Lockheed says makes breakthrough on fusion energy project

[Ghost Dog]

(Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade...

... 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 told reporters. In a statement, the company, the Pentagon's largest supplier, said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year, and build a prototype in five years. ..

... Compact nuclear fusion would produce far less waste than coal-powered plants since it would use deuterium-tritium fuel, which can generate nearly 10 million times more energy than the same amount of fossil fuels, the company said. Ultra-dense deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, is found in the earth's oceans, and tritium is made from natural lithium deposits. It said future reactors could use a different fuel and eliminate radioactive waste completely...

... Lockheed said it had shown it could complete a design, build and test it in as little as a year, which should produce an operational reactor in 10 years, McGuire said. A small reactor could power a U.S. Navy warship, and eliminate the need for other fuel sources that pose logistical challenges...

/... http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/us-lockheed-fusion-idUSKCN0I41EM20141015

... It's not April 1st, right?

[caraher]

1. Not April 1 in my time zone...

Pretty short on details, though. Presumably these will be forthcoming in patent applications and more detailed materials produced for potential investors...

Here's (most of) the LockMart press release:

PALMDALE, Calif., Oct. 15, 2014 – The Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] Skunk Works® team is working on a new compact fusion reactor (CFR) that can be developed and deployed in as little as ten years. Currently, there are several patents pending that cover their approach.

While fusion itself is not new, the Skunk Works has built on more than 60 years of fusion research and investment to develop an approach that offers a significant reduction in size compared to mainstream efforts.

“Our compact fusion concept combines several alternative magnetic confinement approaches, taking the best parts of each, and offers a 90 percent size reduction over previous concepts,” said Tom McGuire, compact fusion lead for the Skunk Works’ Revolutionary Technology Programs. “The smaller size will allow us to design, build and test the CFR in less than a year.”

After completing several of these design-build-test cycles, the team anticipates being able to produce a prototype in five years. As they gain confidence and progress technically with each experiment, they will also be searching for partners to help further the technology.

[caraher]

2. Aviation Leak has a lot more details

They have a much better piece on what Lockheed is proposing to build.

Although the company released limited information on the CFR in 2013, Lockheed is now providing new details of its invention. Aviation Week was given exclusive access to view the Skunk Works experiment, dubbed “T4,” first hand. Led by Thomas McGuire, an aeronautical engineer in the Skunk Work’s aptly named Revolutionary Technology Programs unit, the current experiments are focused on a containment vessel roughly the size of a business-jet engine. Connected to sensors, injectors, a turbopump to generate an internal vacuum and a huge array of batteries, the stainless steel container seems an unlikely first step toward solving a conundrum that has defeated generations of nuclear physicists—namely finding an effective way to control the fusion reaction.

The problem with tokamaks is that “they can only hold so much plasma, and we call that the beta limit,” McGuire says. Measured as the ratio of plasma pressure to the magnetic pressure, the beta limit of the average tokamak is low, or about “5% or so of the confining pressure,” he says. Comparing the torus to a bicycle tire, McGuire adds, “if they put too much in, eventually their confining tire will fail and burst—so to operate safely, they don’t go too close to that.” Aside from this inefficiency, the physics of the tokamak dictate huge dimensions and massive cost. The ITER, for example, will cost an estimated $50 billion and when complete will measure around 100 ft. high and weigh 23,000 tons.

The CFR will avoid these issues by tackling plasma confinement in a radically different way. Instead of constraining the plasma within tubular rings, a series of superconducting coils will generate a new magnetic-field geometry in which the plasma is held within the broader confines of the entire reaction chamber. Superconducting magnets within the coils will generate a magnetic field around the outer border of the chamber. “So for us, instead of a bike tire expanding into air, we have something more like a tube that expands into an ever-stronger wall,” McGuire says. The system is therefore regulated by a self-tuning feedback mechanism, whereby the farther out the plasma goes, the stronger the magnetic field pushes back to contain it. The CFR is expected to have a beta limit ratio of one. “We should be able to go to 100% or beyond,” he adds.

This crucial difference means that for the same size, the CFR generates more power than a tokamak by a factor of 10. This in turn means, for the same power output, the CFR can be 10 times smaller. The change in scale is a game-changer in terms of producibility and cost, explains McGuire. “It’s one of the reasons we think it is feasible for development and future economics,” he says. “Ten times smaller is the key. 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.

It's a bit of a puff piece - the Aviation Week "exclusive" seems carefully designed to woo investors. But it at least gives a picture of what physics the scheme relies on.

[dumbcat]

4. I used to really like Aviation Week

There were always current copies around where I worked and read them religiously. But it seemed that over the decades their standards had slipped a bit and there were a lot more fluff pieces and questionable articles. But maybe it was just me getting older and more cynical. I'm retired now and haven't seen a copy in years. I hope maybe it was just a bad period of editorial management and now they are back to good tech reporting.

[dumbcat]

3. Something seems backwards here

... the company, the Pentagon's largest supplier, said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year, and build a prototype in five years. ..

On every development project I have ever worked on, you build a prototype of a system that you then test and evaluate. If they can build and test a fusion reactor in less than a year, why would you bother with a prototype? Seems if you have already built and tested one, you could go right to production.

This is either really sloppy journalism, or the contractor spokesman doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Being that no one has successfully demonstarted a sustained fusion reactor process, making it ten times smaller sounds like a funny sort of claim.

[OnlinePoker]

5. I think they are talking a small reactor to see if it works.

If so, then they would build a prototype of the actual full-sized working model. At least, that's how I read it.

[caraher]

6. Pretty much

The AvWeek piece explains the timetable:

The team acknowledges that the project is in its earliest stages, and many key challenges remain before a viable prototype can be built. However, McGuire expects swift progress. The Skunk Works mind-set and “the pace that people work at here is ridiculously fast,” he says. “We would like to get to a prototype in five generations. If we can meet our plan of doing a design-build-test generation every year, that will put us at about five years, and we’ve already shown we can do that in the lab.” The prototype would demonstrate ignition conditions and the ability to run for upward of 10 sec. in a steady state after the injectors, which will be used to ignite the plasma, are turned off. “So it wouldn’t be at full power, like a working concept reactor, but basically just showing that all the physics works,” McGuire says.

That's their 5-year goal, based on their notion that they build, test and design the next prototype annually, and that it will take 5 tries to "get there."

Then they say another 5 years to scale up to a working production model. A lot of it seems to be just a "because we're the Skunk Works, we can move fast" attitude, rather than a detailed plan (which would in any case not be adhered to as challenges arise). So in other words, a WAG based on their own level of self-confidence.

[OnlinePoker]

7. They were unsuccessful getting the X-33 to fly

Nasa cancelled the project after 5 years of development in 2001, so they aren't infallible. Still, I would like to see a working production level fusion plant in my lifetime.

[FogerRox]

8. Nice

But it seems to be mostly a PR blurb. Rather thin on sciencey stuff, which I prefer.

[LawnKorn]

9. Lockheed was making this claim over a year ago

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112736443

[caraher]

10. Very interesting

From the older post:

"Lockheed will build a sub-100MW prototype version by 2017 that will measure about 1-meter in diameter by 2-meters long."

So in early 2013 the prototype was 4 years off, anticipated for 2017. Now in 2014, it's 5 years in the future... Will it be 6 years away next year?