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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?

#251

Post by acidburnNSA »

dfsegoat wrote: post #124
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…

FWIW as an aside: I always scan comments on nuke-related HN posts to find yours first. Super informative and easy to digest. Thanks again.

Happy to hear it! I love the discussions that happen here so it's my pleasure.

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

#252

Post by acidburnNSA »

coda_ wrote: post #248
acidburnNSA wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly the generation of radioactive material in fission plants was considered potentially fatal all the way back to Fermi, who said way back when: > It is not clear that the public will accept an energy source that produces this much radioactivity and that can be subject to diversion of material for bombs. However, the nuclear fission industry has arguably shown that it can technically manage radioactive wastes w…

Appreciate all your comments here. As someone that knows a lot about this stuff, may I ask... would you have any concerns living near (say 5 miles) from a deep geological repository, like what is described here: https://www.nwmo.ca/en/A-Safe-Approach/Facilities/Deep-Geolo...

I spent the first 17 years of my life 5 miles from an operating nuclear power plant. The stored nuclear waste from this plant is still there (though the plant itself was decommissioned). When I visit my family, I am right there next to it. It sits in dry casks exactly like these [1]. I feel 100% safe being in that situation at all times, and I know in elaborate detail the characteristics of nuclear waste and radiation in general.

If the waste was 500m below ground in a designed deep geologic repository I wouldn't feel that much safer (because I already feel totally safe from the dry casks). But it would be at least a little more out of reach for terrorists and whatnot so from that perspective, yeah I'd prefer if it was underground.

I would gladly put my house and raise my family directly on top of a deep geologic nuclear waste repository. This really isn't reckless. I have a Geiger counter. I know what levels of radiation are safe. I know the risks. It's exceedingly low. I am far more worried about hamburgers.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g

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

#253

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

willis936 wrote: post #61

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 challenge…

As an absolute dummie I had to think of ASML where they repeatedly hit molten tin droplets in flight with CO2-lasers, to produce some plasma, to get extreme ultraviolet light out of it. 50.000 times per second. So the part to hit something very small in flight, in a vacuum, precisely and repeatedly exists on an industrial scale already. Though not simple, small and cheap. Should ask Cymer or Trumpf who do this. And forget about all that unnecessary light generating stuff, just ripping out the necessary parts and adapt for their application. And of course harden it against the FUSION happening. Simple, isn't it?

(stupid grin)

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

#254

Post by robocat »

phkahler wrote: post #50
yufeng66 wrote: post #36

There 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.

> Why are the electrons stripped from the helium?

Hydrogen + Boron -> 3×Helium + energy

The energy is mostly 2900keV kinetic energy for each Helium ion i.e. the He ions just fuck off really fast and leave the elections behind.

If a He ions hits H atoms a couple of times, the second H hit has just the right energy to then hit another Boron and create an an avalanche of reactions. https://aip.scitation.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/aip...

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

#255

Post by grogers »

Accujack wrote: post #153
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 deca…

If they succeed in creating a viable p-B11 fusion power plant and that gets developed into a bomb, wouldn't it be a good thing in the sense that it could replace many thousands of fission-based bombs that have huge fallout risk?

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

#256

Post by grogers »

pas wrote: post #155
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.)

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01170 ehich is the first linked paper in that section explains it well. The laser fires through the hole and ablates material from the back disc. The electrons from the created plasma reach the other side of the disc first before the ions because they are lighter, causing a buildup of negative charge on the other side. This charge differential drives a current between the two plates, which creates a magnetic field inside the coil.

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

#257

Post by grogers »

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?

The rough explanation I've heard before is to satisfy conservation of momentum and energy together. But on doing some more digging this seems wrong. C12+gamma is an output, just only for 0.01% of reactions. No idea why the different byproducts have different rates though.

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

#258

Post by TomMarius »

throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #49
TomMarius wrote: post #38

My nuclear fusion physicist friend is very sceptical.

On its own, this isn't a very substantial comment. Can you elaborate on why your friend is sceptical and what effort they put in to come to that conclusion?

He says it's a wild dream which everyone who has studied it knows due to the physical properties. He has a Ph.d. and worked on the Prague-based fusion reactors. I think it's useful to know that people with expertise consider it wild even though they're not exactly sure why themselves. You don't need to take it into consideration if you know better.

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

#259

Post by escape_goat »

SamBam wrote: post #56
escape_goat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be less confusing to refer to 'natural gas' in this context, rather than CH4.

'Natural gas' and not 'cow burps'?

Not cow burps. Cow burps do not contain helium gas. Helium is formed as a product of natural radioactive decay. It tends to get trapped within the earth in the same ways that natural gas does. Thus, helium is often present as an impurity in natural gas. This is what the previous commentator was referring to, but of course, CH4 is not actually a very good source of helium.

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

#260

Post by sonium »

I don't want to be a nay-sayer but I did my PhD on Hydrogen implantation and spentt enough time as a PostDoc to find a few thing odd here:

- All work seems to be purely theoretical although the setup needed is not that hard to come by. For 1000 USD / hour you can rent a proton implanter and check the principle mechanisms of the reaction.

- Everything is published in realativly low impact journals. There are a ton of smart people in academia that love to "think outside the box" but nobody seems to think that this is promising. This basicaly seems to be a one man show of H. Hora.

- It doesn't seem to be that radically new but the first paper was published. I have not found what they have done in the meantime.

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