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Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

560 points by geophile 12y ago

cmsmith 12y ago
I'm not sure why this article is focusing on things like whether the reactor can fit on a truck, where you get deuterium, and how many coal power plants it can replace - instead of the actual question which is how they managed to produce a stable exothermal fusion reaction.
- bkcooper 12y ago
  As far as I can tell from reading various articles (including the Aviation Week article linked elsewhere in the comments), they haven't. The expectation is that they will have a prototype in five years. For that reason, I wouldn't get too excited about this.
ck2 12y ago
nevermind, this is hype - buried in the article The team acknowledges that the project is in its earliest stages, and many key challenges remain before a viable prototype can be built This falls under the xkcd 10 year plan: "we haven't finished inventing it yet, but when we do, it'll be awesome" http://xkcd.com/678/ http://xkcd.com/678/
hliyan 12y ago
As someone who still remembers the excitement and the disappointment due to Pons and Fleischmann (I was a teenager at the time), I'm going to wait for independent verification. But I can't deny I'm a bit excited.
27182818284 12y ago
> could be ready for use in a decade. That's the standard issue joke. "Nuclear fusion has been just ten years away for the last fifty years" It is so common as a joke I'm surprised the article didn't mention it.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  The usual form I've seen for several decades now is 15 years, not 10, but, yeah...
- DennisP 12y ago
  No, the standard joke is "thirty years away." Or at least it was. Strangely enough the number keeps decreasing with the passage of time.
  - z92 12y ago
    Plotting a "Year vs Years away" graph would then give us a good estimation on when we can expect to meet that expectation.
    - willvarfar 12y ago
      If xkcd hasnt made that chart yet, it should!
    - Terr_ 12y ago
      Hmm, although every successive year would contain (most) of the previous year's results, so there'll be a certain inertia.
    - crazypyro 12y ago
      Although this is related to artificial intelligence, http://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf http://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf is an interesting study on expert predictions of future technology.
  - zimbu668 12y ago
    Google Results: fusion "x years away" 10 - 765,000 results 15 - 9,730 results 20 - 793,000 results 25 - 8,750,000 results 30 - 709,000 results 35 - 4,700,000 results 40 - 472,000 results 45 - 10 results 50 - 493,000 results Definitely not 45 years away.
  - mjevans 12y ago
jacknews 12y ago
Hmm, are they confusing fission and fusion?
- deleted 12y ago
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  - cpwright 12y ago
    The article certainly does, even if Lockheed does not. "U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle." US naval vessels have fission reactors, not fusion. I'm also pretty sure that although they would refuel a reactor, that rather than replace the reactor they'll likely replace the ship.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      As etiam points out[0], some of them do carry fusion reactors, but they are not designed to generate electricity. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458426
      - monochromatic 12y ago
        Kind of a stretch to call a nuclear warhead a "reactor"...
        mikeash 12y ago
        It is a reactor when used, for a couple of nanoseconds....
        wlesieutre 12y ago
        While Wiktionary has "A device which uses atomic energy to produce heat" as one definition, other dictionaries all include the ability to regulate/control/sustain a nuclear reaction. I'm inclined to agree with them.
jacknews 12y ago
Hmmm, are they confusing fission and fusion?
- Wintamute 12y ago
  I think they must write "fusion" instead of "fission" on the second to last paragraph ...
ihnorton 12y ago
Content-free article, but presumably it is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor This is not the first time they have gone public with this - Charles Chase gave a talk at Google X last year, recorded and publicly-available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY
- phkahler 12y ago
  I read the wikipedia link. How do they get the energy out? What are the byproducts? etc...
  - nine_k 12y ago
    AFAICT, ²H + ²H produce ³H (which is the burned), H, ³He, and ⁴He, plus some neutrons and gamma rays. The latter must bring the energy out of the chamber, by heating some blanketing. Then it must be the same as with fission reactors.
    - DennisP 12y ago
      From the article Flexie posted, for production they're planning to use deuterium-tritium, which produces helium and high-energy neutrons, which breed more tritium from lithium. Like most fusion projects they use deuterium alone for testing.
  - valarauca1 12y ago
    Electron Disassociation. Basically you catch electrons flying out of the plasma arc (where fusion is taking place), and ground them back into the plasma (which is positively charged). Umm its largely theory at this point.
- chton 12y ago
  It sounds very similar to the way Helion Energy does it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy). Do you know what the major differences are?
ph0rque 12y ago
> Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire said. So that would power 50k to 100k typical houses in the US... not bad!
- hga 12y ago
  Compact is good, because until you can fuse helium-3, the reactor is producing neutrons, which will transmute the reactor and its shielding into other, often radioactive elements. So the entire thing will have to be regularly replaced and disposed of (which we can do safely, but too many people believe otherwise).
  - Someone 12y ago
    I do not see how compact matters much here. As far as I understand, the basic reaction used is the same, so that compact design will produce the same number of neutrons per Watt produced as a large one. Wouldn't the effect of its smaller mass be that the container will have to be replaced more often, more or less in the ratio of the masses of the machines?
    - hga 12y ago
      We really don't know the practical consequences of this systematic transmutation (for all we know, neutron liberating fusion reactors will never be economic). It's entirely possible the device will have to be replaced more often, I'm just pointing out the less mass in it, the less that has to be disposed of when that happens.
etiam 12y ago
> U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle. sigh To the extent this is true I suspect those "large fusion reactors" are tuned not so much for generating electricity and a great deal for annihilating whatever the carrying missile is pointed at. But never mind fuzzy thinking at Reuters right now. This is amazing news if holds up. Fingers crossed.
- golemotron 12y ago
  I cringed when I saw that line too.
- aqme28 12y ago
  Looks like they issued the correction > U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fission reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle.
  - Zigurd 12y ago
    If by "large" they mean "very small" then, yeah.
  - mpyne 12y ago
    Even the need for regular replacement went away long ago. Our current (old) designs get refueled only once, and new ships don't get refueled at all (the core lasts as long as the hull does). They do all need regular maintenance, but that's true for all U.S. warships.
- deleted 12y ago
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- dyeje 12y ago
  I believe you're misunderstanding, those ships run on power generated by a nuclear reactor. A reactor is like when you think of a regular nuclear power plant, it's not part of a missile.
lnanek2 12y ago
The article is completely wrong about US Navy ships having fusion reactors. They have fission reactors, not fusion. I wonder if they are even reporting the breakthrough right since they clearly don't know the difference. For all we know the breakthrough may be smaller fission reactors too, which isn't a big deal at all.
- geekam 12y ago
  They issued a correction. > U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fission reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle.
- deleted 12y ago
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deleted 12y ago
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flexie 12y ago
Here is a link with more info on the technology behind: http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compa...
orkoden 12y ago
>U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle. I don't think so.
- everyone 12y ago
  I'm guessing thats a typo
  - bhhaskin 12y ago
    That is a pretty big typo if it is.
    - quink 12y ago
      Just in case someone skipped out on the relevant day of middle school science, it should be 'fission'. The difference is that fission is taking heavy elements, breaking them apart and using the released energy. Radioactivity, Thorium, Uranium, Plutonium, all the yucky stuff. Research has been going on for decades into making these reactors safer, and with breeder reactors and modern conventional designs that appears to have been achieved. Nevertheless, they appear on their way out anyway. Fusion fuses together light isotopes and uses the energy thus released - they basically do what the sun does. And are clean. For various definitions of clean. And if you're wondering how they are the complete opposite yet both work, it all pivots around iron. Copying from Wikipedia on iron: > Its abundance in rocky planets like Earth is due to its abundant production by fusion in high-mass stars, where the production of nickel-56 (which decays to the most common isotope of iron) is the last nuclear fusion reaction that is exothermic. And yes, that means that everything in this universe will one gigayear end up right at the pivot between fission and fusion, ever onwards oscillating further towards it. Our universe is ever tending tiwards irony. A pivot that we're probably going to see humanity go through too, but in a different way. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
- javert 12y ago
  This bothers me immensely. Clearly, neither the author nor the editor for a "Scientific American" article (for pete's sake, science is in the name!) know the difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. This article is the cognitive equivalent of parrots squawking, because they don't even understand why the news actually is news. People calling this a "typo" are giving too much credit. It could be a mistake, but the whole point of having an editor is to catch typos and mistakes! And it's a simple, short article!
waterlesscloud 12y ago
Makes YC's choice to invest in a fusion startup all the more interesting. http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/08/14/vc-funding-y-combinator-power-up-nuclear-fusion-co-helion-energy/ http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/08/14/vc-funding-y-...
flexie 12y ago
Here is more on the tech, including a drawing: http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compa...
- tokenadult 12y ago
  This article provides a lot more engineering information and other background and is well worth a thorough read. Thanks to flexie for finding and sharing the link.
- sungeuns 12y ago
  I was curious about detail when I saw the news, Thanks for sharing!
- danmaz74 12y ago
  Thanks, much, much better than the original article.
- Estragon 12y ago
  Seems premature to call this a breakthrough when they haven't even built a prototype yet.
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    This is HN. If the hyperloop was a technological breakthrough, so is this press release.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Hyperloop case doesn't have 50 years of track record of being "just few years from now", and as far as I remember, the design was more-less feasible if only someone would get around to building it. It didn't have such hard problems to be solved as fusion still has.
      - jeffreyrogers 12y ago
silviorelli 12y ago
What a coincidence.. Few days ago has been released the report on the alleged LENR/cold fusion E-Cat reactor... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8436419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8436419
KhalilK 12y ago
Meanwhile, work on an actual fusion reactor continues; http://www.iter.org/newsline/-/2020 http://www.iter.org/newsline/-/2020
- dweinus 12y ago
  From the article: "Until now, the majority of fusion reactor systems have used a plasma control device called a tokamak, invented in the 1950s by physicists in the Soviet Union. The tokamak uses a magnetic field to hold the plasma in the shape of a torus, or ring, and maintains the reaction by inducing a current inside the plasma itself with a second set of electromagnets. The challenge with this approach is that the resulting energy generated is almost the same as the amount required to maintain the self-sustaining fusion reaction."
  - KhalilK 12y ago
    From the article ?
ck2 12y ago
Very cheap energy means cheap war and lots of it. This could be bad.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Our main reason for war right now is scarce energy. Cheap clean electricity means no-one needs to care about the Middle East for starters — most of the fighting there is superpower proxy fighting — e.g. Assad would be gone if not backed by Russia and China, so no Islamic State. No Oil, no Iraq war x2. No oil, no Hugo Chavez for that matter.
  - seren 12y ago
    I would only be cautiously optimistic : even if our energy problems are solved, the construction of reactors, for example the superconductors, might require some rare materials. The grab for energy could become a grab for minerals. It will probably involved other regions of the world though and change the whole dynamic.
  - ZenoArrow 12y ago
    Hugo Chavez is dead, but I agree with the rest of what you say.
- sp332 12y ago
  Cheaper and more plentiful resources means less reason to go to war.
  - ck2 12y ago
    This isn't Star Trek, this is the United States. We always find a reason to go to war. Or it finds us and we return the favor.
  - paulmd 12y ago
    Unlimited free energy means we eventually global-warm our planet through waste heat. Works out at about 10% the potency of greenhouse gasses per MW.
robin_reala 12y ago
“the first reactors […] could be ready for use in a decade.” I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before…
- nine_k 12y ago
  I'm used to hearing that nuclear fusion is going to become mainstream "in 30 years"; I've heard it for ~25 years. If it's 10 years now, some progress has been made.
- tormeh 12y ago
  With all the alternative small fusion reactors I'm taking a strict "show me the energy" approach...
  - drjesusphd 12y ago
    As well you should. The mainstream magnetic confinement community has been very cautious about overhyping lately. Unfortunately, the over zealousness of groups like this and NIF saps credibility from them anyway.
- akavel 12y ago
  I have the link to xkcd 678 "Researcher Translation" bookmarked for those occasions. Quoting the appropriate row here: If a researcher says a cool new technology should be available to consumers in... -> what they mean is... [...] ten years -> "we haven't finished inventing it yet, but when we do, it'll be awesome."
  - ufmace 12y ago
    That would be http://xkcd.com/678/ http://xkcd.com/678/
spellingnazi 12y ago
For christ sake fix the title.
- Jetrel 12y ago
  Breakthrough Engery. Yesss.
zwieback 12y ago
Mr. Fusion!
jscheel 12y ago
So, they've come up with a way to make a fusor that produces more energy than it consumes? Also, I'd be interested in knowing what kind of scram mechanism they develop. If the superconductors were to fail, the expansion of the plasma would be catastrophic, right?
- astazangasta 12y ago
  It certainly wouldn't produce a runaway fusion reaction, if that's what you mean. A hot plasma would dissipate pretty quickly once confinement fails, so the only energy would be that in the plasma itself. Might be bad for whoever is in the room, but probably not the county.
  - jscheel 12y ago
    Right, I meant catastrophic for the reactor. Definitely not worried about blowing up the country. Probably shouldn't have typed that phrase. NSA is probably all over me now.
cowkingdeluxe 12y ago
"McGuire said the company had several patents pending for the work and was looking for partners in academia, industry and among government laboratories to advance the work." I'm guessing this means that they will try and maximize profit rather than maximize cheap and clean energy for the entire world. That is a bit disappointing if true.
- festivusr 12y ago
  They're a for-profit company.
- hangonhn 12y ago
  Profit and good of the world need not be opposites. In fact they tend to go together if the company is going for the long run.
- monochromatic 12y ago
  If the only motivation is cheap and clean energy for the entire world, expensive research never gets funded.
- zo1 12y ago
  "I'm guessing this means that they will try and maximize profit rather than maximize cheap and clean energy for the entire world. That is a bit disappointing if true." I don't understand what you expect? You want them to give it away for free? After paying very intelligent, expensive engineers decades worth of salaries to create it? You want them to create a fund where people can donate their hard-earned money for this noble goal? I'm sure you could give them a call with that idea, or you could create your own fund, even. Or you could badger your "government" to fund such a project. Seeing as government is a very good analogy for a bunch of people giving their collective earnings for society-level goals. Let me know how that goes.
wcoenen 12y ago
> 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck A typical thermal power station has an efficiency below 50% for electricity generation, so the plant dissipates at least as much heat as it generates electrical power. I wonder how you could get rid of 100MW of waste heat from a volume small enough to fit on a truck. That's a heat flux of more than a megawatt per square meter of surface area.
- bulltale 12y ago
  In addition, in the step before where the heat is transferred away from the reactor walls to the turbines, a heat flux is needed of 100MJ/s. Assuming a contact surface of 100m2, that is 1MJ/s per m2. That sounds like a huge flux and I am not sure if there is any medium that could do this. Or are my assumptions way off?
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - wcoenen 12y ago
    I think I was editing my comment to add an estimate of the heat flux while you wrote this, and we arrived at the same number.
- javajosh 12y ago
  That's an excellent point! Perhaps they intend the truck to be sitting at the bottom of a fast moving river. But what gets me is that they are burying the lead. No fusion reactor of any size has reached sustainability...so why is the story here talking about size at all? Small size would be a very nice added bonus; fusion reactors that don't consume more energy than they produce are earth-changing.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I agree that the announcement is a bit burying the lead here, though maybe the size is actually important to making it work. From Aviation Week[0]: "But on the physics side, it still has to work, and one of the reasons we think our physics will work is that we’ve been able to make an inherently stable configuration.” One of the main reasons for this stability is the positioning of the superconductor coils and shape of the magnetic field lines. “In our case, it is always in balance. So if you have less pressure, the plasma will be smaller and will always sit in this magnetic well,” he notes." As far as I understand this (IANAP), they're saying that smaller size = less pressure, and that helps their design to work (in theory). [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458524
JohnnyLee 12y ago
Based on the image of the machine, this is a magnetic mirror with neutral beam injection. Mirrors were some of the first plasma confinement devices. An issue they have is that they lose charged particles out the ends in a way that depends on the ratio of perpendicular to parallel velocity and the magnetic field strength. It may be that they think they can use the neutral beam injectors to inject the fuel in such a way that it's well confined in the machine... Never mind, another linked article says that the injectors are only used for ignition.
csdrane 12y ago
Can we assume that their reactor isn't energy positive? Because if it were, I would imagine that they would be announcing so--rather than this nebulous "breakthrough."
- seren 12y ago
  From the aviationweek.com [0] article, it seems it is a concept, and they don't even have a prototype. They are trying to get some fundings to build the PoC. What makes the announcement a bit strange is that they have very concrete claims "it will fit in a truck" without much substance. [0] http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compa...
higherpurpose 12y ago
I guess that's somewhat game-changing. This, however, would be much more game-changing (if we can get confirmation once and for all whether it's real or not): http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reactor-verified-by-third-party-researchers-seems-to-have-1-million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reacto...
- altcognito 12y ago
  The "or not" link: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2014/10/12/rossi-handles-samples-in-alleged-independent-test-of-his-device/ http://news.newenergytimes.net/2014/10/12/rossi-handles-samp...
nerdy 12y ago
I know there are some very smart people at skunk works who've done incredible things in the past but humans have cried wolf so many times on fusion it's sort of hard to just accept until they've actually built a working reactor, shown it and had it independently verified.
- regularfry 12y ago
  Fusion physicists I know are very sceptical that this design can work. It's a variant on a known design with a known problem: the plasma leaks out of the ends of the magnetic containment. It's also unclear why Lockheed would be publicising it this way at this point, unless it's a naked ploy for more funding from the DoD, and an attempt to bring in money (and possibly pressure) from non-classified sources. That being said, if they've genuinely cracked it, the game changes so much as to be unrecognisable.
  - jobu 12y ago
    From the Aviation Week article that flexie linked: "The team acknowledges that the project is in its earliest stages, and many key challenges remain before a viable prototype can be built." They don't actually say it, but it sounds like they've only got computer models to work with at this point. Not very likely that they've actually cracked it.
    - regularfry 12y ago
      Aditional weird: this is the second round of publicity they've had on this project, for what looks like no progress. Why publicise? Why now?
      - adventured 12y ago
        Push the oil and natural gas markets lower, pile on all the other factors pushing them down right now, and further harm Russia's economy. I'm half joking, but I'd keep an eye out for more unusual energy related press releases, to see if that'll confirm that it's a media blitz aimed at the oil market etc.
Tloewald 12y ago
"Ultra-dense deuterium is an isotope of Hydrogen" (1) ultra-dense?, (2) and tritium which is denser (but hardly ultra-dense) and also an isotope of hydrogen. Ah science reporting.
deleted 12y ago
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mletonsa 12y ago
Two of their patents were published few days ago: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0301518.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0301518.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0301519.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0301519.html Both have publication date 10/09/2014. Maybe connected with the press release?
deleted 12y ago
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jburwell 12y ago
This appears to be further development of the novel nuclear reactor approach described by Charles Chase at Solve in 2013 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY. The video provides a basic overview of fusion reactor designs and their breakthrough.
- mbrubeck 12y ago
  Yeah, and when they first announced it, they were predicting a working reactor in four years ("by 2017"): http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockheeds-skunk-works-promises-fusion-power-four-years http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockheeds-skunk-works-promise... A year and a half later, they're apparently no closer to that goal.
adamzerner 12y ago
I don't know much about fusion. It seems that the breakthrough they're talking about is that reactors are ~10x smaller. Why is this a big deal? Square footage is plentiful. I thought the problems are safety and how much energy it could produce.
- jdnier 12y ago
  Because these relatively small reactors can be made to tie in with existing gas turbine power plants. They can ship these replacement fusion plants all over the world. http://aviationweek.com/blog/high-hopes-can-compact-fusion-unlock-new-power-space-and-air-transport http://aviationweek.com/blog/high-hopes-can-compact-fusion-u...
- yojo 12y ago
  If it's 10x smaller it is available for portable applications. Like boats/planes/space ships. It would also presumably be easier to air drop in developing regions to bypass building a giant energy grid (similar to cell phone deployment).
- regularfry 12y ago
  Take a look at the footprint of ITER. It surprised me how massive the thing is planned to be. That's the competition.
  - drjesusphd 12y ago
    > Take a look,at the footprint of ITER Or any other power plant for that matter. "If it sounds too good to be true..."
    - regularfry 12y ago
      The area energy density of ITER is particularly low. The whole plant is only designed to produce 500MW, on a concrete platform 1000mx400m. Compare that to this: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Barking+Power+Station,+Barking,+Greater+London+IG11+0GH/@51.5213895,0.1148288,546m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x47d8a5f3748dd567:0x950349063e836eef https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Barking+Power+Station,+B... google.co.uk That's a 20 year old 1GW combined cycle gas plant, in a building roughly 50mx150m. Anything they can do to bring fusion plants smaller than ITER is going to help.
peteretep 12y ago
> Lockheed shares fell 0.6 percent to $175.02 amid a broad > market selloff. Doh.
- prewett 12y ago
  Any movement under 1% is noise. And if there is a broad selloff, you'd expect Lockheed Martin shares to drop.
_-__--- 12y ago
This title makes me engery
JustSomeNobody 12y ago
Everything is always a decade away. (And then it rarely happens)
mrisse 12y ago
From the article: Lockheed shares fell 0.6 percent to $175.02 amid a broad market selloff. Shouldn't the market be a little more excited about this?
- jerf 12y ago
  It's dangerous to read the market's mind, but my guess is that there isn't enough information for anyone to believe that this is anything more than a PR puff piece. As much as I want to believe it I can't find any evidence myself, either. At this point I'm pretty much at the "show me the over-unity reactor" phase. There's so many research paths to fusion right now that are all "promising", but until one of them actually builds something that works in the real world I'm not personally interested in hearing any more vague promises. By all means fund them and keep working on them! I'm just not interested in the PR pieces any more. Give me a report about how it's working.
- patrickk 12y ago
  Most likely algorithms trading on technical indicators, nothing to do with this news. Short term price movements are almost total noise.
- fsloth 12y ago
  I was wondering the same thing. People have claimed to have working fusion reactors just in a few years if they only could have some more funding for so long that anyone who claims to offer a production capable fusion reactor loses their credibility completely until they actually produce one. Skunkworks have as an organization an amazing engineering track record of implementing ground breaking technologies. I wonder what their current status is. Anyone have an inside scoop whether their game is still as sharp?
- jcfrei 12y ago
  The general consumer sentiment and state of the economy are much more important even for a company such as Lockheed (slow economy > less profits > less taxes > less DoD spending) than unproven (as of now) claims about yet another fusion reactor.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
vegabook 12y ago
Ready Steady (govt) Grant! "Partners in industry and goverment". Translation: 10 years to product (but hey, prototype in 5) so please give us lots of dough. It's the technology of the future and always has been.
bluedino 12y ago
Then the dilemma becomes: Does the USA share this with other countries? Or do we keep our clean, plentiful power for ourselves, become energy independent, have clean skies, and keep (exploit?) this technological advantage over the rest of the developed world for the next 20-30 years?
- Ygg2 12y ago
  > have clean skies You can't have clean skies if everyone else is polluting. That is what makes pollution such a hard problem to solve. Even if USA cuts its pollution to zero, China alone can make up the difference. But yeah, having access to this technology for everyone would be a serious game changer.
- hugogee 12y ago
  What dilemma? Its a no brainer we use it for free and have the rest of the world use it at a $profit$, while getting to enjoy that very same clean(er) air. But as history has shown it is probably too good to be true. Fusion that is. Edit: We are all riding the same spaceship... Its a serious flaw in thinking 'us vs them' when we are beginning to experiene some of the results in climate change.
startupfounder 12y ago
"The early reactors will be designed to generate around 100 MW and fit into transportable units measuring 23 X 43 ft."[0] These reactors will be similar to the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and potentially only require refueling every 25 years through a process known as ROH.[1] 100MW capacity in the size of an international shipping container? The implications of this are massive if this technology can be brought to scale, and that is the key term - SCALE. The cost of solar is plummeting and by the time fusion technology can produce 10% of our energy demand the cost of solar will be heading to $1/Watt, battery storage will be competitive and that is hard to beat even if the footprint is only a fraction of a solar farm. [0] http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compa... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimitz-class_aircraft_carrier#Refueling_Complex_Overhaul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimitz-class_aircraft_carrier#...
leephillips 12y ago
I wrote about this when the project was first revealed, in March 2013: http://lee-phillips.org/LockheedFusion/ http://lee-phillips.org/LockheedFusion/ I didn't find much to inspire confidence.
karcass 12y ago
It's exciting to see that fusion has gone from being perpetually 20 years away to being perpetually 10 years away. ;-)
- grecy 12y ago
  Gotta love marketing
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  We're 10 perpetual years closer!
dmfdmf 12y ago
25 years ago my nuke professor used to scoff at some of the claims of the fusion researchers. The problem is the high energy neutrons flying out of the reactor will neutron-activate every material within the vicinity. He thought the radioactivity and nuclear waste of a fusion reactor could be worse than a fission reactor. Also he thought that fusion researchers were vastly underestimating the problem of neutron embrittlement of the reactor structures and components. This is a very difficult engineering and material science problem that would have to be solved even if they did get the fusion process to work.
- DennisP 12y ago
  With D-T fusion you would have more activation of the reactor materials, because D-T produces such high-energy neutrons. What you wouldn't have is transuranics, which make up the bulk of our nuclear waste (and all of the really long-lived stuff), or fission products (the most radioactive stuff, like the cesium and strontium we heard about after Fukushima). But D-T is only the easiest form of fusion. Next up is D-D, which has much lower-energy neutrons. Helion is working on D-D combined with D-He3, producing only 6% of its energy as neutrons. And several outfits are hoping to manage proton-boron fusion, producing very little neutron radiation.
  - dmfdmf 12y ago
    Correct me if I am wrong, but each of these "steps" is a research project in their own right. The AviationWeekly article mentioned D-T fusion for the Lockheed prototype and includes a diagram with the caption "blanket absorbs neutrons to breed fuel and transfer heat to turbines". This "blanket" will be tons of material that would be activated during operation and would have to be disposed of at EOL. Also, modern materials include many trace elements within the main molecular lattice such as cobalt, chromium, etc in steel and in some ways might be more difficult to process than used fuel rods. I worked in the nuclear power industry decades ago and I don't recall the how the energy of fusion neutrons vs fission neutrons compared but I thought that in general fusion neutrons were significantly higher. Most power fission reactors also have neutron moderators which help to reduce the activation and embrittlement problems. Nevertheless, core components in fission reactors are already experiencing neutron embrittlement and has been a concern. I'm not trying to be negative on fusion power but these overly optimistic reports have to be read with a critical eye.
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salzig 12y ago
Sounds like the "Solve for x" talk from last year (2013-02-11) https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/charles-chase-on-energy-for-everyone https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/charles-chase-on-energy-...
Everhusk 12y ago
"The team acknowledges that the project is in its earliest stages, and many key challenges remain before a viable prototype can be built." No doubt that Skunkworks is world class... but claiming a "breakthrough in fusion energy" before a prototype has even been built is pretty bold of them.
nabla9 12y ago
I'm not seeing any top physicists working in this program (McGuire is not one). I would be willing to bet 1000 EUR that their math and modeling does not add up, or they have skipped some details. Problem with fusion research like this is that the closer you get self sustainment or energy generation, the harder it gets and problems pile up. This project looks like many other similar projects that have gone bust. They start by solving the easiest problems first, get some funding and hit the wall. The main problem with any reactor design is how to handle the 14 MeV neutrons produced by the fusion reaction (no mention in the article). They tend to damage the reactor and make it economically unfeasible. At this point being able to create fusion reaction is not the main challenge. It's the sustainment and economics of limiting the damage. If they really have solved all the problems and demonstrate economically sound fusion in 5-10 years, they will be handed Nobel price in physics for sure.
- cswhatt 12y ago
  Betting on a math error from Skunkworks? Highly unlikely. If anything, scalability will be the issue, as it always is
  - gh02t 12y ago
    It's a very safe bet. Well, probably not a math error as they are quite a fine institution, but what he says is probably the case. The challenges of fusion power are largely fundamental nitty gritty engineering issues. We know fairly well how to design most of a fusion reactor; in a lot of ways they are conceptually easier than fission reactors. The two main hurdles are the materials problems and how to keep the reaction critical with radiative heat loss. These are big problems that so many times have been ignored by people claiming to have solved fusion power. You just can't get away from them, but solving them would be truly revolutionary. I'm not saying they don't have something novel here as they really are some fine researchers at Skunkworks. Just temper your expectations.
    - noir_lord 12y ago
      > The challenges of fusion power are largely fundamental nitty gritty engineering issues. I'm not saying they've done it and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof but this is the place that made a Mach 3.5 jet with wings that leaked out of titanium in the 60's. Nitty-gritty engineering is something they are fairly good at.
problame 12y ago
I'm happy if that is true, but guys: the first thing you think of is putting a potentially massive explosive on the back of a truck? Driven by humans? What could go wrong...
- Balgair 12y ago
  True, but we currently have gallons and gallons of highly flammable liquids hidden behind the cheapest #8 steel possible and something literally called a bumper, all exposed to whatever rust and rocks the nation's roads can throw at it. It's all about the level of risk.
Animats 12y ago
This might work. It's from Lockheed's Skunk Works, which has a very good track record and tremendous respect in the aerospace community. With the basic physics laid out, this is mostly an engineering and construction problem. Their plan is to build and test a new prototype every year. The Skunk Works can do that; they've been doing it for decades. They're a manufacturer of prototypes, and have in-house capabilities for building things fast. They don't have to contract out much, and where they do, they have a contracting operation and supply chain they can rely on.
- ninkendo 12y ago
  > With the basic physics laid out, this is mostly an engineering and construction problem. That phrase has been accurate for nuclear fusion in general for more than 50 years. The engineering and construction problems are immense.
  - titanomachy 12y ago
    That's definitely true, and it's nice to have another set of brilliant engineers working on this problem from a somewhat different angle than that taken by previous brilliant engineers. Personally, I've become somewhat disillusioned with ITER after reading so much about their bureaucratic hurdles... but maybe they have enough talent onboard to pull it off anyway.
- drjesusphd 12y ago
  I have not seen any "basic physics" laid out at all about this concept. Namely, how do they keep the plasma from leaking out the sides of the mirror? What calculations/simulations have they done? As long as they remain secretive, they have no right to demand to be taken seriously.
was_hellbanned 12y ago
The ".NET Rocks!" podcast did three GeekOut shows this year on nuclear fusion, which will probably make you only more skeptical of fusion research claims. Fusion Power GeekOut: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1013 http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1013 Fusion Power GeekOut #2: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1022 http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1022 Cold Fusion GeekOut: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1037 http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1037
al2o3cr 12y ago
I'd love to know how they're planning on disposing of heat in the magnets themselves - most of the available high-current superconductors prefer to stay close to liquid helium temperatures, which is a challenge when you've set them next to a ten megakelvin plasma that's emitting a 100MW neutron flux...
aortega 12y ago
IMHO the best thing is how they pitch this as a power source for carriers and military ships, that are mostly used to fight wars for oil. Well played, Lockheed.
knappador 12y ago
Aneutronic fusion would be lighter-weight, but it's good to see another concept we can learn something new from. There are two aneutronic fusion projects to look at. Polywell has become a Navy project last I heard and focus fusion (DPF) is working on an all-tungsten electrode, after which we might see the very first experiment without electrode contamination from arcing in the contacts vaporizing metal.
peter_l_downs 12y ago
Crazy. Vernor Vinge has an excellent short story called "Bookworm, Run!" [0] that, among other things, discusses the effects of cheap, clean, compact power being distributed around the world. In particular, it describes a wide-spread economic depression. Kind of interesting to think about, and definitely worth reading if you're into sci-fi. [0]: http://books.google.com/books?id=tEMQpbiboH0C&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=bookworm,+run&source=bl&ots=UTPAJ0Ppbn&sig=dUdh7ABbXwkxVjxnCNMflKmq9To&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Utg-VKjKCdSIsQSBtoD4Ag&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=bookworm%2C%20run&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=tEMQpbiboH0C&pg=PA15&lpg=PA...
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Interesting when you compare to the recent dynomak paper announcement[1]. The pointer to 'superconducting magnets' doesn't get a lot of ink though. I went by Fry's the other day and they were out of them :-) I wondered about them because to date such things usually are sitting in a cryogenic bath (think MRI machine) and not next to a million degree hot plasma. Even in the LHC there is a lot of space between the beam and the ring magnets. Dr McGuire in the article suggests -- “We should be able to go to 100% or beyond,” which is quite the challenge from the thermal management perspective. It is however another great example that there is money going into lots of different fusion ideas. And that can only be a good thing as far as I am concerned. [1] http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/10/08/uw-fusion-reactor-concept-could-be-cheaper-than-coal/ http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/10/08/uw-fusion-reactor-...
anigbrowl 12y ago
On a tangent, is there any fundamental reason that reactors are always built to drive turbines rather thermocouples - do they simply not scale up to the amount of heat a typical reactor puts out, or what?
- avian 12y ago
  Steam turbine plus a conventional generator is vastly more efficient than thermocouples - 30-40% for steam versus <5% for thermocouples. I suspect they are also much, much cheaper when you are talking about powers in the hundreds-of-megawatts range. I don't have specific data at hand to back that though. I never heard of any grid-level power generation being done with thermocouples.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    That is in line with general impression. I just find it really weird that after all the high-tech nuclear stuff is working the next stage is an old-fashioned water boiler like on a steam engine of hundreds of years ago. (Well, obviously these turbines are not old-fashioned or simple boilers, but you know what I mean.) It just baffles me that we don't have a way of efficiently generating electrical current directly from particle radiation, eg through pressure fluctuations in a magnetic field, instead of through heat transfer.
    - DennisP 12y ago
      The reason we'll need turbines for the first generation of fusion reactors is that most of their energy is released as neutrons. Some more advanced fuels release most of their energy as fast-moving charged particles, which would let us generate electricity more directly.
WalterBright 12y ago
Makes me wonder if the modern Lockheed Skunkworks bears much relation to how Kelly Johnson ran it in the 50's and 60's. Many companies have tried to set up a skunkworks since, but didn't have the guts to run it like Kelly did, and didn't get the results, either.
gpvos 12y ago
Does anyone know how to get around the paywall?
ridgeguy 12y ago
This looks like a real thermal engineering challenge in one respect. The superconductive magnet coils are exposed to the neutron flux that transfers fusion reaction energy to the absorptive thermal blanket. I don't know offhand the neutron cross-sections of likely superconductor materials at whatever neutron energy spectrum this reactor will produce, but I suspect energy absorption by the magnet structure won't be small. I wonder how they plan to keep the magnets cold. Never mind the other effects on materials of high-flux neutron absorption.

560 points by geophile 12y ago

I'm not sure why this article is focusing on things like whether the reactor can fit on a truck, where you get deuterium, and how many coal power plants it can replace - instead of the actual question which is how they managed to produce a stable exothermal fusion reaction.

bkcooper 12y ago
As far as I can tell from reading various articles (including the Aviation Week article linked elsewhere in the comments), they haven't. The expectation is that they will have a prototype in five years. For that reason, I wouldn't get too excited about this.

ck2 12y ago

nevermind, this is hype - buried in the article The team acknowledges that the project is in its earliest stages, and many key challenges remain before a viable prototype can be built This falls under the xkcd 10 year plan: "we haven't finished inventing it yet, but when we do, it'll be awesome" http://xkcd.com/678/ http://xkcd.com/678/

hliyan 12y ago

As someone who still remembers the excitement and the disappointment due to Pons and Fleischmann (I was a teenager at the time), I'm going to wait for independent verification. But I can't deny I'm a bit excited.

27182818284 12y ago

> could be ready for use in a decade. That's the standard issue joke. "Nuclear fusion has been just ten years away for the last fifty years" It is so common as a joke I'm surprised the article didn't mention it.

dragonwriter 12y ago
The usual form I've seen for several decades now is 15 years, not 10, but, yeah...
DennisP 12y ago
No, the standard joke is "thirty years away." Or at least it was. Strangely enough the number keeps decreasing with the passage of time.
- z92 12y ago
  Plotting a "Year vs Years away" graph would then give us a good estimation on when we can expect to meet that expectation.
  - willvarfar 12y ago
    If xkcd hasnt made that chart yet, it should!
  - Terr_ 12y ago
    Hmm, although every successive year would contain (most) of the previous year's results, so there'll be a certain inertia.
  - crazypyro 12y ago
    Although this is related to artificial intelligence, http://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf http://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf is an interesting study on expert predictions of future technology.
- zimbu668 12y ago
  Google Results: fusion "x years away" 10 - 765,000 results 15 - 9,730 results 20 - 793,000 results 25 - 8,750,000 results 30 - 709,000 results 35 - 4,700,000 results 40 - 472,000 results 45 - 10 results 50 - 493,000 results Definitely not 45 years away.
- mjevans 12y ago

jacknews 12y ago

Hmm, are they confusing fission and fusion?

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- cpwright 12y ago
  The article certainly does, even if Lockheed does not. "U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle." US naval vessels have fission reactors, not fusion. I'm also pretty sure that although they would refuel a reactor, that rather than replace the reactor they'll likely replace the ship.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    As etiam points out[0], some of them do carry fusion reactors, but they are not designed to generate electricity. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458426
    - monochromatic 12y ago
      Kind of a stretch to call a nuclear warhead a "reactor"...
      - mikeash 12y ago
        It is a reactor when used, for a couple of nanoseconds....
        wlesieutre 12y ago
        While Wiktionary has "A device which uses atomic energy to produce heat" as one definition, other dictionaries all include the ability to regulate/control/sustain a nuclear reaction. I'm inclined to agree with them.

jacknews 12y ago

Hmmm, are they confusing fission and fusion?

Wintamute 12y ago
I think they must write "fusion" instead of "fission" on the second to last paragraph ...

ihnorton 12y ago

Content-free article, but presumably it is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor This is not the first time they have gone public with this - Charles Chase gave a talk at Google X last year, recorded and publicly-available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY

phkahler 12y ago
I read the wikipedia link. How do they get the energy out? What are the byproducts? etc...
- nine_k 12y ago
  AFAICT, ²H + ²H produce ³H (which is the burned), H, ³He, and ⁴He, plus some neutrons and gamma rays. The latter must bring the energy out of the chamber, by heating some blanketing. Then it must be the same as with fission reactors.
  - DennisP 12y ago
    From the article Flexie posted, for production they're planning to use deuterium-tritium, which produces helium and high-energy neutrons, which breed more tritium from lithium. Like most fusion projects they use deuterium alone for testing.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  Electron Disassociation. Basically you catch electrons flying out of the plasma arc (where fusion is taking place), and ground them back into the plasma (which is positively charged). Umm its largely theory at this point.
chton 12y ago
It sounds very similar to the way Helion Energy does it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy). Do you know what the major differences are?

ph0rque 12y ago

> Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire said. So that would power 50k to 100k typical houses in the US... not bad!

hga 12y ago
Compact is good, because until you can fuse helium-3, the reactor is producing neutrons, which will transmute the reactor and its shielding into other, often radioactive elements. So the entire thing will have to be regularly replaced and disposed of (which we can do safely, but too many people believe otherwise).
- Someone 12y ago
  I do not see how compact matters much here. As far as I understand, the basic reaction used is the same, so that compact design will produce the same number of neutrons per Watt produced as a large one. Wouldn't the effect of its smaller mass be that the container will have to be replaced more often, more or less in the ratio of the masses of the machines?
  - hga 12y ago
    We really don't know the practical consequences of this systematic transmutation (for all we know, neutron liberating fusion reactors will never be economic). It's entirely possible the device will have to be replaced more often, I'm just pointing out the less mass in it, the less that has to be disposed of when that happens.

etiam 12y ago

> U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle. sigh To the extent this is true I suspect those "large fusion reactors" are tuned not so much for generating electricity and a great deal for annihilating whatever the carrying missile is pointed at. But never mind fuzzy thinking at Reuters right now. This is amazing news if holds up. Fingers crossed.

golemotron 12y ago
I cringed when I saw that line too.
aqme28 12y ago
Looks like they issued the correction > U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fission reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle.
- Zigurd 12y ago
  If by "large" they mean "very small" then, yeah.
- mpyne 12y ago
  Even the need for regular replacement went away long ago. Our current (old) designs get refueled only once, and new ships don't get refueled at all (the core lasts as long as the hull does). They do all need regular maintenance, but that's true for all U.S. warships.
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dyeje 12y ago
I believe you're misunderstanding, those ships run on power generated by a nuclear reactor. A reactor is like when you think of a regular nuclear power plant, it's not part of a missile.

lnanek2 12y ago

The article is completely wrong about US Navy ships having fusion reactors. They have fission reactors, not fusion. I wonder if they are even reporting the breakthrough right since they clearly don't know the difference. For all we know the breakthrough may be smaller fission reactors too, which isn't a big deal at all.

geekam 12y ago
They issued a correction. > U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fission reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle.
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flexie 12y ago

Here is a link with more info on the technology behind: http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compa...

orkoden 12y ago

>U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle. I don't think so.

everyone 12y ago
I'm guessing thats a typo
- bhhaskin 12y ago
  That is a pretty big typo if it is.
  - quink 12y ago
    Just in case someone skipped out on the relevant day of middle school science, it should be 'fission'. The difference is that fission is taking heavy elements, breaking them apart and using the released energy. Radioactivity, Thorium, Uranium, Plutonium, all the yucky stuff. Research has been going on for decades into making these reactors safer, and with breeder reactors and modern conventional designs that appears to have been achieved. Nevertheless, they appear on their way out anyway. Fusion fuses together light isotopes and uses the energy thus released - they basically do what the sun does. And are clean. For various definitions of clean. And if you're wondering how they are the complete opposite yet both work, it all pivots around iron. Copying from Wikipedia on iron: > Its abundance in rocky planets like Earth is due to its abundant production by fusion in high-mass stars, where the production of nickel-56 (which decays to the most common isotope of iron) is the last nuclear fusion reaction that is exothermic. And yes, that means that everything in this universe will one gigayear end up right at the pivot between fission and fusion, ever onwards oscillating further towards it. Our universe is ever tending tiwards irony. A pivot that we're probably going to see humanity go through too, but in a different way. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
javert 12y ago
This bothers me immensely. Clearly, neither the author nor the editor for a "Scientific American" article (for pete's sake, science is in the name!) know the difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. This article is the cognitive equivalent of parrots squawking, because they don't even understand why the news actually is news. People calling this a "typo" are giving too much credit. It could be a mistake, but the whole point of having an editor is to catch typos and mistakes! And it's a simple, short article!

waterlesscloud 12y ago

Makes YC's choice to invest in a fusion startup all the more interesting. http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/08/14/vc-funding-y-combinator-power-up-nuclear-fusion-co-helion-energy/ http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/08/14/vc-funding-y-...

flexie 12y ago

Here is more on the tech, including a drawing: http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compa...

tokenadult 12y ago
This article provides a lot more engineering information and other background and is well worth a thorough read. Thanks to flexie for finding and sharing the link.
sungeuns 12y ago
I was curious about detail when I saw the news, Thanks for sharing!
danmaz74 12y ago
Thanks, much, much better than the original article.
Estragon 12y ago
Seems premature to call this a breakthrough when they haven't even built a prototype yet.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  This is HN. If the hyperloop was a technological breakthrough, so is this press release.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Hyperloop case doesn't have 50 years of track record of being "just few years from now", and as far as I remember, the design was more-less feasible if only someone would get around to building it. It didn't have such hard problems to be solved as fusion still has.
    - jeffreyrogers 12y ago

silviorelli 12y ago

What a coincidence.. Few days ago has been released the report on the alleged LENR/cold fusion E-Cat reactor... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8436419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8436419

KhalilK 12y ago

Meanwhile, work on an actual fusion reactor continues; http://www.iter.org/newsline/-/2020 http://www.iter.org/newsline/-/2020

dweinus 12y ago
From the article: "Until now, the majority of fusion reactor systems have used a plasma control device called a tokamak, invented in the 1950s by physicists in the Soviet Union. The tokamak uses a magnetic field to hold the plasma in the shape of a torus, or ring, and maintains the reaction by inducing a current inside the plasma itself with a second set of electromagnets. The challenge with this approach is that the resulting energy generated is almost the same as the amount required to maintain the self-sustaining fusion reaction."
- KhalilK 12y ago
  From the article ?

ck2 12y ago

Very cheap energy means cheap war and lots of it. This could be bad.

Tloewald 12y ago
Our main reason for war right now is scarce energy. Cheap clean electricity means no-one needs to care about the Middle East for starters — most of the fighting there is superpower proxy fighting — e.g. Assad would be gone if not backed by Russia and China, so no Islamic State. No Oil, no Iraq war x2. No oil, no Hugo Chavez for that matter.
- seren 12y ago
  I would only be cautiously optimistic : even if our energy problems are solved, the construction of reactors, for example the superconductors, might require some rare materials. The grab for energy could become a grab for minerals. It will probably involved other regions of the world though and change the whole dynamic.
- ZenoArrow 12y ago
  Hugo Chavez is dead, but I agree with the rest of what you say.
sp332 12y ago
Cheaper and more plentiful resources means less reason to go to war.
- ck2 12y ago
  This isn't Star Trek, this is the United States. We always find a reason to go to war. Or it finds us and we return the favor.
- paulmd 12y ago
  Unlimited free energy means we eventually global-warm our planet through waste heat. Works out at about 10% the potency of greenhouse gasses per MW.

robin_reala 12y ago

“the first reactors […] could be ready for use in a decade.” I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before…

nine_k 12y ago
I'm used to hearing that nuclear fusion is going to become mainstream "in 30 years"; I've heard it for ~25 years. If it's 10 years now, some progress has been made.
tormeh 12y ago
With all the alternative small fusion reactors I'm taking a strict "show me the energy" approach...
- drjesusphd 12y ago
  As well you should. The mainstream magnetic confinement community has been very cautious about overhyping lately. Unfortunately, the over zealousness of groups like this and NIF saps credibility from them anyway.
akavel 12y ago
I have the link to xkcd 678 "Researcher Translation" bookmarked for those occasions. Quoting the appropriate row here: If a researcher says a cool new technology should be available to consumers in... -> what they mean is... [...] ten years -> "we haven't finished inventing it yet, but when we do, it'll be awesome."
- ufmace 12y ago
  That would be http://xkcd.com/678/ http://xkcd.com/678/

spellingnazi 12y ago

For christ sake fix the title.

Jetrel 12y ago
Breakthrough Engery. Yesss.

zwieback 12y ago

Mr. Fusion!

jscheel 12y ago

So, they've come up with a way to make a fusor that produces more energy than it consumes? Also, I'd be interested in knowing what kind of scram mechanism they develop. If the superconductors were to fail, the expansion of the plasma would be catastrophic, right?

astazangasta 12y ago
It certainly wouldn't produce a runaway fusion reaction, if that's what you mean. A hot plasma would dissipate pretty quickly once confinement fails, so the only energy would be that in the plasma itself. Might be bad for whoever is in the room, but probably not the county.
- jscheel 12y ago
  Right, I meant catastrophic for the reactor. Definitely not worried about blowing up the country. Probably shouldn't have typed that phrase. NSA is probably all over me now.

cowkingdeluxe 12y ago

"McGuire said the company had several patents pending for the work and was looking for partners in academia, industry and among government laboratories to advance the work." I'm guessing this means that they will try and maximize profit rather than maximize cheap and clean energy for the entire world. That is a bit disappointing if true.

festivusr 12y ago
They're a for-profit company.
hangonhn 12y ago
Profit and good of the world need not be opposites. In fact they tend to go together if the company is going for the long run.
monochromatic 12y ago
If the only motivation is cheap and clean energy for the entire world, expensive research never gets funded.
zo1 12y ago
"I'm guessing this means that they will try and maximize profit rather than maximize cheap and clean energy for the entire world. That is a bit disappointing if true." I don't understand what you expect? You want them to give it away for free? After paying very intelligent, expensive engineers decades worth of salaries to create it? You want them to create a fund where people can donate their hard-earned money for this noble goal? I'm sure you could give them a call with that idea, or you could create your own fund, even. Or you could badger your "government" to fund such a project. Seeing as government is a very good analogy for a bunch of people giving their collective earnings for society-level goals. Let me know how that goes.

wcoenen 12y ago

> 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck A typical thermal power station has an efficiency below 50% for electricity generation, so the plant dissipates at least as much heat as it generates electrical power. I wonder how you could get rid of 100MW of waste heat from a volume small enough to fit on a truck. That's a heat flux of more than a megawatt per square meter of surface area.

bulltale 12y ago
In addition, in the step before where the heat is transferred away from the reactor walls to the turbines, a heat flux is needed of 100MJ/s. Assuming a contact surface of 100m2, that is 1MJ/s per m2. That sounds like a huge flux and I am not sure if there is any medium that could do this. Or are my assumptions way off?
- deleted 12y ago
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- wcoenen 12y ago
  I think I was editing my comment to add an estimate of the heat flux while you wrote this, and we arrived at the same number.
javajosh 12y ago
That's an excellent point! Perhaps they intend the truck to be sitting at the bottom of a fast moving river. But what gets me is that they are burying the lead. No fusion reactor of any size has reached sustainability...so why is the story here talking about size at all? Small size would be a very nice added bonus; fusion reactors that don't consume more energy than they produce are earth-changing.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I agree that the announcement is a bit burying the lead here, though maybe the size is actually important to making it work. From Aviation Week[0]: "But on the physics side, it still has to work, and one of the reasons we think our physics will work is that we’ve been able to make an inherently stable configuration.” One of the main reasons for this stability is the positioning of the superconductor coils and shape of the magnetic field lines. “In our case, it is always in balance. So if you have less pressure, the plasma will be smaller and will always sit in this magnetic well,” he notes." As far as I understand this (IANAP), they're saying that smaller size = less pressure, and that helps their design to work (in theory). [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458524

JohnnyLee 12y ago

Based on the image of the machine, this is a magnetic mirror with neutral beam injection. Mirrors were some of the first plasma confinement devices. An issue they have is that they lose charged particles out the ends in a way that depends on the ratio of perpendicular to parallel velocity and the magnetic field strength. It may be that they think they can use the neutral beam injectors to inject the fuel in such a way that it's well confined in the machine... Never mind, another linked article says that the injectors are only used for ignition.

csdrane 12y ago

Can we assume that their reactor isn't energy positive? Because if it were, I would imagine that they would be announcing so--rather than this nebulous "breakthrough."

seren 12y ago
From the aviationweek.com [0] article, it seems it is a concept, and they don't even have a prototype. They are trying to get some fundings to build the PoC. What makes the announcement a bit strange is that they have very concrete claims "it will fit in a truck" without much substance. [0] http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compa...

higherpurpose 12y ago

I guess that's somewhat game-changing. This, however, would be much more game-changing (if we can get confirmation once and for all whether it's real or not): http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reactor-verified-by-third-party-researchers-seems-to-have-1-million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reacto...

altcognito 12y ago
The "or not" link: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2014/10/12/rossi-handles-samples-in-alleged-independent-test-of-his-device/ http://news.newenergytimes.net/2014/10/12/rossi-handles-samp...

nerdy 12y ago

I know there are some very smart people at skunk works who've done incredible things in the past but humans have cried wolf so many times on fusion it's sort of hard to just accept until they've actually built a working reactor, shown it and had it independently verified.

regularfry 12y ago
Fusion physicists I know are very sceptical that this design can work. It's a variant on a known design with a known problem: the plasma leaks out of the ends of the magnetic containment. It's also unclear why Lockheed would be publicising it this way at this point, unless it's a naked ploy for more funding from the DoD, and an attempt to bring in money (and possibly pressure) from non-classified sources. That being said, if they've genuinely cracked it, the game changes so much as to be unrecognisable.
- jobu 12y ago
  From the Aviation Week article that flexie linked: "The team acknowledges that the project is in its earliest stages, and many key challenges remain before a viable prototype can be built." They don't actually say it, but it sounds like they've only got computer models to work with at this point. Not very likely that they've actually cracked it.
  - regularfry 12y ago
    Aditional weird: this is the second round of publicity they've had on this project, for what looks like no progress. Why publicise? Why now?
    - adventured 12y ago
      Push the oil and natural gas markets lower, pile on all the other factors pushing them down right now, and further harm Russia's economy. I'm half joking, but I'd keep an eye out for more unusual energy related press releases, to see if that'll confirm that it's a media blitz aimed at the oil market etc.

Tloewald 12y ago

"Ultra-dense deuterium is an isotope of Hydrogen" (1) ultra-dense?, (2) and tritium which is denser (but hardly ultra-dense) and also an isotope of hydrogen. Ah science reporting.

deleted 12y ago

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mletonsa 12y ago

Two of their patents were published few days ago: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0301518.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0301518.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0301519.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0301519.html Both have publication date 10/09/2014. Maybe connected with the press release?

deleted 12y ago

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jburwell 12y ago

This appears to be further development of the novel nuclear reactor approach described by Charles Chase at Solve in 2013 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY. The video provides a basic overview of fusion reactor designs and their breakthrough.

mbrubeck 12y ago
Yeah, and when they first announced it, they were predicting a working reactor in four years ("by 2017"): http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockheeds-skunk-works-promises-fusion-power-four-years http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockheeds-skunk-works-promise... A year and a half later, they're apparently no closer to that goal.

adamzerner 12y ago

I don't know much about fusion. It seems that the breakthrough they're talking about is that reactors are ~10x smaller. Why is this a big deal? Square footage is plentiful. I thought the problems are safety and how much energy it could produce.

jdnier 12y ago
Because these relatively small reactors can be made to tie in with existing gas turbine power plants. They can ship these replacement fusion plants all over the world. http://aviationweek.com/blog/high-hopes-can-compact-fusion-unlock-new-power-space-and-air-transport http://aviationweek.com/blog/high-hopes-can-compact-fusion-u...
yojo 12y ago
If it's 10x smaller it is available for portable applications. Like boats/planes/space ships. It would also presumably be easier to air drop in developing regions to bypass building a giant energy grid (similar to cell phone deployment).
regularfry 12y ago
Take a look at the footprint of ITER. It surprised me how massive the thing is planned to be. That's the competition.
- drjesusphd 12y ago
  > Take a look,at the footprint of ITER Or any other power plant for that matter. "If it sounds too good to be true..."
  - regularfry 12y ago
    The area energy density of ITER is particularly low. The whole plant is only designed to produce 500MW, on a concrete platform 1000mx400m. Compare that to this: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Barking+Power+Station,+Barking,+Greater+London+IG11+0GH/@51.5213895,0.1148288,546m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x47d8a5f3748dd567:0x950349063e836eef https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Barking+Power+Station,+B... google.co.uk That's a 20 year old 1GW combined cycle gas plant, in a building roughly 50mx150m. Anything they can do to bring fusion plants smaller than ITER is going to help.

peteretep 12y ago

> Lockheed shares fell 0.6 percent to $175.02 amid a broad > market selloff. Doh.

prewett 12y ago
Any movement under 1% is noise. And if there is a broad selloff, you'd expect Lockheed Martin shares to drop.

_-__--- 12y ago

This title makes me engery

JustSomeNobody 12y ago

Everything is always a decade away. (And then it rarely happens)

mrisse 12y ago

From the article: Lockheed shares fell 0.6 percent to $175.02 amid a broad market selloff. Shouldn't the market be a little more excited about this?

jerf 12y ago
It's dangerous to read the market's mind, but my guess is that there isn't enough information for anyone to believe that this is anything more than a PR puff piece. As much as I want to believe it I can't find any evidence myself, either. At this point I'm pretty much at the "show me the over-unity reactor" phase. There's so many research paths to fusion right now that are all "promising", but until one of them actually builds something that works in the real world I'm not personally interested in hearing any more vague promises. By all means fund them and keep working on them! I'm just not interested in the PR pieces any more. Give me a report about how it's working.
patrickk 12y ago
Most likely algorithms trading on technical indicators, nothing to do with this news. Short term price movements are almost total noise.
fsloth 12y ago
I was wondering the same thing. People have claimed to have working fusion reactors just in a few years if they only could have some more funding for so long that anyone who claims to offer a production capable fusion reactor loses their credibility completely until they actually produce one. Skunkworks have as an organization an amazing engineering track record of implementing ground breaking technologies. I wonder what their current status is. Anyone have an inside scoop whether their game is still as sharp?
jcfrei 12y ago
The general consumer sentiment and state of the economy are much more important even for a company such as Lockheed (slow economy > less profits > less taxes > less DoD spending) than unproven (as of now) claims about yet another fusion reactor.
mikeyouse 12y ago

vegabook 12y ago

Ready Steady (govt) Grant! "Partners in industry and goverment". Translation: 10 years to product (but hey, prototype in 5) so please give us lots of dough. It's the technology of the future and always has been.

bluedino 12y ago

Then the dilemma becomes: Does the USA share this with other countries? Or do we keep our clean, plentiful power for ourselves, become energy independent, have clean skies, and keep (exploit?) this technological advantage over the rest of the developed world for the next 20-30 years?

Ygg2 12y ago
> have clean skies You can't have clean skies if everyone else is polluting. That is what makes pollution such a hard problem to solve. Even if USA cuts its pollution to zero, China alone can make up the difference. But yeah, having access to this technology for everyone would be a serious game changer.
hugogee 12y ago
What dilemma? Its a no brainer we use it for free and have the rest of the world use it at a $profit$, while getting to enjoy that very same clean(er) air. But as history has shown it is probably too good to be true. Fusion that is. Edit: We are all riding the same spaceship... Its a serious flaw in thinking 'us vs them' when we are beginning to experiene some of the results in climate change.

startupfounder 12y ago

"The early reactors will be designed to generate around 100 MW and fit into transportable units measuring 23 X 43 ft."[0] These reactors will be similar to the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and potentially only require refueling every 25 years through a process known as ROH.[1] 100MW capacity in the size of an international shipping container? The implications of this are massive if this technology can be brought to scale, and that is the key term - SCALE. The cost of solar is plummeting and by the time fusion technology can produce 10% of our energy demand the cost of solar will be heading to $1/Watt, battery storage will be competitive and that is hard to beat even if the footprint is only a fraction of a solar farm. [0] http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compa... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimitz-class_aircraft_carrier#Refueling_Complex_Overhaul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimitz-class_aircraft_carrier#...

leephillips 12y ago

I wrote about this when the project was first revealed, in March 2013: http://lee-phillips.org/LockheedFusion/ http://lee-phillips.org/LockheedFusion/ I didn't find much to inspire confidence.

karcass 12y ago

It's exciting to see that fusion has gone from being perpetually 20 years away to being perpetually 10 years away. ;-)

grecy 12y ago
Gotta love marketing
Igglyboo 12y ago
We're 10 perpetual years closer!

dmfdmf 12y ago

25 years ago my nuke professor used to scoff at some of the claims of the fusion researchers. The problem is the high energy neutrons flying out of the reactor will neutron-activate every material within the vicinity. He thought the radioactivity and nuclear waste of a fusion reactor could be worse than a fission reactor. Also he thought that fusion researchers were vastly underestimating the problem of neutron embrittlement of the reactor structures and components. This is a very difficult engineering and material science problem that would have to be solved even if they did get the fusion process to work.

DennisP 12y ago
With D-T fusion you would have more activation of the reactor materials, because D-T produces such high-energy neutrons. What you wouldn't have is transuranics, which make up the bulk of our nuclear waste (and all of the really long-lived stuff), or fission products (the most radioactive stuff, like the cesium and strontium we heard about after Fukushima). But D-T is only the easiest form of fusion. Next up is D-D, which has much lower-energy neutrons. Helion is working on D-D combined with D-He3, producing only 6% of its energy as neutrons. And several outfits are hoping to manage proton-boron fusion, producing very little neutron radiation.
- dmfdmf 12y ago
  Correct me if I am wrong, but each of these "steps" is a research project in their own right. The AviationWeekly article mentioned D-T fusion for the Lockheed prototype and includes a diagram with the caption "blanket absorbs neutrons to breed fuel and transfer heat to turbines". This "blanket" will be tons of material that would be activated during operation and would have to be disposed of at EOL. Also, modern materials include many trace elements within the main molecular lattice such as cobalt, chromium, etc in steel and in some ways might be more difficult to process than used fuel rods. I worked in the nuclear power industry decades ago and I don't recall the how the energy of fusion neutrons vs fission neutrons compared but I thought that in general fusion neutrons were significantly higher. Most power fission reactors also have neutron moderators which help to reduce the activation and embrittlement problems. Nevertheless, core components in fission reactors are already experiencing neutron embrittlement and has been a concern. I'm not trying to be negative on fusion power but these overly optimistic reports have to be read with a critical eye.

deleted 12y ago

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salzig 12y ago

Sounds like the "Solve for x" talk from last year (2013-02-11) https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/charles-chase-on-energy-for-everyone https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/charles-chase-on-energy-...

Everhusk 12y ago

"The team acknowledges that the project is in its earliest stages, and many key challenges remain before a viable prototype can be built." No doubt that Skunkworks is world class... but claiming a "breakthrough in fusion energy" before a prototype has even been built is pretty bold of them.

nabla9 12y ago

I'm not seeing any top physicists working in this program (McGuire is not one). I would be willing to bet 1000 EUR that their math and modeling does not add up, or they have skipped some details. Problem with fusion research like this is that the closer you get self sustainment or energy generation, the harder it gets and problems pile up. This project looks like many other similar projects that have gone bust. They start by solving the easiest problems first, get some funding and hit the wall. The main problem with any reactor design is how to handle the 14 MeV neutrons produced by the fusion reaction (no mention in the article). They tend to damage the reactor and make it economically unfeasible. At this point being able to create fusion reaction is not the main challenge. It's the sustainment and economics of limiting the damage. If they really have solved all the problems and demonstrate economically sound fusion in 5-10 years, they will be handed Nobel price in physics for sure.

cswhatt 12y ago
Betting on a math error from Skunkworks? Highly unlikely. If anything, scalability will be the issue, as it always is
- gh02t 12y ago
  It's a very safe bet. Well, probably not a math error as they are quite a fine institution, but what he says is probably the case. The challenges of fusion power are largely fundamental nitty gritty engineering issues. We know fairly well how to design most of a fusion reactor; in a lot of ways they are conceptually easier than fission reactors. The two main hurdles are the materials problems and how to keep the reaction critical with radiative heat loss. These are big problems that so many times have been ignored by people claiming to have solved fusion power. You just can't get away from them, but solving them would be truly revolutionary. I'm not saying they don't have something novel here as they really are some fine researchers at Skunkworks. Just temper your expectations.
  - noir_lord 12y ago
    > The challenges of fusion power are largely fundamental nitty gritty engineering issues. I'm not saying they've done it and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof but this is the place that made a Mach 3.5 jet with wings that leaked out of titanium in the 60's. Nitty-gritty engineering is something they are fairly good at.

problame 12y ago

I'm happy if that is true, but guys: the first thing you think of is putting a potentially massive explosive on the back of a truck? Driven by humans? What could go wrong...

Balgair 12y ago
True, but we currently have gallons and gallons of highly flammable liquids hidden behind the cheapest #8 steel possible and something literally called a bumper, all exposed to whatever rust and rocks the nation's roads can throw at it. It's all about the level of risk.

Animats 12y ago

This might work. It's from Lockheed's Skunk Works, which has a very good track record and tremendous respect in the aerospace community. With the basic physics laid out, this is mostly an engineering and construction problem. Their plan is to build and test a new prototype every year. The Skunk Works can do that; they've been doing it for decades. They're a manufacturer of prototypes, and have in-house capabilities for building things fast. They don't have to contract out much, and where they do, they have a contracting operation and supply chain they can rely on.

ninkendo 12y ago
> With the basic physics laid out, this is mostly an engineering and construction problem. That phrase has been accurate for nuclear fusion in general for more than 50 years. The engineering and construction problems are immense.
- titanomachy 12y ago
  That's definitely true, and it's nice to have another set of brilliant engineers working on this problem from a somewhat different angle than that taken by previous brilliant engineers. Personally, I've become somewhat disillusioned with ITER after reading so much about their bureaucratic hurdles... but maybe they have enough talent onboard to pull it off anyway.
drjesusphd 12y ago
I have not seen any "basic physics" laid out at all about this concept. Namely, how do they keep the plasma from leaking out the sides of the mirror? What calculations/simulations have they done? As long as they remain secretive, they have no right to demand to be taken seriously.

was_hellbanned 12y ago

The ".NET Rocks!" podcast did three GeekOut shows this year on nuclear fusion, which will probably make you only more skeptical of fusion research claims. Fusion Power GeekOut: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1013 http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1013 Fusion Power GeekOut #2: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1022 http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1022 Cold Fusion GeekOut: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1037 http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1037

al2o3cr 12y ago

I'd love to know how they're planning on disposing of heat in the magnets themselves - most of the available high-current superconductors prefer to stay close to liquid helium temperatures, which is a challenge when you've set them next to a ten megakelvin plasma that's emitting a 100MW neutron flux...

aortega 12y ago

IMHO the best thing is how they pitch this as a power source for carriers and military ships, that are mostly used to fight wars for oil. Well played, Lockheed.

knappador 12y ago

Aneutronic fusion would be lighter-weight, but it's good to see another concept we can learn something new from. There are two aneutronic fusion projects to look at. Polywell has become a Navy project last I heard and focus fusion (DPF) is working on an all-tungsten electrode, after which we might see the very first experiment without electrode contamination from arcing in the contacts vaporizing metal.

peter_l_downs 12y ago

Crazy. Vernor Vinge has an excellent short story called "Bookworm, Run!" [0] that, among other things, discusses the effects of cheap, clean, compact power being distributed around the world. In particular, it describes a wide-spread economic depression. Kind of interesting to think about, and definitely worth reading if you're into sci-fi. [0]: http://books.google.com/books?id=tEMQpbiboH0C&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=bookworm,+run&source=bl&ots=UTPAJ0Ppbn&sig=dUdh7ABbXwkxVjxnCNMflKmq9To&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Utg-VKjKCdSIsQSBtoD4Ag&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=bookworm%2C%20run&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=tEMQpbiboH0C&pg=PA15&lpg=PA...

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Interesting when you compare to the recent dynomak paper announcement[1]. The pointer to 'superconducting magnets' doesn't get a lot of ink though. I went by Fry's the other day and they were out of them :-) I wondered about them because to date such things usually are sitting in a cryogenic bath (think MRI machine) and not next to a million degree hot plasma. Even in the LHC there is a lot of space between the beam and the ring magnets. Dr McGuire in the article suggests -- “We should be able to go to 100% or beyond,” which is quite the challenge from the thermal management perspective. It is however another great example that there is money going into lots of different fusion ideas. And that can only be a good thing as far as I am concerned. [1] http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/10/08/uw-fusion-reactor-concept-could-be-cheaper-than-coal/ http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/10/08/uw-fusion-reactor-...

anigbrowl 12y ago

On a tangent, is there any fundamental reason that reactors are always built to drive turbines rather thermocouples - do they simply not scale up to the amount of heat a typical reactor puts out, or what?

avian 12y ago
Steam turbine plus a conventional generator is vastly more efficient than thermocouples - 30-40% for steam versus <5% for thermocouples. I suspect they are also much, much cheaper when you are talking about powers in the hundreds-of-megawatts range. I don't have specific data at hand to back that though. I never heard of any grid-level power generation being done with thermocouples.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  That is in line with general impression. I just find it really weird that after all the high-tech nuclear stuff is working the next stage is an old-fashioned water boiler like on a steam engine of hundreds of years ago. (Well, obviously these turbines are not old-fashioned or simple boilers, but you know what I mean.) It just baffles me that we don't have a way of efficiently generating electrical current directly from particle radiation, eg through pressure fluctuations in a magnetic field, instead of through heat transfer.
  - DennisP 12y ago
    The reason we'll need turbines for the first generation of fusion reactors is that most of their energy is released as neutrons. Some more advanced fuels release most of their energy as fast-moving charged particles, which would let us generate electricity more directly.

WalterBright 12y ago

Makes me wonder if the modern Lockheed Skunkworks bears much relation to how Kelly Johnson ran it in the 50's and 60's. Many companies have tried to set up a skunkworks since, but didn't have the guts to run it like Kelly did, and didn't get the results, either.

gpvos 12y ago

Does anyone know how to get around the paywall?

ridgeguy 12y ago

This looks like a real thermal engineering challenge in one respect. The superconductive magnet coils are exposed to the neutron flux that transfers fusion reaction energy to the absorptive thermal blanket. I don't know offhand the neutron cross-sections of likely superconductor materials at whatever neutron energy spectrum this reactor will produce, but I suspect energy absorption by the magnet structure won't be small. I wonder how they plan to keep the magnets cold. Never mind the other effects on materials of high-flux neutron absorption.