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Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works Shooting for 100 MW Fusion Prototype by 2017

72 points by mactitan 14y ago

allerratio 14y ago
Do we really want to give traffic to such a fringe site? (It's mainly about the E-Cat scam http://psiram.com/en/index.php/Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer http://psiram.com/en/index.php/Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyze... )
- mactitan 14y ago
  sorry, but how the heck is skunkworks being associated? maybe it's a lie. But this popping up elsewhere: http://americansecurityproject.org/blog/2013/lockheed-martin-outlines-plans-for-nuclear-fusion-reactor/ http://americansecurityproject.org/blog/2013/lockheed-martin...
  - DennisP 14y ago
    A Lockheed employee presented at Google's SolveForX. It's been widely reported.
  - allerratio 14y ago
    The problem isn't the video itself. It's the rest of the site. You could have posted a direct link to the video: https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/ahJzfmdvb2dsZS1zb2x2ZWZvcnhyEAsSCE1vb25zaG90GNKGAww/solve-for-x-charles-chase-on-energy-for-everyone https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/ahJzfmdvb2dsZS1zb2x2ZWZv... or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY
mslathrop 14y ago
Nuclear fusion is always only 10 years away from working.
- DennisP 14y ago
  Funny, it used to always be 20 years away. Before that it was always 30. It's strange how the number keeps decreasing with the passage of time.
  - TallGuyShort 14y ago
    Apparently it's dropped down to 4 years since that comment...
  - mslathrop 14y ago
    Yes I won't disagree that the technology is getting better and that we are getting closer to achieving it. But a commercial fusion reactor in ten years seems very unrealistic with the current regulation and standards set by current government regulatory bodies. When I was in school studying nuclear engineering, the running joke was that fusion will always be N amount of years away from happening. It seems like every year or so a new company or group of researchers has found a breakthrough that will allow fusion to happen in N amount of years even though we have yet to reach breakeven in a research setting.
    - forgotAgain 14y ago
      But a commercial fusion reactor in ten years seems very unrealistic with the current regulation and standards set by current government regulatory bodies. I think it would be too much of a competitive disadvantage for a country to not use fusion if it became practical.
    - digikata 14y ago
      Decades of research and money into fusion, but the limiting factor is government regulation? C'mon...
    - DennisP 14y ago
      There'd be some need for regulation but less than with fission. The only nuclear waste is activated reactor components, not transuranics and fission products. The reactor turns off like a light switch, with nothing to produce decay heat, and it has no potential for a runaway reaction. (It's hard enough to get the reaction going in the first place.) The only potential radiation release is small amounts of tritium, and there's no concern about fissiles getting diverted for weapons. Tritium has some weapons use if you're ready to progress to thermonuclear bombs, but in that case you hardly need fusion reactors to make it. If we manage boron fusion, we'll be producing less radiation than burning equivalent coal, and won't have tritium. It's hard to see how anyone would justify regulating that for anything other than electrical safety, just like any other power plant, and for radiation standards on par with medical equipment. People bring up that joke in the comments section of every fusion article ever published. The fact is, fusion has progressed exponentially since about 1970, about as fast as Moore's Law, despite a level of funding far below what those early optimistic advocates said we needed.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mactitan 14y ago
Just out of curiosity: what if fusion was perfected? what are the consequences? massive economic growth & population? Does the earth become an heat sink?
- Breakthrough 14y ago
  It's a heat sink right now. Hydroelectric generation aside, efficiency for electricity generation is pretty much always below 40%! That, however, is since almost all our plants use the Carnot/Rankine cycle heat engine. Again though, even those watts of electricity eventually get turned back into heat. Gotta love entropy... The consequences of us having fusion? The good, we get cheap, abundant electricity for the entirety of the planet's lifespan with almost no harmful byproducts, made by a nuclear plant that's impossible to melt down or be used in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The bad, we have to build the plants, and possibly replace the old ones. That indicates a large shift in jobs, and makes you wonder how we can afford it (although improving economic conditions should make the latter less of a downside as fusion becomes viable).
  - Retric 14y ago
    There are power plants that hit 42% theremal and dump waste heat, others reuses that waste heat for things like home/office heating and hit 70+ efficiency. So really one of the best solutions is simply to find ways to reuse waste heat. Granted, you would still need massive shielding even with a tin can sized fusion reactor, but assuming ther safe enough to put near city's you could got a lot of winter heating practically for free.
    - Breakthrough 14y ago
      Yes, that's called co-generation (or combined heat/power plants). I can't comment on fusion reactors, but this isn't really feasible with fission reactors, since the coolant becomes radioactive. Sure you could run it through several loops to bring it down to a safe level, but then you're losing efficiency at each sub-stage. I'd also like to point out you can only achieve those high efficiency numbers when you're actually using the heat.
picklefish 14y ago
Should probably get rid of whatever crap site this is... but here is the direct youtube video. He basically talks about a new kind of fusion reactor they've been working on in skunkworks and how it's different from the reactor people have been trying to build forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
Gravityloss 14y ago
Plasma physicist Pekka Janhunen points out in the comments that the losses in a traditional magnetic trap are high, this is what the Tokamak was invented for in the first place. (That's also what the Polywell tries to solve). Haven't watched the video.
cstross 14y ago
I note that submarine reactors are typically on the order of 50Mw, and surface ships (CVNs -- aircraft carriers -- typically; also some Russian Arctic ice-breakers) are up to 100Mw per reactor. Anyone smell a [Naval] market?
- potatolicious 14y ago
  I doubt it, but my understanding of the topic is limited. AFAIK nuclear reactors are popular on naval warships because they dramatically reduce (and in some cases eliminate) the need to refuel. It's one huge factor crossed off of your logistics problems - modern CVNs can go literally decades without refueling, with the only resupply being jet fuel, munitions, and life support. Doesn't fusion demand constant refueling (like most power plants)?
  - dalke 14y ago
    Yes, it needs constant refueling, but the rate is something like a milligram per second. A year's supply of fuel would weigh a few kilograms.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Nope. > A 1 GW fusion plant will need about 100 Kg of deuterium and 3 tons of natural lithium to operate for a whole year, generating about 7 billion kWh. http://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/faq/ http://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/faq/ If it's possible to proportionally scale down that plant for the sub, then it would produce 50 MW for two decades on the same fuel. A nuclear sub weighs in the neighborhood of 10,000 tons, so 4 tons for fuel seems pretty easy to manage. Obviously, all these numbers are very rough, but it's probably within an order of magnitude.
    - mrweasel 14y ago
      I'm a bit surprised about the Lithium use, that seems like a lot. Assuming that we spend the entire early production of Lithium we would only be able to feed 11.000 1GW powerplants.
jordanthoms 14y ago
Did they actually show a picture of it? I guess there are limits on what they could reveal
hvs 14y ago
Just a decade away from commercial applications? Hmmm, isn't "the next big breakthrough" always a decade away? A good rule of thumb: unless the technology has been proven to work and they are just working on commercializing it, "a decade" always means, "we have no idea when we will have anything, if ever."

72 points by mactitan 14y ago

Do we really want to give traffic to such a fringe site? (It's mainly about the E-Cat scam http://psiram.com/en/index.php/Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer http://psiram.com/en/index.php/Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyze... )

mactitan 14y ago
sorry, but how the heck is skunkworks being associated? maybe it's a lie. But this popping up elsewhere: http://americansecurityproject.org/blog/2013/lockheed-martin-outlines-plans-for-nuclear-fusion-reactor/ http://americansecurityproject.org/blog/2013/lockheed-martin...
- DennisP 14y ago
  A Lockheed employee presented at Google's SolveForX. It's been widely reported.
- allerratio 14y ago
  The problem isn't the video itself. It's the rest of the site. You could have posted a direct link to the video: https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/ahJzfmdvb2dsZS1zb2x2ZWZvcnhyEAsSCE1vb25zaG90GNKGAww/solve-for-x-charles-chase-on-energy-for-everyone https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/ahJzfmdvb2dsZS1zb2x2ZWZv... or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY

mslathrop 14y ago

Nuclear fusion is always only 10 years away from working.

DennisP 14y ago
Funny, it used to always be 20 years away. Before that it was always 30. It's strange how the number keeps decreasing with the passage of time.
- TallGuyShort 14y ago
  Apparently it's dropped down to 4 years since that comment...
- mslathrop 14y ago
  Yes I won't disagree that the technology is getting better and that we are getting closer to achieving it. But a commercial fusion reactor in ten years seems very unrealistic with the current regulation and standards set by current government regulatory bodies. When I was in school studying nuclear engineering, the running joke was that fusion will always be N amount of years away from happening. It seems like every year or so a new company or group of researchers has found a breakthrough that will allow fusion to happen in N amount of years even though we have yet to reach breakeven in a research setting.
  - forgotAgain 14y ago
    But a commercial fusion reactor in ten years seems very unrealistic with the current regulation and standards set by current government regulatory bodies. I think it would be too much of a competitive disadvantage for a country to not use fusion if it became practical.
  - digikata 14y ago
    Decades of research and money into fusion, but the limiting factor is government regulation? C'mon...
  - DennisP 14y ago
    There'd be some need for regulation but less than with fission. The only nuclear waste is activated reactor components, not transuranics and fission products. The reactor turns off like a light switch, with nothing to produce decay heat, and it has no potential for a runaway reaction. (It's hard enough to get the reaction going in the first place.) The only potential radiation release is small amounts of tritium, and there's no concern about fissiles getting diverted for weapons. Tritium has some weapons use if you're ready to progress to thermonuclear bombs, but in that case you hardly need fusion reactors to make it. If we manage boron fusion, we'll be producing less radiation than burning equivalent coal, and won't have tritium. It's hard to see how anyone would justify regulating that for anything other than electrical safety, just like any other power plant, and for radiation standards on par with medical equipment. People bring up that joke in the comments section of every fusion article ever published. The fact is, fusion has progressed exponentially since about 1970, about as fast as Moore's Law, despite a level of funding far below what those early optimistic advocates said we needed.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mactitan 14y ago

Just out of curiosity: what if fusion was perfected? what are the consequences? massive economic growth & population? Does the earth become an heat sink?

Breakthrough 14y ago
It's a heat sink right now. Hydroelectric generation aside, efficiency for electricity generation is pretty much always below 40%! That, however, is since almost all our plants use the Carnot/Rankine cycle heat engine. Again though, even those watts of electricity eventually get turned back into heat. Gotta love entropy... The consequences of us having fusion? The good, we get cheap, abundant electricity for the entirety of the planet's lifespan with almost no harmful byproducts, made by a nuclear plant that's impossible to melt down or be used in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The bad, we have to build the plants, and possibly replace the old ones. That indicates a large shift in jobs, and makes you wonder how we can afford it (although improving economic conditions should make the latter less of a downside as fusion becomes viable).
- Retric 14y ago
  There are power plants that hit 42% theremal and dump waste heat, others reuses that waste heat for things like home/office heating and hit 70+ efficiency. So really one of the best solutions is simply to find ways to reuse waste heat. Granted, you would still need massive shielding even with a tin can sized fusion reactor, but assuming ther safe enough to put near city's you could got a lot of winter heating practically for free.
  - Breakthrough 14y ago
    Yes, that's called co-generation (or combined heat/power plants). I can't comment on fusion reactors, but this isn't really feasible with fission reactors, since the coolant becomes radioactive. Sure you could run it through several loops to bring it down to a safe level, but then you're losing efficiency at each sub-stage. I'd also like to point out you can only achieve those high efficiency numbers when you're actually using the heat.

picklefish 14y ago

Should probably get rid of whatever crap site this is... but here is the direct youtube video. He basically talks about a new kind of fusion reactor they've been working on in skunkworks and how it's different from the reactor people have been trying to build forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

Gravityloss 14y ago

Plasma physicist Pekka Janhunen points out in the comments that the losses in a traditional magnetic trap are high, this is what the Tokamak was invented for in the first place. (That's also what the Polywell tries to solve). Haven't watched the video.

cstross 14y ago

I note that submarine reactors are typically on the order of 50Mw, and surface ships (CVNs -- aircraft carriers -- typically; also some Russian Arctic ice-breakers) are up to 100Mw per reactor. Anyone smell a [Naval] market?

potatolicious 14y ago
I doubt it, but my understanding of the topic is limited. AFAIK nuclear reactors are popular on naval warships because they dramatically reduce (and in some cases eliminate) the need to refuel. It's one huge factor crossed off of your logistics problems - modern CVNs can go literally decades without refueling, with the only resupply being jet fuel, munitions, and life support. Doesn't fusion demand constant refueling (like most power plants)?
- dalke 14y ago
  Yes, it needs constant refueling, but the rate is something like a milligram per second. A year's supply of fuel would weigh a few kilograms.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  Nope. > A 1 GW fusion plant will need about 100 Kg of deuterium and 3 tons of natural lithium to operate for a whole year, generating about 7 billion kWh. http://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/faq/ http://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/faq/ If it's possible to proportionally scale down that plant for the sub, then it would produce 50 MW for two decades on the same fuel. A nuclear sub weighs in the neighborhood of 10,000 tons, so 4 tons for fuel seems pretty easy to manage. Obviously, all these numbers are very rough, but it's probably within an order of magnitude.
  - mrweasel 14y ago
    I'm a bit surprised about the Lithium use, that seems like a lot. Assuming that we spend the entire early production of Lithium we would only be able to feed 11.000 1GW powerplants.

jordanthoms 14y ago

Did they actually show a picture of it? I guess there are limits on what they could reveal

hvs 14y ago

Just a decade away from commercial applications? Hmmm, isn't "the next big breakthrough" always a decade away? A good rule of thumb: unless the technology has been proven to work and they are just working on commercializing it, "a decade" always means, "we have no idea when we will have anything, if ever."