Nuclear Fusion - So, how we doing?

DRZ

DRZ

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Lockheed are working on a very compact fusion reactor at the Skunk Works, imaginatively called the Compact Fusion Reactor.

The aim is for it to fit into a shipping container. The science seems a bit controversial but is obviously plausible enough to carry on with development.
 
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OT but

It isn't much of a problem tbh, it is blown way out of proportion by the media. I specialised in applied radiation and nuclear physics at University and much of the waste product is re-used and heavily sought after in many industries. The rest is that is disposed of is disposed of very safely and easily and the quantity is surprisingly small. Fission is clean and manageable.

Fusion would be nice but we need more faith in the nuclear industry to get the sort of funding required. The public need to get over their fears of glowing green cartoon barrels and three eyed fish.

Relying more on fission now is the single greatest thing you can do for clean power and to market possible future investments of fusion to the average person. People seem to get freaked out when they see the word nuclear regardless of context. The cold war and freak disasters which should have never occurred, as well as the overhanging threat of weapons has given any form of nuclear energy a bad name. Much of the population wont find any form of power other than the obvious renewable sources acceptable, when they are quite frankly unreasonable to rely upon.
 
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Soldato
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I would expect it to be Helium.

It is but much of what is considered waste is still all theoretical due to the process being unfinished/incomplete/not practically applied.

So though your waste may just be heliem-4 but you might find the only way you can get the reactor to work is in a way which requires parts to be replaced or rebuilt. When the process of fission is undetermined you don't know what the end result could be.

There is a lot of BS on He-4 being produced in large amounts similar to CO2 but in reality, the amounts are insignificant if applied and the energy efficiency is conservatively estimated.
 
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Lockheed Martins Skunkworks project looked interesting but they've been very quiet for a bit.

If they pulled that system off it would be amazing.
 
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Steorn's Orbo > fusion ;)

Bad joke aside, read an interesting article about a slightly different reactor design....the one with the funny shaped chamber (think someone has posted a video above).
 
Don
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Tokamak style (ITER) fusion reactors are increasingly unlikely to be successful. Stellarator style ones (Wendelstein 7-X mentioned above) are seemingly inherently better at plasma containment than tokamak reactors and will in all likelood beat ITER to sustained self sustainment.
 
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Not sure if mentioned, but China has just as many fusion test facilities as Russia

http://chinadailymail.com/2015/04/1...fusion-device-says-it-is-catching-up-with-us/


I'm putting my faith in a portable Fusion device on Kickstarter for charging iPhones, they have got all the marketing done and they've made a really nice box using a 3D printer - now they just have to get the Fusion toroid to work.
Looking good :cool:
 

sid

sid

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Hey guys

I will be off to NIF california to work on fusion related experiments and science. The inertial confinement concept is quite different from magnetic systems like ITER but I'm not an expert on the latter.
Happy to answer some questions if you guys want.
 
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AFAIK there is the laser approach in USA, JET in Japan, ITER in Europe (to be built). I believe problems include reaching the 100million degrees to sustain a reaction and/or putting more energy in than it creates

JET is in Oxfordshire not Japan.

Japan did have a similar Tokamak facility until 2010 though.
 
Caporegime
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About 50 years away form commercial production as long as funding continues.

The problem with the likes of ITER is that even if successful, and we wont know until at least 20-30, the design itself still wont really lead to a commercial reactor. A lot more research, testing and building of reactors will be needed. And these things are so complex it takes 10-20 years to build minimum, plus typically 10 or more years of papper work, planning, funding etc.
 
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Caporegime
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Magnetic confinement is extremely unlikely to yield a quick result, and only because our electrical systems have noise to deal with and that effects the magnetic field such that it collapses.

There's likely a way to error correct it somehow, but I don't know.
 
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I thought this was not possible, I'm sure I read a few years ago that it was found to be impossible to do. Or maybe that was cold fusion?

If this happens I imagine it would make space travel a hell of a lot more viable?

This seems like a very dangerous thing to be messing with though. Much like the hadron collider. Wouldn't it make sense to do these experiments or ehatever in space? Even Doc Oc couldn't control it.
 
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