How Lockheed Martin's Power Play Could Boost Fervor Over Fusion - By Alan Boyle

[bananas]

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/how-lockheed-martins-power-play-could-boost-fervor-over-fusion-n227366

How Lockheed Martin's Power Play Could Boost Fervor Over Fusion
By Alan Boyle
October 16th 2014

Lockheed Martin's project to create a compact fusion reactor could provide a boost for other ventures aiming to harness nuclear fusion energy on a small scale — or at least they hope so.

"I'm glad to see them pursuing high-pressure plasma, because it's the only logical way to have an economical fusion reactor," Jaeyoung Park, president and chief scientist at New Mexico-based EMC2 Fusion Development Corp., told NBC News on Thursday. "Life is lonely if you're the only one doing it."

<snip>

Lockheed Martin is by far the biggest company to reveal its interest in creating compact fusion reactors, and the fact that it's looking for partners should add to the already-percolating interest in commercial fusion research. Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, for instance, is one of the investors in Canada-based General Fusion. Meanwhile, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has invested in California-based Tri-Alpha Energy.

<snip>

Lockheed Martin's McGuire said his team would build a prototype compact fusion reactor within five years, but Helion's schedule is even more ambitious: The company's CEO, David Kirtley, hopes to get to the break-even point — that is, a fusion reaction where the energy output exceeds the input — within three years.

<snip>

So who'll win the commercial fusion race? Will anyone ever cross the break-even line and turn fusion into a cheap power source? Stay tuned ... at least it's good to know there's a race.

[LunaSea]

1. Cool. But uh, where's the beef?

"Although Lockheed Martin issued a press release saying it had several pending patents for its approach, the company has yet to publish any scientific papers on this latest work."

While headlines touted Lockheed's results as a "breakthrough" that could "change the world forever," the corporation used no such language in its press release. However, it appears that we will have to wait at least a little while longer before any reactor Lockheed envisions enters the market.

"This design has two doughnuts and a shell so it will be more than four times as bad as a tokamak,"

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-bash-lockheed-on-nuclear-fusion-2014-10#ixzz3GPhBLdlN

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/10/lockheed-martin-nuclear-fusion-skeptical

[LongTomH]

2. Thanks for the post, I've been skeptical about fusion for years......

A few years ago, I talked with a physicist who had worked on a fusion project. The problem with deuterium-tritium or deuterium-deuterium fusion is that most of the energy is released in the form of neutrons. The neutrons need to be soaked up by a liquid metal blanket and transferred to a heat exchanger to produce steam. That process tends to be less efficient than heat transfer in a nuclear or fossil fuel plant. Also, the neutron radiation will make components of the reactor radioactive after a few years.

There's also the issue of obtaining fuel: Lockheed's reactor uses a deuterium-tritium fuel mix. The tritium comes from the liquid lithium blanket that absorbs neutrons from the reaction, transforming the lithium into tritium and helium.

6Li + n → 4He + 3T.

The world's production of lithium for use in applications like lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. According to the Wikipedia article on lithium:

On June 9, 2014, the Financialist publication, produced by the Credit Suisse company, stated that demand for lithium is growing at more than 12 percent a year; according to Credit Suisse, this rate exceeds projected availability by 25 percent. The publication compared the 2014 lithium situation with oil, whereby "higher oil prices spurred investment in expensive deepwater and oil sands production techniques"; that is, the price of lithium will continue to rise until more expensive production methods that can boost total output receive the attention of investors.

I'll admit to a bias here: I spent a couple of decades of my life as an advocate of the solar power satellite (SPS) concept, first as a member of the old L-5 Society then the National Society (which assimilated the L-5 Society in the 80s). The L-5 Society wanted to build SPS from lunar or asteroid materials, as advocated by the late Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton University.

Invariably, when a discussion of space based solar power occurred, someone always made a statement to the effect that "Fusion power is 'just around the corner,'" and there's no need to spend money on the SPS concept. The Space Studies Institute still refers to fusion as: "The perpetual power of the future, which means it's perpetually in the future."