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> Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. Wikipedia It works at near room temperature. The goa

> Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. Wikipedia It works at near room temperature. The goal of the reactor in the video is to produce isotopes. It does the job.

jacquesm 3y ago
It can not ever produce net energy in this setting, so no, it doesn't do the job. It is in a room, but the temperature inside that vessel is anywhere north of 35,000 C. Unless you have a very hot room that isn't 'room temperature' by any stretch of the definition. Note that room temperature is about the temperature of the process not the temperature of the building containing that process.
- oneshtein 3y ago
  35kK in this reactor is much closer to room temperature than 150MK in ITER, isn't?
  - sudosysgen 3y ago
    Sure, but that's fine and expected since you don't need a sufficient fusion density for net energy.
  - MayeulC 3y ago
    Look, call 35K cold if you want. It's relatively easy to make some fusion at home [1] at even colder temperatures. However, the real issue here is __producing__ energy (edit: more than you put in). This has never been done in a sustained way (H-bombs produce net energy, there were some promising inertial confinement and tokamak results recently, but never for sustained periods of time). And in the chain, it's pointed out quite clearly that everybody understands "cold fusion" as referring to "net positive energy". [1]: https://fusor.net/board/index.php https://fusor.net/board/index.php
    - oneshtein 3y ago
      I am old enough to remember "The Storm in a Glass". Back then, there was a discussion about excessive heat, because the scientific community doubted the possibility of nuclear fusion reactions at such low temperatures and energy costs. My own hypotheses were: a) the reaction is caused by cosmic radiation (muons), and the deuterium filled lattice only amplifies natural high-energy cosmic radiation; b) the reaction occurs through contamination of samples with radioactive materials, and the matrix only amplifies natural decay reactions; c) cracks in the material create resonance with alternating electric current, and as a result, a natural particle accelerator is formed. In the video, researches use lattice to boosts fusor performance by few orders of magnitude. Why you think that they cannot boost it further?
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        > Why you think that they cannot boost it further? That's not how this works. Why do you think it can?
        oneshtein 3y ago
        I have not tried, but my idea (more than 10 years ago, before the war) was to cover the lattice with atom-thin blanket of depleted Uranium, then to shine at it with radiation from hot mix of radioactive isotopes, with hope that lattice will boost performance of Uranium by 1k-10k. The obvious problem for practical use of this idea is small cross-section of the Uranium blanket, so maybe thousands of thin layers of Nickel-Uranium will be required to make it work, or Nickel-Uranium alloy at 98%-2%. PS. The purpose for of the device is to heat homes, to avoid need of Russian gas, not to generate electricity.
        MayeulC 3y ago
        Your comment makes it sound like you don't understand the physics of it at all. What does Uranium have to do with this? What does "performance of uranium" means? What do you think will happen when you bombard it with "radiation"? What kind of "radiation"? Uranium is most commonly used in fission devices, not fusion ones. Fusing Uranium would absorb energy, not liberate energy, this is why we split it. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/170716/is-there-a-difference-in-the-energy-output-of-a-nuclear-fission-reaction-as-oppo https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/170716/is-there-... For heating, you'd be better off using a heat pump. Or I guess you could take some radioactive material and shield it. Or even a breeder reactor, but that's fission. I do not want to come across as disrespectful, but what you're saying sounds like alchemy, or the kind of "science" they show in superhero movies. I could understand using a layer of metal to produce x-rays, and concentrate these to heat a sample (a bit similar to H-bombs, BTW), but I am not a nuclear physicist either. Real physicists have thought about this much more than we did, and if there was a simple pathway to practical fusion, we'd know about it by now. I think you underestimate the complexity of all this (kind of a "Dunning-Kruger" effect), go watch the "MIT's pathway to fusion[1]" videos for an introduction to the problem and modern approaches :) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I'm not saying it is 35K, I'm saying it is at least 35K and probably much higher. Whether it is closer to room temperature or not is not relevant, when someone says 'room temperature' they are talking about 21 degrees Celsius plus or minus a couple, not above the temperature where any kind of solid matter exists. Even tungsten, which melts at 3422 degrees C and boils at the magic number of 5555 C is just vapor at that point. Closer isn't relevant, at all.
    - oneshtein 3y ago
      As you can see, the apparatus didn't evaporate while working, so, probably, temperature is much lower.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        It didn't evaporate because it is constructed carefully not to, but that doesn't mean it isn't blazing hot, just like the gas burner on your stove can be made out of aluminum which would be melted by the flame if it ever became mis-aligned. But that doesn't mean the flame has a temperature lower than the melting point of aluminum, it just means that whoever designed it knew enough to ensure that the aluminum is never exposed to more than that it can handle in spite of being in close proximity to something that is able to melt it instantly. The biggest factors there are flame shape, stand-off and cooling effect of the gas supply itself. Note that when you casually write 'plasma' that you are talking about material that is so hot that it has shed all of its electrons, it is just the nuclei that you're looking at and if it so much as touches anything at all it will waltz right through it as if it isn't there. See also: plasma cutters[1] for a nice demonstration of what happens when you use these facts to your advantage. But for things like plasma based fusion they are a very tricky problem because you have to maintain the plasma while simultaneously extracting energy from it. The device shown in the video is very, very nice and well engineered, it is amazing that they got it work as well as they did with such simplicity but the process is eminently unsuitable for energy generation as far as I understand this stuff, keeping the plasma stable and cooling the whole thing uses many kilowatts. It's an improvement over a linear accelerator or a tokamak for the production of short lived nucleotides it is not an energy generating device. [1] Plasma cutters also don't instantly disintegrate the cutting tip, that's because they blow copious air through the nozzle to keep the hot plasma away from the tip itself and to direct it onto the workpiece that you are cutting. But woe to you if your air pressure unexpectedly drops.
tomrod 3y ago
Aye, it produces neutron isotopes, but not at room temperature and not with a net excess of energy. It's the difference between going on a Sunday walk and a Monday commute. Yes, technically, your body is physically moving places, but the similarities don't extend much beyond that point nor would we encourage mistaking one for the other.
- oneshtein 3y ago
  35 thousand Kelvin in a "cold" nuclear fusion reactor is much closer to room temperature than the temperature in a "hot" nuclear fusion reactor. Both types of reactors do not produce excess energy, but the cold reactor has already found application while the hot reactor will be ready in 25 years. Which kind of reactor is hoax?
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    The cold reactor fuses nuclei by virtue of energy input, the other tries to extract energy from a fusion reaction larger than its input. On a complexity level you're looking at 1:10000 difference or worse.
    - oneshtein 3y ago
      Cold Fusion doesn't work because we are exchanging high-energy particles, which are expensive to produce, for low grade heat in bulk of material. If we will have cheap source of muons, we can change equation. We can drop a tiny bit of Nickel lattice filled with Deuterium, and then strike it with muons from all angles, to create implosion. This will allow us to create tiny blast of hot plasma, which is much easier to extract energy from. Sadly, we have no such cheap source of muons, AFAIK.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        > If we will have cheap source of muons, we can change equation. You can make them but the cost in energy is exactly the problem: you will be spending money on energy to make muons at a considerable loss due to the inefficient ways in which we know how to make them (proton beams, which require a huge amount of energy to create), resulting in an insignificant number of particles. If your goal is to get net energy out it would be good to keep an eye on process efficiency from the beginning. Starting off with a billion to one or so conversion loss for step one raises the bar for the subsequent steps considerably. > Sadly, we have no such cheap source of muons, AFAIK. Indeed we do not, and that's pretty logical.
jjk166 3y ago
It doesn't work anywhere near room temperature. Fusors operate at 10-30 keV, which is about 100 Million to 300 Million C. The plasma is extremely low density so there is very little power to heat things, and thus these units can safely run on a table top, but the temperature of the ions is enormous.
- oneshtein 3y ago
  You are right, nuclear reactions requires enough enormous energy to overcome the barrier OR a heavy particles (muon). However, fusor works at room temperature. It doesn't require preheating to 150MK to start operation, like ITER do.
  - jjk166 3y ago
    No, the Fusor does not work at room temperature, the same electric coils that contain the ions also heat the ions. It actually runs substantially hotter than ITER.

jacquesm 3y ago

It can not ever produce net energy in this setting, so no, it doesn't do the job. It is in a room, but the temperature inside that vessel is anywhere north of 35,000 C. Unless you have a very hot room that isn't 'room temperature' by any stretch of the definition. Note that room temperature is about the temperature of the process not the temperature of the building containing that process.

oneshtein 3y ago
35kK in this reactor is much closer to room temperature than 150MK in ITER, isn't?
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  Sure, but that's fine and expected since you don't need a sufficient fusion density for net energy.
- MayeulC 3y ago
  Look, call 35K cold if you want. It's relatively easy to make some fusion at home [1] at even colder temperatures. However, the real issue here is __producing__ energy (edit: more than you put in). This has never been done in a sustained way (H-bombs produce net energy, there were some promising inertial confinement and tokamak results recently, but never for sustained periods of time). And in the chain, it's pointed out quite clearly that everybody understands "cold fusion" as referring to "net positive energy". [1]: https://fusor.net/board/index.php https://fusor.net/board/index.php
  - oneshtein 3y ago
    I am old enough to remember "The Storm in a Glass". Back then, there was a discussion about excessive heat, because the scientific community doubted the possibility of nuclear fusion reactions at such low temperatures and energy costs. My own hypotheses were: a) the reaction is caused by cosmic radiation (muons), and the deuterium filled lattice only amplifies natural high-energy cosmic radiation; b) the reaction occurs through contamination of samples with radioactive materials, and the matrix only amplifies natural decay reactions; c) cracks in the material create resonance with alternating electric current, and as a result, a natural particle accelerator is formed. In the video, researches use lattice to boosts fusor performance by few orders of magnitude. Why you think that they cannot boost it further?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      > Why you think that they cannot boost it further? That's not how this works. Why do you think it can?
      - oneshtein 3y ago
        I have not tried, but my idea (more than 10 years ago, before the war) was to cover the lattice with atom-thin blanket of depleted Uranium, then to shine at it with radiation from hot mix of radioactive isotopes, with hope that lattice will boost performance of Uranium by 1k-10k. The obvious problem for practical use of this idea is small cross-section of the Uranium blanket, so maybe thousands of thin layers of Nickel-Uranium will be required to make it work, or Nickel-Uranium alloy at 98%-2%. PS. The purpose for of the device is to heat homes, to avoid need of Russian gas, not to generate electricity.
        MayeulC 3y ago
        Your comment makes it sound like you don't understand the physics of it at all. What does Uranium have to do with this? What does "performance of uranium" means? What do you think will happen when you bombard it with "radiation"? What kind of "radiation"? Uranium is most commonly used in fission devices, not fusion ones. Fusing Uranium would absorb energy, not liberate energy, this is why we split it. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/170716/is-there-a-difference-in-the-energy-output-of-a-nuclear-fission-reaction-as-oppo https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/170716/is-there-... For heating, you'd be better off using a heat pump. Or I guess you could take some radioactive material and shield it. Or even a breeder reactor, but that's fission. I do not want to come across as disrespectful, but what you're saying sounds like alchemy, or the kind of "science" they show in superhero movies. I could understand using a layer of metal to produce x-rays, and concentrate these to heat a sample (a bit similar to H-bombs, BTW), but I am not a nuclear physicist either. Real physicists have thought about this much more than we did, and if there was a simple pathway to practical fusion, we'd know about it by now. I think you underestimate the complexity of all this (kind of a "Dunning-Kruger" effect), go watch the "MIT's pathway to fusion[1]" videos for an introduction to the problem and modern approaches :) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I'm not saying it is 35K, I'm saying it is at least 35K and probably much higher. Whether it is closer to room temperature or not is not relevant, when someone says 'room temperature' they are talking about 21 degrees Celsius plus or minus a couple, not above the temperature where any kind of solid matter exists. Even tungsten, which melts at 3422 degrees C and boils at the magic number of 5555 C is just vapor at that point. Closer isn't relevant, at all.
  - oneshtein 3y ago
    As you can see, the apparatus didn't evaporate while working, so, probably, temperature is much lower.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      It didn't evaporate because it is constructed carefully not to, but that doesn't mean it isn't blazing hot, just like the gas burner on your stove can be made out of aluminum which would be melted by the flame if it ever became mis-aligned. But that doesn't mean the flame has a temperature lower than the melting point of aluminum, it just means that whoever designed it knew enough to ensure that the aluminum is never exposed to more than that it can handle in spite of being in close proximity to something that is able to melt it instantly. The biggest factors there are flame shape, stand-off and cooling effect of the gas supply itself. Note that when you casually write 'plasma' that you are talking about material that is so hot that it has shed all of its electrons, it is just the nuclei that you're looking at and if it so much as touches anything at all it will waltz right through it as if it isn't there. See also: plasma cutters[1] for a nice demonstration of what happens when you use these facts to your advantage. But for things like plasma based fusion they are a very tricky problem because you have to maintain the plasma while simultaneously extracting energy from it. The device shown in the video is very, very nice and well engineered, it is amazing that they got it work as well as they did with such simplicity but the process is eminently unsuitable for energy generation as far as I understand this stuff, keeping the plasma stable and cooling the whole thing uses many kilowatts. It's an improvement over a linear accelerator or a tokamak for the production of short lived nucleotides it is not an energy generating device. [1] Plasma cutters also don't instantly disintegrate the cutting tip, that's because they blow copious air through the nozzle to keep the hot plasma away from the tip itself and to direct it onto the workpiece that you are cutting. But woe to you if your air pressure unexpectedly drops.

tomrod 3y ago

Aye, it produces neutron isotopes, but not at room temperature and not with a net excess of energy. It's the difference between going on a Sunday walk and a Monday commute. Yes, technically, your body is physically moving places, but the similarities don't extend much beyond that point nor would we encourage mistaking one for the other.

oneshtein 3y ago
35 thousand Kelvin in a "cold" nuclear fusion reactor is much closer to room temperature than the temperature in a "hot" nuclear fusion reactor. Both types of reactors do not produce excess energy, but the cold reactor has already found application while the hot reactor will be ready in 25 years. Which kind of reactor is hoax?
- jacquesm 3y ago
  The cold reactor fuses nuclei by virtue of energy input, the other tries to extract energy from a fusion reaction larger than its input. On a complexity level you're looking at 1:10000 difference or worse.
  - oneshtein 3y ago
    Cold Fusion doesn't work because we are exchanging high-energy particles, which are expensive to produce, for low grade heat in bulk of material. If we will have cheap source of muons, we can change equation. We can drop a tiny bit of Nickel lattice filled with Deuterium, and then strike it with muons from all angles, to create implosion. This will allow us to create tiny blast of hot plasma, which is much easier to extract energy from. Sadly, we have no such cheap source of muons, AFAIK.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      > If we will have cheap source of muons, we can change equation. You can make them but the cost in energy is exactly the problem: you will be spending money on energy to make muons at a considerable loss due to the inefficient ways in which we know how to make them (proton beams, which require a huge amount of energy to create), resulting in an insignificant number of particles. If your goal is to get net energy out it would be good to keep an eye on process efficiency from the beginning. Starting off with a billion to one or so conversion loss for step one raises the bar for the subsequent steps considerably. > Sadly, we have no such cheap source of muons, AFAIK. Indeed we do not, and that's pretty logical.

jjk166 3y ago

It doesn't work anywhere near room temperature. Fusors operate at 10-30 keV, which is about 100 Million to 300 Million C. The plasma is extremely low density so there is very little power to heat things, and thus these units can safely run on a table top, but the temperature of the ions is enormous.

oneshtein 3y ago
You are right, nuclear reactions requires enough enormous energy to overcome the barrier OR a heavy particles (muon). However, fusor works at room temperature. It doesn't require preheating to 150MK to start operation, like ITER do.
- jjk166 3y ago
  No, the Fusor does not work at room temperature, the same electric coils that contain the ions also heat the ions. It actually runs substantially hotter than ITER.