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Cool thing about this is that it will be a direct energy capture if I understand it correctly. "The hydrogen/boron fusion creates a couple of helium atoms," he

Cool thing about this is that it will be a direct energy capture if I understand it correctly. "The hydrogen/boron fusion creates a couple of helium atoms," he continues. "They're naked heliums, they don't have electrons, so they have a positive charge. We just have to collect that charge. Essentially, the lack of electrons is a product of the reaction and it directly creates the current."

javajosh 7y ago
Yes it seems like you could generate extreme levels of electrostatic force by collecting the Helium nuclei. Do that on one side of a capacitor, periodically short it out (producing ordinary Helium) to clear both plates, and repeat. So yeah a machine which takes hydrogen and boron and emits helium gas and electricity. Sounds like it's worth doing, at least for the sake of children's birthday parties.
- multiplegeorges 7y ago
  Helium is limited on earth and we need it to cool things like MRIs and other massive electromagnets. Apart from literally saving humanity from a climate disaster, we can still use our MRIs!
  - anonuser123456 7y ago
    You're not going to make an appreciable amount of helium with this process. And MRIs of the future will be constructed with REBCO magnets and cooled with liquid nitrogen.
    - russfink 7y ago
      Start looking for unexplained helium signatures among the exoplanets, as evidence of a civilization that applied this method successfully.
      - anonuser123456 7y ago
        And when you don't find them because said civilizations were smart enough to just go build Dyson spheres around red dwarfs then what?
        ncmncm 7y ago
        Nobody will bother with Dyson spheres, or any sort of solar power collection, once they have portable fusion generation. Once you have that, stars and planets are superfluous except as raw material.
acidburnNSA 7y ago
Presumably the lasers have produced enough energy to ionize helium generated in the target. It's quite unclear how a net energy gain will be extracted simply by grabbing the moving ions electrically. That sounds like a huge extra challenge on top of achieving net positive controlled fusion. There will inevitably be a lot of heat produced that has to be cooled. Generally people plan to use the coolant as the working fluid in the power cycle. If there's an innovation here it'd be cool if they put it way more up front. In any case there will still be a coolant.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  The coolant will be forced air to clear the reaction chamber for the next shot. When you are collecting enough power from the accelerated nuclei and X-rays by direct conversion, heat is uninteresting.
hinkley 7y ago
This doesn't sound like it would be more energy-dense than a chemical reaction. How much power can you extract - electrically - from two alpha particles?
- DennisP 7y ago
  Depends on how fast they're going. Fusion generates quite a lot of energy per reaction. According to HB11's papers, each shot would have about 30 kilojoules input power via laser, consume 14 grams of fuel, and produce over a gigajoule output power, or 277 kWh. They think within a decade the lasers will be capable of one shot per second. Right now it's more like one per minute.

javajosh 7y ago

Yes it seems like you could generate extreme levels of electrostatic force by collecting the Helium nuclei. Do that on one side of a capacitor, periodically short it out (producing ordinary Helium) to clear both plates, and repeat. So yeah a machine which takes hydrogen and boron and emits helium gas and electricity. Sounds like it's worth doing, at least for the sake of children's birthday parties.

multiplegeorges 7y ago
Helium is limited on earth and we need it to cool things like MRIs and other massive electromagnets. Apart from literally saving humanity from a climate disaster, we can still use our MRIs!
- anonuser123456 7y ago
  You're not going to make an appreciable amount of helium with this process. And MRIs of the future will be constructed with REBCO magnets and cooled with liquid nitrogen.
  - russfink 7y ago
    Start looking for unexplained helium signatures among the exoplanets, as evidence of a civilization that applied this method successfully.
    - anonuser123456 7y ago
      And when you don't find them because said civilizations were smart enough to just go build Dyson spheres around red dwarfs then what?
      - ncmncm 7y ago
        Nobody will bother with Dyson spheres, or any sort of solar power collection, once they have portable fusion generation. Once you have that, stars and planets are superfluous except as raw material.

acidburnNSA 7y ago

Presumably the lasers have produced enough energy to ionize helium generated in the target. It's quite unclear how a net energy gain will be extracted simply by grabbing the moving ions electrically. That sounds like a huge extra challenge on top of achieving net positive controlled fusion. There will inevitably be a lot of heat produced that has to be cooled. Generally people plan to use the coolant as the working fluid in the power cycle. If there's an innovation here it'd be cool if they put it way more up front. In any case there will still be a coolant.

ncmncm 7y ago
The coolant will be forced air to clear the reaction chamber for the next shot. When you are collecting enough power from the accelerated nuclei and X-rays by direct conversion, heat is uninteresting.

hinkley 7y ago

This doesn't sound like it would be more energy-dense than a chemical reaction. How much power can you extract - electrically - from two alpha particles?

DennisP 7y ago
Depends on how fast they're going. Fusion generates quite a lot of energy per reaction. According to HB11's papers, each shot would have about 30 kilojoules input power via laser, consume 14 grams of fuel, and produce over a gigajoule output power, or 277 kWh. They think within a decade the lasers will be capable of one shot per second. Right now it's more like one per minute.