Fusion energy milestone reported by California scientists

[jakeXT]

Scientists are creeping closer to their goal of creating a controlled fusion-energy reaction, by mimicking the interior of the sun inside the hardware of a laboratory. In the latest incremental advance, reported Wednesday online in the journal Nature, scientists in California used 192 lasers to compress a pellet of fuel and generate a reaction in which more energy came out of the fuel core than went into it.

There’s still a long way to go before anyone has a functioning fusion reactor, something physicists have dreamed of since Albert Einstein was alive. A fusion reactor would run on a common form of hydrogen found in seawater, would emit minimal nuclear waste and couldn’t have the kind of meltdown that can occur in a traditional nuclear-fission reactor.

“You kind of picture yourself climbing halfway up a mountain, but the top of the mountain is hidden in clouds,” Omar Hurricane, the lead author of the Nature paper, said in a teleconference with journalists. “And then someone calls you on your satellite phone and asks you, ‘How long is it going to take you to climb to the top of the mountain?’ You just don’t know.”

Hurricane and other scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, home of the multibillion-dollar National Ignition Facility, took pains to calibrate their claims of success. This was not fusion “ignition,” the NIF’s ultimate ambition. The experiment overall requires much more energy on the front end — all those laser shots —than comes out the back end.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fusion-energy-milestone-reported-by-california-scientists/2014/02/12/f511ed18-936b-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

[Esse Quam Videri]

1. Saw this last year and was very intrigued

Lockheed Martin is promising a 100MW prototype reactor by 2017.

http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockheeds-skunk-works-promises-fusion-power-four-years

[Lionel Mandrake]

2. There's an opportunity to make big bucks here

by selling them short if they ever go public. It's a safe bet that these airplane guys won't succeed when they plunge into a business where they have no experience.

[kristopher]

3. Today on NPR re: restoration of MIT's fusion funding

While the fusion reactor was shut down, Mumgaard worked on side projects. He began writing his thesis and considered his next move, possibly China. The U.S. has about 200 to 300 fusion grad research students. China has 2,000 to 3,000 and an ambitious fusion program.

“I’d probably have gone overseas where the funding is maybe more secure and long term,” Mumgaard says. “It would have been a problem. I possibly would have left the field.”

But late last month Congress restored most of MIT’s fusion budget and renewed the U.S. financial support for an international fusion reactor being constructed in France. It’s based on MIT’s reactor but will be 10 times bigger and more powerful, designed to prove commercial fusion power is possible.

“We think you could put electricity on the grid in 20 to 30 years, but that would require a real crash program,” Greenwald says. “At the rate we’re now going, it would be longer. Fifty years is more like the kind of number.”

http://www.wbur.org/2014/02/06/mit-fusion-center-federal-funding

[The Polywell Guy]

4. 13 Year old does Fusion. Was on Letterman show (4-9-2014).

Howdy,

I worked on NIF for many years. It is never going to be commercial.

For the past 5 years, I have been blogging about Fusors and Polywells. They are a relative new method for fusing the atom.

They use an electric field to heat ions to fusion conditions. Basically, the electric field does work on the ions, heating them.

Fusors will never make power because the wire cages conduct away ions. Polywells might work. They swap the cage for a cloud of electrons.

These things are incredibly simple to build and are very cheap. I think this path shows so much more promise, than tokamaks or lasers.

====

On March 4th, an 8th grader in Lincolnshire England, became The Youngest Person In the World To Do Nuclear Fusion. He built a fusor, for 3,000 pounds, in his middle school. His name is Jamie Edwards. His story was reposted across the web. He got a letter of congratulations from His Royal Highness, Prince Andrew, The Duke of York.

Jamie was on the letterman show talking about Nuclear Fusion, on Wednesday. You can watch the clip here:

[IMG][/IMG]