6 ms·

Skepticism is not unreasonable, but so is hope: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1644 http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1644 Short version: details matter, Thomas McG

Skepticism is not unreasonable, but so is hope: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1644 http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1644 Short version: details matter, Thomas McGuire is a smart guy who knows enough to avoid the obvious mistakes, Lockheed Martin is a commercial company taking a commercial route to technology development, so they are disengaged from the scientific community. Will it work? They only reasonable answer is: "Maybe." We'll know better in five or ten years.

easytiger 12y ago
To be fair to LM if they get this right and it works, they will assume a large portion of all the world's wealth rather quickly. Also surely we need a Manhatten project for nuclear fusion. Indeed it is possible it the the fault of the Manhatten project that Fusion wasn't pursued at the time
- keeganpoppen 12y ago
  haha yeah-- not saying it's an easy problem or anything, but you'd think that we'd have about as good a chance as humanity could ever hope for if you ask while Oppenheimer, Fermi, Feynman, Bohr et alia are all working together... ON THE SAME PROJECT. And this is ignoring the fact that we wouldn't even give Einstein security clearance...
  - maccard 12y ago
    Well we have computers now...
- Icybee 12y ago
  If this works, and the global demand for fossil fuels significantly reduces or disappears, imagine the impact it will have on the countries whose economies are largely dependant on exporting oil, gas or coal. A large part of the Middle East, or even countries lie Russia or Venezuela could be in for a very bad few decades. We could be in for turbulent times, if it works.
  - jahnu 12y ago
    Surely cheap energy for all would help any country raise it's standard of living. I think you could as easy argue that we'd see less turbulence since nearly all resource constraints would be relaxed. Salt-water can be desalinated cheaply and pumped anywhere. Factories powered. Homes heated or cooled. Travel would be inexpensive. CO2 could be extracted from the air and buried.
    - patrickk 12y ago
      > Travel would be inexpensive. This would be particularly exciting. Ships, trains and physically large forms of transport (maybe even aircraft/spacecraft?!?) could have fusion reactors built in. Electric cars charged by cheap power from local, neighbourhood fusion reactors. The power grid is decentralised with reliable baseload power sources, that are clean, reliable (no intermittent problems with weather with renewables) and safe. Power sources can be located where they are needed, whether it's in a basement, on a roof of an urban building or on Mars.
      - db48x 12y ago
        Don't get too starry-eyed; this is deuterium-tritium or deuterium-deuterium fusion they're talking about. It produces neutron radiation so you still need shielding, and it really complicates the materials engineering. All the properties of the material you're using to do some job depend on what kind of atoms are in it, and all those neutrons are busy transmuting those same atoms. The first working fusion reactor will probably have crazy maintenance requirements. (It's already a bit of a problem with fission plants, but with the simpler fusion reactions as much as 80% of the energy is produced in the form of neutrons.) The holy grail that you're thinking of is aneutronic fusion, usually deuterium-helium3 or deuterium-lithium6. He3 is super rare though, so a D-He3 reactor using it might need to get the He3 from a bigger fusion reactor using D-D fusion, which produces it (and that pesky neutron). Even better still might be proton-boron fusion; it needs temperatures an order of magnitude higher than D-D fusion (and magnetic confinement two or three orders of magnitude stronger), but produces far fewer neutrons (there are fewer undesirable side reactions). Alas, this route will produce four orders of magnitude less energy than the much simpler D-D reaction. Given the scale of the engineering problems, we could even end up harnessing fusion power by building dyson spheres; a star might be the only feasible, stable way to build a fusion reactor. Hopefully our universe was set on an easier difficulty setting than that when it was instantiated.
- jahnu 12y ago
  That kind of assumes no country would just copy it. Which they simply would unless LM sold these devices or licenses to them at very reasonable prices.
  - bottled_poe 12y ago
    Just like how countries can simply 'copy' nuclear weapon designs, right?
    - adventured 12y ago
      Or how China can easily just copy and use nuclear reactor designs, instead of buying them from Westinghouse or GE (that is to say, not).
    - patrickk 12y ago
      One way or another, if a successful fusion reactor is actually built, the design will eventually get out and be reverse engineered and copied. It's too important for it to not happen.
      - XorNot 12y ago
        Knowing something is definitely feasible is very, very different to trying to invent the first working prototype. i.e. knowing that a particular design of plane does actually fly, means you can make very different assumptions about information you get from looking at it's shape.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
Shivetya 12y ago
well that and Lockheed's proposal doesn't involve the tens of billions of dollars the other more headline grabbing one does, hence it can't be good, can it? The issue I see is this, no one has done it yet, produce sustainable fusion power so I say, let them all try their theories and we all benefit. If Lockheed's experiment is fractionally as expensive as the big guys on the street then why not. Governments sure piss away enough as it is on lesser adventures.

easytiger 12y ago

To be fair to LM if they get this right and it works, they will assume a large portion of all the world's wealth rather quickly. Also surely we need a Manhatten project for nuclear fusion. Indeed it is possible it the the fault of the Manhatten project that Fusion wasn't pursued at the time

keeganpoppen 12y ago
haha yeah-- not saying it's an easy problem or anything, but you'd think that we'd have about as good a chance as humanity could ever hope for if you ask while Oppenheimer, Fermi, Feynman, Bohr et alia are all working together... ON THE SAME PROJECT. And this is ignoring the fact that we wouldn't even give Einstein security clearance...
- maccard 12y ago
  Well we have computers now...
Icybee 12y ago
If this works, and the global demand for fossil fuels significantly reduces or disappears, imagine the impact it will have on the countries whose economies are largely dependant on exporting oil, gas or coal. A large part of the Middle East, or even countries lie Russia or Venezuela could be in for a very bad few decades. We could be in for turbulent times, if it works.
- jahnu 12y ago
  Surely cheap energy for all would help any country raise it's standard of living. I think you could as easy argue that we'd see less turbulence since nearly all resource constraints would be relaxed. Salt-water can be desalinated cheaply and pumped anywhere. Factories powered. Homes heated or cooled. Travel would be inexpensive. CO2 could be extracted from the air and buried.
  - patrickk 12y ago
    > Travel would be inexpensive. This would be particularly exciting. Ships, trains and physically large forms of transport (maybe even aircraft/spacecraft?!?) could have fusion reactors built in. Electric cars charged by cheap power from local, neighbourhood fusion reactors. The power grid is decentralised with reliable baseload power sources, that are clean, reliable (no intermittent problems with weather with renewables) and safe. Power sources can be located where they are needed, whether it's in a basement, on a roof of an urban building or on Mars.
    - db48x 12y ago
      Don't get too starry-eyed; this is deuterium-tritium or deuterium-deuterium fusion they're talking about. It produces neutron radiation so you still need shielding, and it really complicates the materials engineering. All the properties of the material you're using to do some job depend on what kind of atoms are in it, and all those neutrons are busy transmuting those same atoms. The first working fusion reactor will probably have crazy maintenance requirements. (It's already a bit of a problem with fission plants, but with the simpler fusion reactions as much as 80% of the energy is produced in the form of neutrons.) The holy grail that you're thinking of is aneutronic fusion, usually deuterium-helium3 or deuterium-lithium6. He3 is super rare though, so a D-He3 reactor using it might need to get the He3 from a bigger fusion reactor using D-D fusion, which produces it (and that pesky neutron). Even better still might be proton-boron fusion; it needs temperatures an order of magnitude higher than D-D fusion (and magnetic confinement two or three orders of magnitude stronger), but produces far fewer neutrons (there are fewer undesirable side reactions). Alas, this route will produce four orders of magnitude less energy than the much simpler D-D reaction. Given the scale of the engineering problems, we could even end up harnessing fusion power by building dyson spheres; a star might be the only feasible, stable way to build a fusion reactor. Hopefully our universe was set on an easier difficulty setting than that when it was instantiated.
jahnu 12y ago
That kind of assumes no country would just copy it. Which they simply would unless LM sold these devices or licenses to them at very reasonable prices.
- bottled_poe 12y ago
  Just like how countries can simply 'copy' nuclear weapon designs, right?
  - adventured 12y ago
    Or how China can easily just copy and use nuclear reactor designs, instead of buying them from Westinghouse or GE (that is to say, not).
  - patrickk 12y ago
    One way or another, if a successful fusion reactor is actually built, the design will eventually get out and be reverse engineered and copied. It's too important for it to not happen.
    - XorNot 12y ago
      Knowing something is definitely feasible is very, very different to trying to invent the first working prototype. i.e. knowing that a particular design of plane does actually fly, means you can make very different assumptions about information you get from looking at it's shape.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

Shivetya 12y ago

well that and Lockheed's proposal doesn't involve the tens of billions of dollars the other more headline grabbing one does, hence it can't be good, can it? The issue I see is this, no one has done it yet, produce sustainable fusion power so I say, let them all try their theories and we all benefit. If Lockheed's experiment is fractionally as expensive as the big guys on the street then why not. Governments sure piss away enough as it is on lesser adventures.