Alternative to Tokamak Fusion Reactor 266
Sterling D. Allan writes to tell us OpenSourceEnergy is reporting on a "far more feasible and profoundly less expensive approach to hot fusion". Inventor Eric Lerner's focus fusion process uses hydrogen and boron to combine into helium which gives off tremendous energy with a very small material requirement. Lerner's project apparently only requires a few million in capital investment which is a far cry from the $10 billion being spent on the Tokamak fusion project.
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Magnetic reconnection [pppl.gov] in traditional fusion reactors is seen as a bad thing because it shoots particles in unpredictable directions that often can't be contained by the confining magnetic fields. So it results in a loss of plasma density and also eventually puts small holes in the sides of the reactor.
If these particles are that energetic it seems to make sense that they could be used to heat the plasma if they could be controlled. No idea if they are energetic enough to be used alone though.
That magnetic reconnection thingy is also what causes the northern lights.
call me a sceptic, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition, Eric Lerner is a believer in the plasma universe theory; he wrote a book on the matter called 'the Big Bang Never Happened', which apparently makes him popular with the evolution-denier crowd. Again, questionable associations.
He's also criticised [aip.org] the peer-review scientific process, calling it open to fraud. Just unfortunate that peer-review has not been kind to his own research, I imagine.
I'm no physicist, but it seems his process passes a short, extremely high current from a coffee-can sized copper electrode through a low-pressure hydrogen-boron mix.
The current's magnetic field forms a small hot ball of plasma, a plasmoid, (without external magnets) and when the current's magnetic field collapses it induces an electric field that heats the plasmoid so much, it ignites fusion reactions that create more electrons & ions, which can be converted back into electricity via an advanced transformer that converts an ion stream to electricity.
So basically, pass an electric current though low-density hydrogen-boron in a coffee can, and you get spontaneous fusion - so much so, you get over-unity? Somehow, it strikes me as a little too easy to be true.
Shockingly enough, Lerner has yet to demonstrate over-unity, but that's because the government is so in bed with the oil-companies, they won't give him any money. NASA gave him some money, looked at his results, and dropped him.
I won't call him a junk-scientist, but I think I'd like to see some peer-reviewed and repeated evidence of his results before I lend his theories much credence.
Re:Send in the Clowns! (Score:3, Interesting)
And I certainly have no interest in pleasing Jeremy Rifkin or anyone like him. I thought once of buying him a pair of wooden clogs, like the ones a certain group of people used to throw into factory machinery.
It doesn't seem occur to people like this that an unlimited power source would open up the entire solar system for exploitation. Regardless, countries like China and India are "using up even more of the planet even faster" without such an energy source, so in the long run we'd be better off having it.
Potential dangers for home fusion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can any one say "Cold Fusion" (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't see why though, since he only needs $1.5 - $2 million dollars. With all the money we throw at such horrible research, why the NSF can't throw $2 million this way is beyond me.
Who knows? Maybe it's literally too good to be true and scientists that know the lingo, know it?
Migma reactor is another fusion concept (Score:1, Interesting)
Some URLs are at: http://www.rexresearch.com/maglich/maglich.htm [rexresearch.com],
with a good bio page on Maglich at: http://www.hienergyinc.com/company/bio_maglich.ht
Re:Eric Lerner (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Eric Lerner (Score:3, Interesting)
modern reactor emergency shutdown systems are usualy designed to drown the reactor core in boron to end the chain reaction immediately in the event of an "un-requested fission surplus"
random fact for the day & Obligatory Simpsons quote all in one
Re:Maybe, maybe not (Score:3, Interesting)
Not all "services" can be economically automated, even with unlimited cheap energy. Without centralized control of life's necessities (energy, food, housing, etc.) there would be no incentive for anyone to participate in the "service" economy. Without limits on those necessities, there would be no centralized control.
It would even be difficult to get people to work on automating any "services" that are truly necessary. Unnecessary services, (the type that the ultra-wealthy enjoy), would simply disappear. No more waiters, chefs, strip clubs, massages, nurses, plastic surgeons. Anything that couldn't be automated, or people wouldn't do for free, simply wouldn't get done.
Even though the living standards of most people would go up, the living standards of the extremely wealthy would go down. Not by much, but they would go down.
Of course, I don't believe all of this to be true. But it's what a majority of those in wealth and power believe. And until they are either convinced otherwise or deposed, they will fight to maintain their illusions.
A Dialog (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, we can't observe it. That's why we call it dark.
Then how do we know it exists?
Well, our cosmological model needs it to exist to make sense. Our cosmological model is very good. We know this because we can measure many aspects of the universe and our model predicts all of them.
Except the amount of matter, for which it's badly, badly off.
Well, yes. But it's the best we've got.
Well, I've got a competing theory, it's not perfect, but it doesn't require the bulk of the matter in the universe to be unobservable.
That's going to be a problem. You see, the weight of the community is behind our theory, and because it requires an acceptance of a major unobservable, unmeasurable component, it's sort of become
Re:Eric Lerner (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem is that if the red-shift is really from the Doppler effect then redness ought to be smoothly and evenly distributed across the cosmos. But it isn't.
In the 1997 it is was observed [ldolphin.org] that the red-shift occurs in quantum steps. An alternate theory that explains the redshift AND the quantum steps is the redshift is actually caused by a descrease in the speed of light, that galaxies are not moving away from each other, and that there was no Big Bang. This theory has other implications that also nicely explain some of the problems with the current theory quantum mechanics, such as why doesn't an electron collapse into the nucleus.
Several Billion dollars really isn't that much (Score:2, Interesting)
Sad to say we are a small contributor to the international fusion effort too. Hopefully the next administration will be more forward-thinking.
Re:A Dialog (Score:3, Interesting)
Focus fusion (Score:5, Interesting)