MigL Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 Lockheed-Martin, the aerospace and defence giant, has promised a working fusion reactor of the high Beta type, using cylindrical magnetic containment and radio waves to heat deuterium and tritium. They say thy'll have the capability to meet global baseload energy demands by 2050. Any opinions or information as to where they are currently in their project would be appreciated. Is this another example of capitalism solving the world's problems because there's profit in it ?
swansont Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 The reports I read admitted they don't even have a working prototype. Many an idea has found rough going between the concept and the working product. Is this another example of capitalism solving the world's problems because there's profit in it ? If it ends up working, I suspect it will be more of an idea of capitalism leveraging socialism — the basic research in this has been government-funded. It will be a matter of capitalism picking up the burden once the research has gotten close enough to where it might be profitable.
imatfaal Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 Is this another example of capitalism solving the world's problems because there's profit in it ? And I am not sure that a company which gets 85% of its income from a single governmental source is exactly a shining beacon of independent capitalism
beejewel Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 I watched the promotional video, the guy they interviewed was confident he would be looking for another job once he had completed the fusion project. That's a pretty bold claim for a technology that has never even lit up a light bulb. My confidence in fusion has followed an exponential decay curve since I started working on the problem in 2005, one simply can't heard light nuclei together against their will, they move too fast. Steven
DrP Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 That's a pretty bold claim for a technology that has never even lit up a light bulb. My confidence in fusion has followed an exponential decay curve ... The JET broke even in 1996!.. I do not know what ITER has been doing - I haven't been following it. Where do you work? I would have LOVED to work on the problem, but my grades were not high enough to get a research place at JET. Now I have a Ph.D., but in the wrong field to seriously consider applying to work on anyhting fusion related.
Sensei Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 (edited) Deuterium isotope has 115 ppm, particles per million, abundance. That's it, you have to process ~39 tons of water to have 1 kg of Deuterium. You have to spend energy to separate isotope. Tritium isotope doesn't exist in nature in amounts needed for industry, and must be made.. Edited October 31, 2014 by Sensei
swansont Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 The JET broke even in 1996!.. For how long? And was there a viable path to producing net, usable energy? (i.e. to light a light bulb, as beejewel put it)
MigL Posted October 31, 2014 Author Posted October 31, 2014 Of the two problems, heating and the much more serious confinement problem, supposedly they've got a design for a cylindrical containment using modified mirror technology for the ends, and other 'tricks' to re-confine escaping plasma. I don't really know much about fusion tech to be able to describe it. I have always believed the way forward is not renewable energy, but fusion energy, so if anybody is doing research/engineering to make it feasible, I get excited. The fact that its a big, capitalist company like Lockheed-Martin gives added confidence as they don't do anything without seeing the light of profit at the end of the tunnel. They must believe they have some hope of succeeding, unlike a research institute which doesn't care about eventual profits. The fact that the L-M research/engineering effort is being conducted at Clarence "Kelly" Johnson's Skunk Works also gives me confidence. Any outfit that could engineer a plane like the SR-71 back in the 50s has gotta have a few tricks up their sleeve.
CharonY Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 But isn't that only true if LM is investing its own money? I am not certain of the funding arrangement, but if the majority are governmental funds LM is getting monety to build something that may not work, but could produce patentable spin-off technologies (depending on intellectual property arrangements).
Sensei Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 The fact that the L-M research/engineering effort is being conducted .. There is also antimatter (antiprotons) created at CERN.. It doesn't automatically mean there is more energy produced in this process than it's used to make it happen..
beejewel Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 There is also antimatter (antiprotons) created at CERN.. Please define antiprotons, and where are they ? (except for the odd one in particle colliders)
Strange Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 Please define antiprotons, and where are they ? In the trap. http://alpha.web.cern.ch/node/200
Sensei Posted October 31, 2014 Posted October 31, 2014 (edited) Please define antiprotons, and where are they ? (except for the odd one in particle colliders) Antiprotons are created during protons accelerated to relativistic velocities collide with rest protons. They can be held indefinitely in magnetic traps. [math]p^+ + p^+ \rightarrow p^+ + p^+ + p^- + p^+[/math] They have the same properties as normal protons, except charge that is -1e. Edited October 31, 2014 by Sensei
swansont Posted November 1, 2014 Posted November 1, 2014 But isn't that only true if LM is investing its own money? I am not certain of the funding arrangement, but if the majority are governmental funds LM is getting monety to build something that may not work, but could produce patentable spin-off technologies (depending on intellectual property arrangements). Yes, it would be interesting to know if there is government money involved, or if this is purely a L-M venture because they think it'll work. One of the articles I read said the L-M is looking to partner with a university to make the prototype, which makes me suspect that they have limited experimental resources devoted to this and they want to leverage another lab's existing infrastructure to make this work. Which is fine, but it explains how this ends up being a low-risk/high-reward venture. One also has to note that not getting a working device is not necessarily a business failure; it can still yield dividends in the form on new proprietary knowledge and patents of things they learn/develop on the way, especially if someone else has paid for a lot of it.
MigL Posted November 1, 2014 Author Posted November 1, 2014 Don't have time to look this up now, but I thought I read L-M has already filed for three patents. One relating to containment metchanism/geometry.
Bluemoon Posted November 3, 2014 Posted November 3, 2014 Confidence in this project may explain the following directive by the US Senate issued in July :- "the Committee directs the Department of Energy to work with the Department of State to withdraw from the ITER project" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
DrP Posted November 4, 2014 Posted November 4, 2014 Hi Swansont - sorry - I do not know the answer to your questions.. But the 'break even' mark was always considered the holy grail for fusion... it happened without much fuss or report about 20 years ago (princess Dianna died, which overshadowed everything else that happened and was news worthy)... presumably with enough energy for a light bulb, but I do not have the quantised figures I am afraid. I was told this verbally over breakfast with a chap that worked there. .... as for the conclusions drawn as to the viability of the process??.. well - they are still building ITER I think.. so it must be viable to enough to chuck billions into a new tokamak. (Not sure why I couldn't get the quote button to work today - no worries)
swansont Posted November 4, 2014 Posted November 4, 2014 Hi Swansont - sorry - I do not know the answer to your questions.. But the 'break even' mark was always considered the holy grail for fusion... it happened without much fuss or report about 20 years ago (princess Dianna died, which overshadowed everything else that happened and was news worthy)... presumably with enough energy for a light bulb, but I do not have the quantised figures I am afraid. I was told this verbally over breakfast with a chap that worked there. .... as for the conclusions drawn as to the viability of the process??.. well - they are still building ITER I think.. so it must be viable to enough to chuck billions into a new tokamak. (Not sure why I couldn't get the quote button to work today - no worries) There have been a couple reports of systems achieving break-even or better, but for only a fraction of a second. While that's a significant milestone, it's still a long ways off from sustained net useful energy generation and further still from a commercially viable product.
Endy0816 Posted November 4, 2014 Posted November 4, 2014 It will all be worth it when we finally have a Fusion powered Orlando Eye.
Strange Posted November 6, 2014 Posted November 6, 2014 More on this here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429944.300-little-reactors-may-be-best-path-to-nuclear-fusion.html
swansont Posted November 6, 2014 Posted November 6, 2014 I think some (most? all?) of the skepticism is that the claims about fusion over the years are very similar. Saying, "We have a new idea and will have a working model in ~a decade if you give us the money to develop it" is almost exactly what everyone else has said before this.
Wilmot McCutchen Posted November 9, 2014 Posted November 9, 2014 There is an excess of tritium in the Fukushima wastewater, and superheavy water could be centrifugally separated. The availability of deuterium and tritium for fusion should not be a major obstacle to development of sustained net usable energy generation. Magnetic confinement fusion appears to be making progress away from tokamaks. Hot fusion still has a pulse. From Strange's link: "Spheromaks were in vogue in the 1970s when Jarboe began working on them at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, but back then they couldn't confine a hot plasma for longer than the blink of an eye. The car-sized experiment that Jarboe has working today is the first spheromak to confine high-pressure plasma. "It could go on indefinitely if we had the cooling and power supply," he says."
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