Scientists skeptical of Lockheed Martin's truck-sized FUSION reactor breakthrough boast

[nitpicker]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/16/experts_skeptical_over_lockheed_martins_claims_to_have_cracked_fusion/

Scientists skeptical of Lockheed Martin's truck-sized FUSION reactor breakthrough boast
By Iain Thomson, 16 Oct 2014

Pic Lockheed Martin has caused quite a stir with its announcement that it will ship fusion reactors the size of a truck within the next decade.
(snip)

Lockheed gave Aviation Week a sneak peek at the technology, and McGuire certainly talks a mean game. Conventional fusion reactors are massive systems of machinery that contain superheated plasma held in a torus using magnetism, but the Lockheed design eschews that approach in favor of a reaction chamber that can hold the plasma in a new configuration that is much smaller.
(snip)

Sounds great, right? Compact fusion reactors of this type would solve the world's energy needs at a stroke, slash carbon emissions, and ensure reliable, clean power anywhere in the world with some easy-to-obtain fuel: hydrogen. But experts are skeptical, not just about the technology but about the manner in which it is being promoted.
(snip)

If the technology is such a game changer, why isn't moneybags Lockheed prepared to put its own money behind it? "Lockheed Martin had revenues of $45bn last year, and profits of $2.9bn, so why are they seeking external funding, he asked. "That's like Barack Obama asking me for a loan."

(snip)
It's very rare in the scientific field for a revolutionary leap forward of the nature Lockheed is claiming. It's not impossible, but the scientific community will need to see a lot more evidence before the compact fusion reactor is taken seriously.

[aquart]

1. Wait. We have FUSION?

When did we get fusion?

[drm604]

2. We don't have useful fusion.

Current reactors are unstable and take more energy than they generate.

This claim by Lockheed Martin is extremely questionable. Either they've figured it out or they haven't. If they have, then why 10 years? If they haven't then how can they put a timeline on when they will?

[Yo_Mama]

16. If they had proof that they had usuable fusion, they would be funding it themselves.

There wouldn't be media reports. They are looking for money, therefore they don't have it. Until you demonstrate that it works, you have nothing. And by "works", I mean "produces more energy than is input". If they even thought it would work, they'd be holding it close to their belts and funding it themselves.

[hootinholler]

3. About the time of the Hydrogen bomb

Oh, a Reactor? Um, sometime in the early 80's IIRC, but they are energy sinks not energy fountains fusing a few atoms at a time.

[Hortensis]

4. Perhaps they are expecting development of a great national/international effort to pursue this

as other scientists realize how close we are and don't want to sink too much of their own money in it? Better to risk investors' money in any case. Just speculating, of course. But if this amazing news is real, the race to develop the first fission bomb should be nothing to the competition to save the world.

I like to think, anyway. After all these years I still feel a little knot of sorrow that "kitchen fusion" wasn't real.

[Yo_Mama]

17. It isn't news until you've built a prototype and demonstrated net energy output

They haven't.

[GliderGuider]

5. Fusion Unlimited

Some people won't like this comment, but I think that succeeding at this is the worst thing that could happen to humanity, short of never running out of fossil fuels. Lots and lots of cheap energy was what got us into this Homo colossus pickle in the first place. What makes anyone think that accessing even more energy will get us out? Even if it is carbon-free? Climate change isn't the only civilization tipping point we face, after all.

What we face is not a technological problem. What we have is a social problem. Humans in groups demonstrate an absolute inability to live within limits, to live in equilibrium with our surroundings. If we did have such an ability, all those societies that Jared Diamond chronicled in "Collapse" wouldn't have collapsed, and our species would have come to an accommodation with our environment long ago, no matter what our level of technology or energy availability was.

The point of technology is to maximize the useful energy we can extract from an energy flow. Sometimes a technology can even create new energy flows where there were none before. More advanced technology does it better, making more energy available for human uses. Think of the harnessing of fire, the burning of fossil fuels, the splitting of the atom, wind turbines and solar panels - and now the vague possibility of limitless fusion power.

In the words of Eric Sevareid, "The chief cause of problems is solutions." From an ecological point of view, more energy is the problem, not the solution.

[defacto7]

6. ^ this ^

"What we face is not a technological problem. What we have is a social problem."

Absolutely true.

"Humans in groups demonstrate an absolute inability to live within limits, to live in equilibrium with our surroundings"

and now I think you are god.

So few take this position... and it is fundamental.

[Nihil]

7. Agree.

Even if Lockheed have got fusion sorted (or are about to), that doesn't resolve
the greater problem with the human mindset that is basically "Me, Me, Me".

It just accelerates it (and we really need that don't we?).

[caraher]

8. Could be

Effectively limitless energy, employed using the collective "wisdom" of the marketplace, is effectively limitless potential destructive power. It could get our current civilization out of the short-term climate change mess, but giving full rein to our appetite for energy is a longer-term recipe for disaster.

[hunter]

9. I agree.

I posted this in a previous GD thread:

Oh boy, enough energy that we can turn the entire biosphere into humans!!!

And everything else into automobiles, highways, airliners, and trash. Great mountains of trash.

I can't wait.

:sarcam:

That's probably how Idiocracy or WALL-E happened.

If I didn't think this news was bunk I'd lose all hope for earth's future. Instead it's just Lockheed standing in front of the lab door whispering, "Don't go in there, it's secret" to con clueless legislators, military people, and investors out of even more money.

Fusion powered aircraft carriers and submarines and power plants will not improve anything. We already have nuclear power and fossil fuel power and look what we do with that.

If anyone really wants to "save the world" it will involve universal literacy, equal rights for men and women, comprehensive sex education for all children, and universal access to birth control.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=919963

When we first started building fossil fueled engines, more than 200 years ago, fossil fuel was, from the perspective of a human lifetime, essentially unlimited.

Unless we, as a species, achieve some kind of wisdom, inexpensive fusion power would be like giving a methamphetamine addict a truckload of the stuff.

[GliderGuider]

10. We're already well on our way to turning the entire biosphere into humans.

Even without Mr. Fusion...



Everything above about 200 MT on that graph is biomass that couldn't exist without human-produced energy and the technology to manage it. More is definitely not better in this case...

[Hortensis]

11. The issue is sustainable development. People aren't really willing to continue squatting

around fires in the center of their huts, old and worn down by the daily struggle to survive in their 30s, when they are well aware their relatives in town are watching TV and living more than twice as long. Bringing the true blessings of modern technology to all people requires sustainable energy. On the plus side, the birth rate of those with lives formed by plentiful energy drops precipitously. The focus shifts from reproducing for mere survival to advancing wellbeing.

The way to advance IS through advances. Birth rates for those born in highly developed nations are in negative numbers, populations shrinking. Creating their own temporary problems, of course, but much better ones.

[GliderGuider]

13. You're not an ecologist or systems scientist, I take it? nt

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

http://m.aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details[/font]

Guy Norris - Oct 15, 2014

[font size=4]Lockheed Martin aims to develop compact reactor prototype in five years, production unit in 10[/font]

[font size=3]Hidden away in the secret depths of the Skunk Works, a Lockheed Martin research team has been working quietly on a nuclear energy concept they believe has the potential to meet, if not eventually decrease, the world’s insatiable demand for power.

Dubbed the compact fusion reactor (CFR), the device is conceptually safer, cleaner and more powerful than much larger, current nuclear systems that rely on fission, the process of splitting atoms to release energy. Crucially, by being “compact,” Lockheed believes its scalable concept will also be small and practical enough for applications ranging from interplanetary spacecraft and commercial ships to city power stations. It may even revive the concept of large, nuclear-powered aircraft that virtually never require refueling—ideas of which were largely abandoned more than 50 years ago because of the dangers and complexities involved with nuclear fission reactors.

Yet the idea of nuclear fusion, in which atoms combine into more stable forms and release excess energy in the process, is not new. Ever since the 1920s, when it was postulated that fusion powers the stars, scientists have struggled to develop a truly practical means of harnessing this form of energy. Other research institutions, laboratories and companies around the world are also pursuing ideas for fusion power, but none have gone beyond the experimental stage. With just such a “Holy Grail” breakthrough seemingly within its grasp, and to help achieve a potentially paradigm-shifting development in global energy, Lockheed has made public its project with the aim of attracting partners, resources and additional researchers.

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.

…[/font][/font]

http://lockheedmartin.com/compactfusion

#t=139

[hatrack]

14. "Conceptually" - key word here, I think

.

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. I don't think so

Fusion would be safer than Fission.

Fission, happens spontaneously. In a fission based power plant, operators bring a bunch of radioactive material together, a chain reaction occurs, and then try to control it. If they lose control of it, it can melt down.

Fission produces long-lasting radioactive waste.

Fusion, happens naturally in the center of stars, but, elsewhere it is kind of difficult to keep going. (We've been working on it for decades.) If we lose control of it, it stops.

Fusion will produce smaller amounts, of shorter lived waste.

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. Does Lockheed Martin Really Have a Breakthrough Fusion Machine?

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531836/does-lockheed-martin-really-have-a-breakthrough-fusion-machine/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Does Lockheed Martin Really Have a Breakthrough Fusion Machine?[/font]

[font size=4]Lockheed Martin says it will have a small fusion reactor prototype in five years but offers no data.[/font]

By David Talbot on October 20, 2014

[font size=3]Lockheed Martin’s announcement last week that it had secretly developed a promising design for a compact nuclear fusion reactor has met with excitement but also skepticism over the basic feasibility of its approach.

Nuclear fusion could produce far more energy, far more cleanly, than the fission reactions at the heart of today’s nuclear power plants. But there are huge obstacles and no hard evidence that Lockheed has overcome them. The so-far-insurmountable challenge is to confine hydrogen plasma at conditions under which the hydrogen nuclei fuse together at levels that release a useful amount of energy. In decades of research, nobody has yet produced more energy from fusion reaction experiments than was required to conduct the experiments in the first place.

Most research efforts use a method that tries to contain hot plasma within magnetic fields in a doughnut-shaped device called a tokamak. Three research-scale tokamaks operate in the United States: one at MIT, another at a lab in Princeton, and a third at a Department of Energy lab in San Diego. The world’s largest tokamak is under construction in France at an international facility known as ITER, at a projected cost of $50 billion.

Tom McGuire, project lead of the Lockheed effort, said in an interview that the company has come up with a compact design, called a high beta fusion reactor, based on principles of so-called “magnetic mirror confinement.” This approach tries to contain plasma by reflecting particles from high-density magnetic fields to low-density ones.

…[/font][/font]

[FogerRox]

19. based on principles of so-called “magnetic mirror confinement.”

Could be a Polywell/Wiffleball design

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. No… It’s not a whiffleball

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531836/does-lockheed-martin-really-have-a-breakthrough-fusion-machine/

The interior of Lockheed Martin’s fusion reactor shows a series of rings used to create magnetic fields that confine plasma.