This would be a huge game changer, for earth and space, if it can really be done.
12 thoughts on “A Mini-Fusion Reactor”
I’m a liberal arts moron, so grain of salt and all that, but the phrase “five generations to a prototype” doesn’t fill me with glee and astonishment. It *sounds* like this is a bright idea for a model, not an actual testbed, let alone a prototype. Say what you like of tokamaks – like, for instance, they might as well be displays at Epcot Center for all the practical use they offer – but they do actual work. Poorly and pointlessly from an energy-producing point of view, but still, physical and operational.
Well there was no shortage of nuclear fusion reactor designs in the 50s and 60s before everyone decided to jump into the Tokamak bandwagon. I am not an expert on this area but this design kind of reminds me of the magnetic mirror fusion reactor.
Every kind of reactor design had a lot of unsolved issues. AFAIK people eventually picked the Tokawak because there wasn’t enough money to keep funding large scale research on all of these designs simultaneously and the Tokamak seemed to be the most viable design for steady state operation back then. Steady state is a desirable trait if you want to build a power generator.
I kind of doubt they could use something like this on aircraft. If I remember correctly the main concern with Project Pluto was the weight of the reactor and currently fusion reactors designs are at least an order of magnitude larger than a fission reactor with the same power output.
Maybe the Navy could use it if they shrank it down to fission reactor size like what they claim they can do.
Steady state is desirable for a power generator? Maybe, but certainly not essential. Reliable pulsed operation would work just as well. For an example of the latter, see diesel generators; the power generation in such items takes less than a millisecond, and I haven’t heard anyone describing those as impractical.
My money (if I had any) would be on dense plasma focus fusion.
The magic plasma physics 8 ball says “Not bloody likely”. This is Solyndra for Lockmart. IF you can get enough people on the AGW funding gravy train you’ve increased your lobby and congressional voting power.
We’ve been promised nuclear fusion power 10 years in the future for the past 50 years.
That’s why fusion is the energy source of the future and always will be. Sorry, but I have a very hard time trusting Lockheed.
Yeah, I don’t believe this for a moment. DT fusion reactors make very little sense, regardless of the containment mechanism. Issues with power density, wall/blanket cost and tritium breeding efficiency/doubling time are probably showstoppers.
A bigger metaissue is that the decision loop for energy technologies like this is just too long. Faster evolving technologies, like solar, are already inside the loop. In 50 years solar will be incredibly cheap and fusion research will have long since been terminated.
Paul, if solar were free, it still would be a niche solution, same with wind.
Both are diffuse and therefore maintenance intensive.
You can’t store or base-load either. Neither are dispatchable.
Solar won’t be cheap by real world measures until electricity can be stored cheaply to account to time of availability.
To add: The only way to solve those issues for Solar would be to put a powersat into Geo Orbit where it would be in near-perpetual sunlight and the miniscule time it was in shadow, the adjacent sats could help cover it’s load.
Or, simply build lots of batteries. I think batteries coming down in cost is far more likely than fusion becoming practical. I’m not just talking about Li-ion batteries — although Musk wants to use those for solar energy storage — but also multiple competing technologies being developed right now by a large number of companies.
Nothing that hasn’t been out for a few months. The overall configuration appears solid, if they have a solution to the supports for the inside magnets crossing the magnetic field.
I’m a liberal arts moron, so grain of salt and all that, but the phrase “five generations to a prototype” doesn’t fill me with glee and astonishment. It *sounds* like this is a bright idea for a model, not an actual testbed, let alone a prototype. Say what you like of tokamaks – like, for instance, they might as well be displays at Epcot Center for all the practical use they offer – but they do actual work. Poorly and pointlessly from an energy-producing point of view, but still, physical and operational.
Well there was no shortage of nuclear fusion reactor designs in the 50s and 60s before everyone decided to jump into the Tokamak bandwagon. I am not an expert on this area but this design kind of reminds me of the magnetic mirror fusion reactor.
Every kind of reactor design had a lot of unsolved issues. AFAIK people eventually picked the Tokawak because there wasn’t enough money to keep funding large scale research on all of these designs simultaneously and the Tokamak seemed to be the most viable design for steady state operation back then. Steady state is a desirable trait if you want to build a power generator.
I kind of doubt they could use something like this on aircraft. If I remember correctly the main concern with Project Pluto was the weight of the reactor and currently fusion reactors designs are at least an order of magnitude larger than a fission reactor with the same power output.
Maybe the Navy could use it if they shrank it down to fission reactor size like what they claim they can do.
Steady state is desirable for a power generator? Maybe, but certainly not essential. Reliable pulsed operation would work just as well. For an example of the latter, see diesel generators; the power generation in such items takes less than a millisecond, and I haven’t heard anyone describing those as impractical.
My money (if I had any) would be on dense plasma focus fusion.
The magic plasma physics 8 ball says “Not bloody likely”. This is Solyndra for Lockmart. IF you can get enough people on the AGW funding gravy train you’ve increased your lobby and congressional voting power.
We’ve been promised nuclear fusion power 10 years in the future for the past 50 years.
That’s why fusion is the energy source of the future and always will be. Sorry, but I have a very hard time trusting Lockheed.
Yeah, I don’t believe this for a moment. DT fusion reactors make very little sense, regardless of the containment mechanism. Issues with power density, wall/blanket cost and tritium breeding efficiency/doubling time are probably showstoppers.
A bigger metaissue is that the decision loop for energy technologies like this is just too long. Faster evolving technologies, like solar, are already inside the loop. In 50 years solar will be incredibly cheap and fusion research will have long since been terminated.
Paul, if solar were free, it still would be a niche solution, same with wind.
Both are diffuse and therefore maintenance intensive.
You can’t store or base-load either. Neither are dispatchable.
Solar won’t be cheap by real world measures until electricity can be stored cheaply to account to time of availability.
To add: The only way to solve those issues for Solar would be to put a powersat into Geo Orbit where it would be in near-perpetual sunlight and the miniscule time it was in shadow, the adjacent sats could help cover it’s load.
Or, simply build lots of batteries. I think batteries coming down in cost is far more likely than fusion becoming practical. I’m not just talking about Li-ion batteries — although Musk wants to use those for solar energy storage — but also multiple competing technologies being developed right now by a large number of companies.
Nothing that hasn’t been out for a few months. The overall configuration appears solid, if they have a solution to the supports for the inside magnets crossing the magnetic field.