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> could be ready for use in a decade. That's the standard issue joke. "Nuclear fusion has been just ten years away for the last fifty years" It is so common as a joke I'm surprised the article didn't mention it.
> U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle. sigh To the extent this is true I suspect those "large fusion reactors" are tuned not so much for generating electricity and a great deal for annihilating whatever the carrying missile is pointed at. But never mind fuzzy thinking at Reuters right now. This is amazing…
I believe you're misunderstanding, those ships run on power generated by a nuclear reactor. A reactor is like when you think of a regular nuclear power plant, it's not part of a missile.
I'm guessing this means that they will try and maximize profit rather than maximize cheap and clean energy for the entire world. That is a bit disappointing if true.
> U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle. sigh To the extent this is true I suspect those "large fusion reactors" are tuned not so much for generating electricity and a great deal for annihilating whatever the carrying missile is pointed at. But never mind fuzzy thinking at Reuters right now. This is amazing…
Unless I'm missing something, I think you're making a similar mistake. Submarines and carriers run on a fission reactor. And it powers everything - drives turbines for locomotion, electricity...
“the first reactors […] could be ready for use in a decade.” I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As etiam points out[0], some of them do carry fusion reactors, but they are not designed to generate electricity. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458426
Kind of a stretch to call a nuclear warhead a "reactor"...
A typical thermal power station has an efficiency below 50% for electricity generation, so the plant dissipates at least as much heat as it generates electrical power.
I wonder how you could get rid of 100MW of waste heat from a volume small enough to fit on a truck. That's a heat flux of more than a megawatt per square meter of surface area.
Content-free article, but presumably it is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor This is not the first time they have gone public with this - Charles Chase gave a talk at Google X last year, recorded and publicly-available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY
I read the wikipedia link. How do they get the energy out? What are the byproducts? etc...
Basically you catch electrons flying out of the plasma arc (where fusion is taking place), and ground them back into the plasma (which is positively charged).
Umm its largely theory at this point.
Hmm, are they confusing fission and fusion?
Lockheed Martin is, indeed, saying they have a workable fusion reactor. Author of this article is the one that's confused.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read the wikipedia link. How do they get the energy out? What are the byproducts? etc...
AFAICT, ²H + ²H produce ³H (which is the burned), H, ³He, and ⁴He, plus some neutrons and gamma rays. The latter must bring the energy out of the chamber, by heating some blanketing. Then it must be the same as with fission reactors.