Not to be a downer, but if you say your technology is working a billion times better than expected, one of two things is probably true: you are trying to stir up media hype, or you don't really understand the underlying technology to begin with.
Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
141–150 of 285 posts
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good answer! > Same can be said for fission, but it only powers 5% of the world due to what can be called complications But weren't these complications obvious before deciding to scale up fission power plants? The ones I know about: - Radioactive waste - Risk of failure - Unavoidable EOL
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…
Thank you for your comments. It's great to have someone knowledgeable about these topics give some ELI5 answers.
> Fossil kills 4.2M people/year
Where does this number come from?
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#143To 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…
"the ultra rich (very fast particles) manage to create value among themselves without having to cascade their wealth down to the crowd (cold particles), and then upload that value to hyperspace (the electric field from the electrodes), without ever interacting with the mass of the crowd (the mass of the target)"
Are you saying this kind of fusion is anti social justice? We should ban this immediately!
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#144This 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 Hydrogen Boron reaction is real and well-known to be a way to do fusion without lots of stray neutrons. The sticking point has always been that it's more difficult to cause that reaction than deuterium/tritium or deuterium/deuterium.
So the fusion here is where two protons form an alpha particle? They show a proton hitting B11 and generating two alpha particles and another proton.
1 proton + (5 protons, 6 neutrons) -> 3 * (2 protons, 2 neutrons)
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#145Always 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 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 useless as a jobs program for weapon experts, so must rely on commercial investment.
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#146Always 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…
A number of these steps become easier if the reactor is physically small. A plant that fits in a shipping container has a way easier path to commercial viability. Small plants require less capital. They're easier to manufacture. They can iterate faster. They have less environmental impact, and therefore fewer regulatory hurdles. They require less labor to build and a smaller supply chain. I expect that the engineerin…
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.
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#147Always 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 :)
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#148This 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"
I don't know. I think a really flashy website would be more concerning. This is a serviceable website that gets it's point across without consuming a gig of bandwidth on a video in the header background.
Agreed, I do not see their "budget" website as sign they lack credibility, I see it as a sign that they are focused on their work.
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#149If new fusion startups like this one are interesting to folks on this thread, here's a list of companies working on fusion energy that I've compiled:
Re: Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
A number of these steps become easier if the reactor is physically small. A plant that fits in a shipping container has a way easier path to commercial viability. Small plants require less capital. They're easier to manufacture. They can iterate faster. They have less environmental impact, and therefore fewer regulatory hurdles. They require less labor to build and a smaller supply chain. I expect that the engineerin…
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 that’s a problem, you can locate hundreds of small reactors together.