soon as the fusion does or not.

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

#208

Post by [deleted] »

goda90 wrote: post #157
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.

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…

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by kragen »

I think he's dechirping a convergent laser wavefront to get a 10-petawatt pulse with which to accelerate hydrogen into a ¹¹B target to run an alphavoltaic battery from an aneutronic p-¹¹B fusion avalanche resulting within a plasma sphere contained by optical tweezers. Is that right?

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

#210

Post by pfdietz »

strbean wrote: post #190
jabl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, he moved away from fusion after basically showing the whole non-Maxwellian approach for aneutronic fusion couldn't work.
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