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Lockheed Martin has obtained a patent for a compact fusion reactor

257 points by joak 9y ago

cornholio 9y ago
A practical small sized fusor is a fantasy at this point. The only reaction that stands any chance to break even is the Deuterium-Tritium fusion, which generates one neutron for each tritium atom fused. Since tritium is not found in nature and has a 12 years half life, it needs to be produced by capturing the free neutron. The classic proposal is to line the reactor with a thick blanket of molten or ceramic lithium that will breed a tritium atom for each captured neutron. This whole design is purely speculative, there is no practical instance of this process at industrial scale and there are significant doubts tritium self-sufficiency is even attainable -the neutron capture and tritium recovery efficiency must be close to 100% or you need a large ratio of neutron multiplication that brings its own problems of nuclear waste and contamination. Tritium is a particularly hazard with the nasty habit of replacing hidrogen in living tissue, seeping out of the tinniest pores and embrittling the reactor vessel and ducts. Assuming all these problems are solved (which are themselves already researched for decades and worthy of 100s of patents), you will still end-up with a factory sized tritium production facility, not something container sized. BTW, did I mention tritium is the key ingredient for moving from clasic fission nukes to thermonuclear weapons? (never mention the classic proliferation appeal of any environment with plenty of neutrons) And this is just one subsistem, one problem to solve out of a vast number. But hey, they've got a patent.
- Zarathust 9y ago
  This is a critical part to consider in "current" fusion research. Most of it rely on the deuterium / tritium fusion which will probably require a classic nuclear plant to generate the fuel. This makes the whole "infinite clean energy" claim pretty bogus for now.
  - gruturo 9y ago
    Not only the "infinite" part in that statement is indeed bogus - but the immense neutron flux makes me skeptical of the "clean" part as well.
    - ExcelSaga 9y ago
      It is very unclean, especially since it requires conventional fission reactors to produce the tritium. It’s theoretically possibl to breed tritium in the reactor blanket of the fusion reactor, but that’s a totally unsolved problem. The high neutron flux of the D-T reaction also destroys all known materials in short order by disrupting the atomic structure of the materials through atomic spallation. There are plenty of other hurdles to making a fusion power plant as oppposed to just a research reactor, but those are big ones.
    - GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
      We know how to contain strong neutron flux. We know how to contain short to medium lived activated materials, we know to avoid cobalt is hardened materials, we don't have to deal with water based corrosion in a fusion containment, though neutron embitterment may be a similar issue.
  - tlb 9y ago
    There is currently a good stock of tritium that would power many such reactors for a while. So it's not insane to put off the tritium problem for later.
    - cornholio 9y ago
      The global inventory of tritium is estimated around 20Kg, that's barely enough for research purposes and ITER. Fueling DEMO, the first commercial fusion reactor will require about 10Kg, and at 2-4GW thermal it will require about 300g of tritium per day, completely depleting the existing stockpile in a single month of operation. So the existing stock is insuficient for even a single commercial reactor. Talking about container sized fusors without ensuring tritium self-sufficiency is a particularity distilled form of insanity.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  Not wholly speculative they've built and tested some machinery with that tape as I remember.
KerrickStaley 9y ago
This is a very big deal if they can make it practical (that's a very big if).
Nokinside 9y ago
Last time this came up, in Google Solve for X in 2013, it was quickly picked part in physics forums by scientists. It's a brainchild of Thomas McGuire, aerospace engineer who has studied some fusion in the graduate school. His team don's seem know what they are doing. I wish there would be betting market for this kind of stuff. edit: Here is actual critique from plasma physics laboratory http://www.ipp.mpg.de/3787558/cfr http://www.ipp.mpg.de/3787558/cfr
- wcarss 9y ago
  Thanks Nokinside! This is a great and easy to follow takedown of the concept on several dimensions (which I've chosen to summarize inline): First, that making the internal device apparatus more complex is counter to the production of energy (you must put stuff in the way of the plasma that has to go fast) and it's also counter to the stability of the device (the plasma that's going fast hits the stuff you put in the way, and the neutrons you produce also hit the stuff you put in the way). Second, that more complex configurations don't in any known configuration actually trap plasma better (i.e. without escape vectors along field lines), and third, that the reactor-size problem comes down to physics of temperature gradients, not (mostly) of plasma containment. Now, I have to wander a little bit down the path of rebutting common fusion concerns raised in sibling comments: The link then mentions that tokamaks (powerful magnetic confinement) and stellarators (geometrically engineered plasma-self-confinement) are two existing designs that can manage not to leak plasma. ITER, as seemingly everyone knows, is a tokamak big enough to potentially be net positive but with an absurd organizational cost and build time. Wendelstein 7-X is a big stellarator potentially able to give us good info on further stellarator designs (and has been a motivator for some cool industrial design advances). I wish that more people on forums bemoaning ITER would learn about ARC at MIT, which is a very well-considered modernisation of the "big tokamak" design, with potentially-available high power superconductor magnets. MIT recently made a large push in favor of this, with op-eds and articles in major newspapers announcing large investment in an MIT-affiliated spinoff company by the Italian energy conglomerate ENI to pursue the initial risky magnet-design and then the routine tokamak construction after. ARC is our best hope today, and ITER is a great long term fallback. Wendelstein is a great research tool, which may someday lead to a power production system. Then there's also the dozen-plus small startups or projects nestled in big orgs, which are mostly research-stage projects, and the whole ecosystem acts as a feedback loop for progress. Everyone's learning together. Of course, even once (er, if) ARC hits net positive rapidly repeated pulses in a few years, there's a lot of issues with tritium and other industrialization and policy concerns (as mentioned elsewhere in this submission's comments) to figure out. But huge money will start pouring into fusion as soon as we have a system that "works", and right now it really seems like we might before 2025. That money will necessarily cause rapid progress on the industrial and engineering work, because that type of work is comparatively easy, and the upside will be both very real and yet also unimaginably high. Fusion is not taking up all of our resources elsewhere, not by a long shot, so while there's even a thin sliver of a chance of it working out it is not reasonable to wholly stop pursuing it in favour of some other plan like all-solar+wind. And right now there is a heck of a lot more than a thin sliver of a chance! ...but, it seems Lockheed's effort would be a big surprise if it's the thing.
eloff 9y ago
I don't know enough to say what their odds are, other than very long. But one day, probably in my lifetime, we'll master fusion power, and it will begin a revolution that will make the industrial revolution look like a minor event. I don't think people realize that really cheap, clean energy solves pretty much every problem of scarcity. We'll enter an age of plenty like the world has never known. Limitless energy means limitless water, food, and materials. Of course it's not really limitless, but if it's even an order of magnitude cheaper than what we have now, the possibilities would be mind blowing.
- qntl 9y ago
  We could pretty much save the world with fission today, but we don’t because politics. I’m not confident that we’ll actually adopt fusion even when the tech is ready.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    I can imagine the first reactors would be prohibitively expensive.
    - mark-r 9y ago
      Naturally. You don't pump money into something like this for years without expecting to get a huge payback. That patent had a lot of military applications in it.
  - danmaz74 9y ago
    How could fission save the world today? It's not that cheap.
    - ben_w 9y ago
      Part of the cost is relatively excessive safety margins. “Relatively excessive“ because despite the reputation fission is the safest power supply we have now, including solar because installing things on rooftops is not without risk. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...
scottmsul 9y ago
The real deal is here, from MIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 Apparently there was a recent breakthrough in superconductors, which allows significantly more current in the inductor coils while still maintaining superconductivity. This in turn allows for much stronger magnetic fields, hence tighter confinement of the plasma and therefore more fusion. A standard tokamak with these new superconductors should produce more energy out than energy in, and be a viable source of energy.
- danbruc 9y ago
  Apparently there was a recent breakthrough in superconductors [...] Recently in this case means mid 1980s. Is the ITER design really that old that they could not make use of YBCO superconductors?
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - scythe 9y ago
    IIRC YBCO can't be feasibly made into wires. However new cuprates have been discovered which are less brittle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth_strontium_calcium_copper_oxide#Wires_and_tapes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth_strontium_calcium_coppe...
    - danbruc 9y ago
      I am not an expert but according to Wikipedia BSCCO is not suitable for high magnetic field strengths. In the video - which I only skimmed - the main point seems to be that they can now build vastly smaller fusion reactors because now super conductors supporting higher fields strengths are available and the energy density of a fusion reactor scales with the fifth power of the magnetic field strength. They also specifically mention rare earths which does not match BSCCO which were, last but not least, also discovered in the late 1980s.
King-Aaron 9y ago
In this thread from a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16590030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16590030, there were a lot of commenters saying that Fusion (/ cold fusion) is not much more than vapourware. Is this news evidence to the contrary?
- deelowe 9y ago
  Progress is steadily being made on fusion, not sure why anyone would say it's vaporware. Cold fusion is something totally different...
  - King-Aaron 9y ago
    Ok, thanks for that. Wasn't sure there was a distinction between the two (layman here with a casual interest in the topic)
    - pbowyer 9y ago
      Search for "Pons and Fleischmann" to learn more about Cold Fusion :)
      - King-Aaron 9y ago
        Appreciate that!
    - zamalek 9y ago
      Cold fusion would happen without plasma involved, i.e. room temperature. Fusion happens with plasma: at least 1000s celcius. The plasma is one of the primary reasons fusion is hard (the magnets are there precisely because of it). That's the allure of CF, pity it's impossible.
- Nokinside 9y ago
  It's not vapourware, just expensive to develop. The path is ITER, DEMO (30% greater plasma density) then commercial reactors based on DEMO
Animats 9y ago
It's a very strange project. If some startup was doing this, it would sound completely bogus. But it's Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. They have a reputation for making the impossible work. Lockheed Martin is funding this internally, and, in one of the few public statements about this, their CEO said that progress was sufficient that the company was putting in more money.
- fastbeef 9y ago
  Be aware that the CEO is probably factoring in PR-value in the calculation of “sufficient progress”.
  - garmaine 9y ago
    Having worked at Lockheed, that is most certainly not how they think. The bottom line is pretty much all that matters and the self-investment even more striking for a government contractor.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  Hire bright scientists to work on fusion, move them to some other boring research project after two months. ... But perhaps I'm pessimist about corporations.
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    Can't speak to this specific project, but your cynicism isn't really misplaced overall. You forgot to mention that the cool project is used as leverage to lower salary expectations...
    - ExcelSaga 9y ago
      If you want to be really cynical then the project they’re moved to is still fusion, but the NIF style used for nuclear weapons research rather than power plants. Then it’s not just about salary, it’s about tempting people who would never work on weapons research into that space.
logicallee 9y ago
I'll just leave this here (mentioned in the middle of a list in the article): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy ------ EDIT: I'm surprised at the downvote. Anyway I'll explain my thinking for sharing that link. I was surprised at the importance of being "container-sized" size since within limits who cares how big a fusion reactor's building is. On land. In the sea or air is a different matter - and when you see the word "Lockheed Martin" most people do think of planes. This is mentioned in the article, in this sentence: >According to the company website on the CFR, the reactor could be powerful enough to run an aircraft carrier, power a plane the size of a C-5 Galaxy airlifter, provide electricity to cities with anywhere from 50 to 100,000 people, and maybe even speed up a trip to Mars. So Lockheed Martin already has planes of a large enough size that such a power plant could make sense. That's pretty amazing if you imagine it. I mean, nuclear submarines already have reactors - why not a plane? A quick google "airplane nuclear reactor" returns: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft and * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion but no practical models. (The first of these two links starts with the words "A nuclear-powered aircraft is a concept for an aircraft intended to be powered by nuclear energy." and goes on to say none have been produced.) So if Lockheed Martin already makes planes that big, then it might be natural and amazing for them to explore containerization of the power plant for that reason. After all, what other space or size/weight constraints are there for nuclear power plants? Where else does it bother anyone whether it's container-size or the size of a two or three or six story building? So, this is the reason for my leaving the link to the specific airplane mentioned in the article.
- tzahola 9y ago
  Ok, but why?
  - logicallee 9y ago
    Why did I mention it? Well, I thought that it's obvious. Look, fuel costs are extreme, I did a quick Google search and got for example: >"For the airline I work for that would mean that an oversimplified average flight's fuel cost is about 40 percent of the overall cost. It's the single most important cost."[1] Almost nothing is as power-dense as a nuclear reactor's core, but you would need an absolutely massive plane before you could see the economy of scale to use it. Unless someone got it down to a manageable size - say, container size. And had a large enough plane to place it on. If you read the article I linked (again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy ) it actually would benefit immediately from a kind of power plant that didn't have to store such huge fuel weight. It says: "We started to build the C-5 and wanted to build the biggest thing we could..." I am not saying it would go in a C-5, only that this company has experience building absolutely huuuuuge planes. And the data sheet gives you tantalizing visions for the future. (Well, it gives me tantalizing visions for the future.) This is how the jet fuel economy works on the C-5 currently: ""After being one of the worst-run programs, ever, in its early years, it has evolved very slowly and with great difficulty into a nearly adequate strategic airlifter that unfortunately needs in-flight refueling or a ground stop for even the most routine long-distance flights." So you see, at the moment it's a huge gigantic plane that Lockheed Martin has huge experience with, and needs to refuel mid-flight for even routine long-distance flights. It also has a payload of 270,000 lbs (120 imperial tons.) That's not counting the 51,150 gallons of fuel capacity. Do you think that would carry a container? We are looking at the kind of thing (or maybe a somewhat larger version) that might actually be able to use an on-board nuclear power-plant. Again: where else on Earth would anyone need a container-sized nuclear power plant? (Genuinely.) So I'm just connecting the dots here. By the way, just for your information, do you know what percent of all human carbon dioxide emissions are caused by plane travel? Google says: "In 2013, aircraft were responsible for about 3 percent of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and nearly 9 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. transportation sector. " [2] Sticking a container-size nuclear power plant into a plane of that size, yeah, with lots of parachutes or safety mechanisms, would be amazing. Above a certain size, the plane would not have to be spending its energy, on carrying its energy (fuel.) I can see that this is a visionary far-out ideal. Maybe they're afraid to bill it as such directly. But then: what other use is there on Earth for a container-sized nuclear power plant? (Besides a ship or submarine.) The air (or space) is the only place with such ridiculous constraints. And anyway I didn't come up with this "vision", the article literally mentioned it explicitly. I just supplied a link to it so you everyone could read through the article and data sheet for themselves. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-does-fuel-cost-take-out-of-the-total-cost-for-a-single-airline-flight https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-does-fuel-cost-take-ou... [2] https://www.c2es.org/content/reducing-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-aircraft/ https://www.c2es.org/content/reducing-carbon-dioxide-emissio...
RobLach 9y ago
I sometimes wonder if we actually need Fusion right now. There's a big sun throwing it's energy at us all the time. Cost of ITER is gonna be around $20 billion. That's 8 Topaz solar stations, together putting out 10 TWh annually. That would give 1.5 San Franciscos electricity at the cost of maintenance/staffing.
- runj__ 9y ago
  "right now" - Probably not. But with something like fusion for free energy would could just start pulling carbon from the atmosphere, we could start to transmute elements, it would be great for interstellar travel and energy would be the limiting factor of a global AI.
  - bewo001 9y ago
    Fusion power will be as 'free' as wind power. Both technologies struggle with high installation cost that has to be distributed over the number of customers and the lifetime of the plant. For fission power, the installation is already too high to compete with wind.
    - solarkraft 9y ago
      but fusion throws out lots of energy. the argument is that the energy will be very very cheap compared to the installation cost (because you just get so much).
      - bewo001 9y ago
        Fusion reactors also consume a lot of energy. ITER plans to have a gain factor of 10, making 500MW of heat -- not electricity -- out of 50MW. According to wikipedia, a gain factor of 22 would be needed for commercial operation. The record is a gain factor of 0.67.. If fusion will ever become economically viable is an open question.
        Nomentatus 9y ago
jlebrech 9y ago
I can see fusion being crucial to colonising mars, solar power is diminished and for earth we could use LFTR (for earth) as it should be cheaper. The development of fusion at a the cheapest it's even been would bring competition to fission and also push the development of LFTR too.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
The claims appear to define nothing more than, what sounds to me like, a basic plasma confinement. Also it says it's a pending application. It's there something interesting or especially novel here?
- drwu 9y ago
  I was looking for the novel point for a long time. It seems that this is just a confined plasma by magnetic mirrors. Mirrors do not confine plasma well, at least for fusion.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  I haven't seen the patent - but there were minor novelties, maybe the steel-backed tape, modularity method, immersion method, etc. Probably enough to get a patent, but I suspect not a patent of great value since there will be other slightly different implementations unless their "metal-backed" tape is their secret sauce. That's possible. "Just build it smaller" can't be patented, that's not a method. Just use tape from that's made by X corp, I can't see that being a patent either.
cabalamat 9y ago
The fact that you can patent something before you know if it works is an abuse of the original intent of the patent system and shows how much it has been corrupted.
- lallysingh 9y ago
  Why? If it doesn't work, the patent is worthless. And the patent office still gets their fees.
gandalfian 9y ago
I never understood this. They casually suggest they can solve the energy crisis but think the big break-though will be making it compact? Its like saying I can turn lead into gold but I'm waiting for the travel version? It makes no sense.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  It does because the non-compact version is ITER and that costs $50bn. Smaller = cheaper.
  - kortex 9y ago
    Smaller = cheaper and faster to build = more iterations = faster learning about these systems.
m3kw9 9y ago
I want to see one actually work before getting hyped up. There has been “good news” thru the years but nothing happens with it
Aoyagi 9y ago
And not a single thought was given to using this on railways?
- detritus 9y ago
  What's made you leap to that assumption? One would think they'd be keen to make the thing work before they start defining its applications.
  - Aoyagi 9y ago
    The diagram in the article.
reubenswartz 9y ago
As much as I'd love to have safe, reliable, economic fusion reactors, the recent progress in solar and batteries makes me wonder if they best place for a fusion reactor isn't 93M miles away. ;-)
oldsklgdfth 9y ago
Is it me or is Lockheed Martin trying to take over the world? They are producing their own semiconductors, moving into radar and now defining new markets to make money from.
- hokumguru 9y ago
  I mean, they're in the business of war. It makes complete sense that they would be producing defense-oriented technology as a defense contractor.
  - oldsklgdfth 9y ago
    This is true. Unlike others in that field they seem to be trying extra hard
apo 9y ago
Lockheed Martin has quietly obtained a patent associated with its design for a potentially revolutionary compact fusion reactor, or CFR. This is a patent application, not a patent. The difference is significant. A patent application can be filed by anyone on any idea, without government review. A patent is granted by the US government after a review process. Part of the review deals with whether the application contains enough information for "one skilled in the art" to reproduce the invention.

257 points by joak 9y ago

A practical small sized fusor is a fantasy at this point. The only reaction that stands any chance to break even is the Deuterium-Tritium fusion, which generates one neutron for each tritium atom fused. Since tritium is not found in nature and has a 12 years half life, it needs to be produced by capturing the free neutron. The classic proposal is to line the reactor with a thick blanket of molten or ceramic lithium that will breed a tritium atom for each captured neutron. This whole design is purely speculative, there is no practical instance of this process at industrial scale and there are significant doubts tritium self-sufficiency is even attainable -the neutron capture and tritium recovery efficiency must be close to 100% or you need a large ratio of neutron multiplication that brings its own problems of nuclear waste and contamination. Tritium is a particularly hazard with the nasty habit of replacing hidrogen in living tissue, seeping out of the tinniest pores and embrittling the reactor vessel and ducts. Assuming all these problems are solved (which are themselves already researched for decades and worthy of 100s of patents), you will still end-up with a factory sized tritium production facility, not something container sized. BTW, did I mention tritium is the key ingredient for moving from clasic fission nukes to thermonuclear weapons? (never mention the classic proliferation appeal of any environment with plenty of neutrons) And this is just one subsistem, one problem to solve out of a vast number. But hey, they've got a patent.

Zarathust 9y ago
This is a critical part to consider in "current" fusion research. Most of it rely on the deuterium / tritium fusion which will probably require a classic nuclear plant to generate the fuel. This makes the whole "infinite clean energy" claim pretty bogus for now.
- gruturo 9y ago
  Not only the "infinite" part in that statement is indeed bogus - but the immense neutron flux makes me skeptical of the "clean" part as well.
  - ExcelSaga 9y ago
    It is very unclean, especially since it requires conventional fission reactors to produce the tritium. It’s theoretically possibl to breed tritium in the reactor blanket of the fusion reactor, but that’s a totally unsolved problem. The high neutron flux of the D-T reaction also destroys all known materials in short order by disrupting the atomic structure of the materials through atomic spallation. There are plenty of other hurdles to making a fusion power plant as oppposed to just a research reactor, but those are big ones.
  - GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
    We know how to contain strong neutron flux. We know how to contain short to medium lived activated materials, we know to avoid cobalt is hardened materials, we don't have to deal with water based corrosion in a fusion containment, though neutron embitterment may be a similar issue.
- tlb 9y ago
  There is currently a good stock of tritium that would power many such reactors for a while. So it's not insane to put off the tritium problem for later.
  - cornholio 9y ago
    The global inventory of tritium is estimated around 20Kg, that's barely enough for research purposes and ITER. Fueling DEMO, the first commercial fusion reactor will require about 10Kg, and at 2-4GW thermal it will require about 300g of tritium per day, completely depleting the existing stockpile in a single month of operation. So the existing stock is insuficient for even a single commercial reactor. Talking about container sized fusors without ensuring tritium self-sufficiency is a particularity distilled form of insanity.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Not wholly speculative they've built and tested some machinery with that tape as I remember.

KerrickStaley 9y ago

This is a very big deal if they can make it practical (that's a very big if).

Nokinside 9y ago

Last time this came up, in Google Solve for X in 2013, it was quickly picked part in physics forums by scientists. It's a brainchild of Thomas McGuire, aerospace engineer who has studied some fusion in the graduate school. His team don's seem know what they are doing. I wish there would be betting market for this kind of stuff. edit: Here is actual critique from plasma physics laboratory http://www.ipp.mpg.de/3787558/cfr http://www.ipp.mpg.de/3787558/cfr

wcarss 9y ago
Thanks Nokinside! This is a great and easy to follow takedown of the concept on several dimensions (which I've chosen to summarize inline): First, that making the internal device apparatus more complex is counter to the production of energy (you must put stuff in the way of the plasma that has to go fast) and it's also counter to the stability of the device (the plasma that's going fast hits the stuff you put in the way, and the neutrons you produce also hit the stuff you put in the way). Second, that more complex configurations don't in any known configuration actually trap plasma better (i.e. without escape vectors along field lines), and third, that the reactor-size problem comes down to physics of temperature gradients, not (mostly) of plasma containment. Now, I have to wander a little bit down the path of rebutting common fusion concerns raised in sibling comments: The link then mentions that tokamaks (powerful magnetic confinement) and stellarators (geometrically engineered plasma-self-confinement) are two existing designs that can manage not to leak plasma. ITER, as seemingly everyone knows, is a tokamak big enough to potentially be net positive but with an absurd organizational cost and build time. Wendelstein 7-X is a big stellarator potentially able to give us good info on further stellarator designs (and has been a motivator for some cool industrial design advances). I wish that more people on forums bemoaning ITER would learn about ARC at MIT, which is a very well-considered modernisation of the "big tokamak" design, with potentially-available high power superconductor magnets. MIT recently made a large push in favor of this, with op-eds and articles in major newspapers announcing large investment in an MIT-affiliated spinoff company by the Italian energy conglomerate ENI to pursue the initial risky magnet-design and then the routine tokamak construction after. ARC is our best hope today, and ITER is a great long term fallback. Wendelstein is a great research tool, which may someday lead to a power production system. Then there's also the dozen-plus small startups or projects nestled in big orgs, which are mostly research-stage projects, and the whole ecosystem acts as a feedback loop for progress. Everyone's learning together. Of course, even once (er, if) ARC hits net positive rapidly repeated pulses in a few years, there's a lot of issues with tritium and other industrialization and policy concerns (as mentioned elsewhere in this submission's comments) to figure out. But huge money will start pouring into fusion as soon as we have a system that "works", and right now it really seems like we might before 2025. That money will necessarily cause rapid progress on the industrial and engineering work, because that type of work is comparatively easy, and the upside will be both very real and yet also unimaginably high. Fusion is not taking up all of our resources elsewhere, not by a long shot, so while there's even a thin sliver of a chance of it working out it is not reasonable to wholly stop pursuing it in favour of some other plan like all-solar+wind. And right now there is a heck of a lot more than a thin sliver of a chance! ...but, it seems Lockheed's effort would be a big surprise if it's the thing.

eloff 9y ago

I don't know enough to say what their odds are, other than very long. But one day, probably in my lifetime, we'll master fusion power, and it will begin a revolution that will make the industrial revolution look like a minor event. I don't think people realize that really cheap, clean energy solves pretty much every problem of scarcity. We'll enter an age of plenty like the world has never known. Limitless energy means limitless water, food, and materials. Of course it's not really limitless, but if it's even an order of magnitude cheaper than what we have now, the possibilities would be mind blowing.

qntl 9y ago
We could pretty much save the world with fission today, but we don’t because politics. I’m not confident that we’ll actually adopt fusion even when the tech is ready.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  I can imagine the first reactors would be prohibitively expensive.
  - mark-r 9y ago
    Naturally. You don't pump money into something like this for years without expecting to get a huge payback. That patent had a lot of military applications in it.
- danmaz74 9y ago
  How could fission save the world today? It's not that cheap.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    Part of the cost is relatively excessive safety margins. “Relatively excessive“ because despite the reputation fission is the safest power supply we have now, including solar because installing things on rooftops is not without risk. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...

scottmsul 9y ago

The real deal is here, from MIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 Apparently there was a recent breakthrough in superconductors, which allows significantly more current in the inductor coils while still maintaining superconductivity. This in turn allows for much stronger magnetic fields, hence tighter confinement of the plasma and therefore more fusion. A standard tokamak with these new superconductors should produce more energy out than energy in, and be a viable source of energy.

danbruc 9y ago
Apparently there was a recent breakthrough in superconductors [...] Recently in this case means mid 1980s. Is the ITER design really that old that they could not make use of YBCO superconductors?
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- scythe 9y ago
  IIRC YBCO can't be feasibly made into wires. However new cuprates have been discovered which are less brittle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth_strontium_calcium_copper_oxide#Wires_and_tapes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth_strontium_calcium_coppe...
  - danbruc 9y ago
    I am not an expert but according to Wikipedia BSCCO is not suitable for high magnetic field strengths. In the video - which I only skimmed - the main point seems to be that they can now build vastly smaller fusion reactors because now super conductors supporting higher fields strengths are available and the energy density of a fusion reactor scales with the fifth power of the magnetic field strength. They also specifically mention rare earths which does not match BSCCO which were, last but not least, also discovered in the late 1980s.

King-Aaron 9y ago

In this thread from a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16590030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16590030, there were a lot of commenters saying that Fusion (/ cold fusion) is not much more than vapourware. Is this news evidence to the contrary?

deelowe 9y ago
Progress is steadily being made on fusion, not sure why anyone would say it's vaporware. Cold fusion is something totally different...
- King-Aaron 9y ago
  Ok, thanks for that. Wasn't sure there was a distinction between the two (layman here with a casual interest in the topic)
  - pbowyer 9y ago
    Search for "Pons and Fleischmann" to learn more about Cold Fusion :)
    - King-Aaron 9y ago
      Appreciate that!
  - zamalek 9y ago
    Cold fusion would happen without plasma involved, i.e. room temperature. Fusion happens with plasma: at least 1000s celcius. The plasma is one of the primary reasons fusion is hard (the magnets are there precisely because of it). That's the allure of CF, pity it's impossible.
Nokinside 9y ago
It's not vapourware, just expensive to develop. The path is ITER, DEMO (30% greater plasma density) then commercial reactors based on DEMO

Animats 9y ago

It's a very strange project. If some startup was doing this, it would sound completely bogus. But it's Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. They have a reputation for making the impossible work. Lockheed Martin is funding this internally, and, in one of the few public statements about this, their CEO said that progress was sufficient that the company was putting in more money.

fastbeef 9y ago
Be aware that the CEO is probably factoring in PR-value in the calculation of “sufficient progress”.
- garmaine 9y ago
  Having worked at Lockheed, that is most certainly not how they think. The bottom line is pretty much all that matters and the self-investment even more striking for a government contractor.
Raphmedia 9y ago
Hire bright scientists to work on fusion, move them to some other boring research project after two months. ... But perhaps I'm pessimist about corporations.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  Can't speak to this specific project, but your cynicism isn't really misplaced overall. You forgot to mention that the cool project is used as leverage to lower salary expectations...
  - ExcelSaga 9y ago
    If you want to be really cynical then the project they’re moved to is still fusion, but the NIF style used for nuclear weapons research rather than power plants. Then it’s not just about salary, it’s about tempting people who would never work on weapons research into that space.

logicallee 9y ago

I'll just leave this here (mentioned in the middle of a list in the article): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy ------ EDIT: I'm surprised at the downvote. Anyway I'll explain my thinking for sharing that link. I was surprised at the importance of being "container-sized" size since within limits who cares how big a fusion reactor's building is. On land. In the sea or air is a different matter - and when you see the word "Lockheed Martin" most people do think of planes. This is mentioned in the article, in this sentence: >According to the company website on the CFR, the reactor could be powerful enough to run an aircraft carrier, power a plane the size of a C-5 Galaxy airlifter, provide electricity to cities with anywhere from 50 to 100,000 people, and maybe even speed up a trip to Mars. So Lockheed Martin already has planes of a large enough size that such a power plant could make sense. That's pretty amazing if you imagine it. I mean, nuclear submarines already have reactors - why not a plane? A quick google "airplane nuclear reactor" returns: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft and * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion but no practical models. (The first of these two links starts with the words "A nuclear-powered aircraft is a concept for an aircraft intended to be powered by nuclear energy." and goes on to say none have been produced.) So if Lockheed Martin already makes planes that big, then it might be natural and amazing for them to explore containerization of the power plant for that reason. After all, what other space or size/weight constraints are there for nuclear power plants? Where else does it bother anyone whether it's container-size or the size of a two or three or six story building? So, this is the reason for my leaving the link to the specific airplane mentioned in the article.

tzahola 9y ago
Ok, but why?
- logicallee 9y ago
  Why did I mention it? Well, I thought that it's obvious. Look, fuel costs are extreme, I did a quick Google search and got for example: >"For the airline I work for that would mean that an oversimplified average flight's fuel cost is about 40 percent of the overall cost. It's the single most important cost."[1] Almost nothing is as power-dense as a nuclear reactor's core, but you would need an absolutely massive plane before you could see the economy of scale to use it. Unless someone got it down to a manageable size - say, container size. And had a large enough plane to place it on. If you read the article I linked (again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy ) it actually would benefit immediately from a kind of power plant that didn't have to store such huge fuel weight. It says: "We started to build the C-5 and wanted to build the biggest thing we could..." I am not saying it would go in a C-5, only that this company has experience building absolutely huuuuuge planes. And the data sheet gives you tantalizing visions for the future. (Well, it gives me tantalizing visions for the future.) This is how the jet fuel economy works on the C-5 currently: ""After being one of the worst-run programs, ever, in its early years, it has evolved very slowly and with great difficulty into a nearly adequate strategic airlifter that unfortunately needs in-flight refueling or a ground stop for even the most routine long-distance flights." So you see, at the moment it's a huge gigantic plane that Lockheed Martin has huge experience with, and needs to refuel mid-flight for even routine long-distance flights. It also has a payload of 270,000 lbs (120 imperial tons.) That's not counting the 51,150 gallons of fuel capacity. Do you think that would carry a container? We are looking at the kind of thing (or maybe a somewhat larger version) that might actually be able to use an on-board nuclear power-plant. Again: where else on Earth would anyone need a container-sized nuclear power plant? (Genuinely.) So I'm just connecting the dots here. By the way, just for your information, do you know what percent of all human carbon dioxide emissions are caused by plane travel? Google says: "In 2013, aircraft were responsible for about 3 percent of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and nearly 9 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. transportation sector. " [2] Sticking a container-size nuclear power plant into a plane of that size, yeah, with lots of parachutes or safety mechanisms, would be amazing. Above a certain size, the plane would not have to be spending its energy, on carrying its energy (fuel.) I can see that this is a visionary far-out ideal. Maybe they're afraid to bill it as such directly. But then: what other use is there on Earth for a container-sized nuclear power plant? (Besides a ship or submarine.) The air (or space) is the only place with such ridiculous constraints. And anyway I didn't come up with this "vision", the article literally mentioned it explicitly. I just supplied a link to it so you everyone could read through the article and data sheet for themselves. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-does-fuel-cost-take-out-of-the-total-cost-for-a-single-airline-flight https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-does-fuel-cost-take-ou... [2] https://www.c2es.org/content/reducing-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-aircraft/ https://www.c2es.org/content/reducing-carbon-dioxide-emissio...

RobLach 9y ago

I sometimes wonder if we actually need Fusion right now. There's a big sun throwing it's energy at us all the time. Cost of ITER is gonna be around $20 billion. That's 8 Topaz solar stations, together putting out 10 TWh annually. That would give 1.5 San Franciscos electricity at the cost of maintenance/staffing.

runj__ 9y ago
"right now" - Probably not. But with something like fusion for free energy would could just start pulling carbon from the atmosphere, we could start to transmute elements, it would be great for interstellar travel and energy would be the limiting factor of a global AI.
- bewo001 9y ago
  Fusion power will be as 'free' as wind power. Both technologies struggle with high installation cost that has to be distributed over the number of customers and the lifetime of the plant. For fission power, the installation is already too high to compete with wind.
  - solarkraft 9y ago
    but fusion throws out lots of energy. the argument is that the energy will be very very cheap compared to the installation cost (because you just get so much).
    - bewo001 9y ago
      Fusion reactors also consume a lot of energy. ITER plans to have a gain factor of 10, making 500MW of heat -- not electricity -- out of 50MW. According to wikipedia, a gain factor of 22 would be needed for commercial operation. The record is a gain factor of 0.67.. If fusion will ever become economically viable is an open question.
      - Nomentatus 9y ago

jlebrech 9y ago

I can see fusion being crucial to colonising mars, solar power is diminished and for earth we could use LFTR (for earth) as it should be cheaper. The development of fusion at a the cheapest it's even been would bring competition to fission and also push the development of LFTR too.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

The claims appear to define nothing more than, what sounds to me like, a basic plasma confinement. Also it says it's a pending application. It's there something interesting or especially novel here?

drwu 9y ago
I was looking for the novel point for a long time. It seems that this is just a confined plasma by magnetic mirrors. Mirrors do not confine plasma well, at least for fusion.
Nomentatus 9y ago
I haven't seen the patent - but there were minor novelties, maybe the steel-backed tape, modularity method, immersion method, etc. Probably enough to get a patent, but I suspect not a patent of great value since there will be other slightly different implementations unless their "metal-backed" tape is their secret sauce. That's possible. "Just build it smaller" can't be patented, that's not a method. Just use tape from that's made by X corp, I can't see that being a patent either.

cabalamat 9y ago

The fact that you can patent something before you know if it works is an abuse of the original intent of the patent system and shows how much it has been corrupted.

lallysingh 9y ago
Why? If it doesn't work, the patent is worthless. And the patent office still gets their fees.

gandalfian 9y ago

I never understood this. They casually suggest they can solve the energy crisis but think the big break-though will be making it compact? Its like saying I can turn lead into gold but I'm waiting for the travel version? It makes no sense.

IshKebab 9y ago
It does because the non-compact version is ITER and that costs $50bn. Smaller = cheaper.
- kortex 9y ago
  Smaller = cheaper and faster to build = more iterations = faster learning about these systems.

m3kw9 9y ago

I want to see one actually work before getting hyped up. There has been “good news” thru the years but nothing happens with it

Aoyagi 9y ago

And not a single thought was given to using this on railways?

detritus 9y ago
What's made you leap to that assumption? One would think they'd be keen to make the thing work before they start defining its applications.
- Aoyagi 9y ago
  The diagram in the article.

reubenswartz 9y ago

As much as I'd love to have safe, reliable, economic fusion reactors, the recent progress in solar and batteries makes me wonder if they best place for a fusion reactor isn't 93M miles away. ;-)

oldsklgdfth 9y ago

Is it me or is Lockheed Martin trying to take over the world? They are producing their own semiconductors, moving into radar and now defining new markets to make money from.

hokumguru 9y ago
I mean, they're in the business of war. It makes complete sense that they would be producing defense-oriented technology as a defense contractor.
- oldsklgdfth 9y ago
  This is true. Unlike others in that field they seem to be trying extra hard

apo 9y ago

Lockheed Martin has quietly obtained a patent associated with its design for a potentially revolutionary compact fusion reactor, or CFR. This is a patent application, not a patent. The difference is significant. A patent application can be filed by anyone on any idea, without government review. A patent is granted by the US government after a review process. Part of the review deals with whether the application contains enough information for "one skilled in the art" to reproduce the invention.