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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 generate
by 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 agoThis 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 agoNot 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 agoIt 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 agoWe 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 agoThere 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 agoThe 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 agoNot wholly speculative they've built and tested some machinery with that tape as I remember.