Fusion Progress: Superheated Gas Kept Stable For 5 Milliseconds 96
An anonymous reader writes: A company called Tri Alpha has successfully kept a ball of superheated gas stable for a record time, 5 milliseconds, putting them closer to producing fusion power. "'They've succeeded finally in achieving a lifetime limited only by the power available to the system,' says particle physicist Burton Richter of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who sits on a board of advisers to Tri Alpha. If the company's scientists can scale the technique up to longer times and higher temperatures, they will reach a stage at which atomic nuclei in the gas collide forcefully enough to fuse together, releasing energy.
Importantly, the Tri Alpha machine may be able to operate with a different fuel than most other fusion reactors. This fuel-a mix of hydrogen and boron-is harder to react, but Tri Alpha researchers say it avoids many of the problems likely to confront conventional fusion power plants." The article does not say how much this success cost the privately-funded Tri Alpha, but it certainly wasn't in the billions of dollars.
Importantly, the Tri Alpha machine may be able to operate with a different fuel than most other fusion reactors. This fuel-a mix of hydrogen and boron-is harder to react, but Tri Alpha researchers say it avoids many of the problems likely to confront conventional fusion power plants." The article does not say how much this success cost the privately-funded Tri Alpha, but it certainly wasn't in the billions of dollars.
24/7 here we come... (Score:3, Insightful)
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As amusing as this kind of comment is, we need to remember that it's easy to be the cynic in the peanut gallery. We're not the ones doing the work while being laughed-at, nor usually even the ones willing to invest in it. From that perspective we don't really deserve to see it in our lifetimes.
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I'm not criticizing the researchers, I'm just saying that time estimates like that are always bogus. I don't believe these researchers have claimed that fusion is 30 years off, either.
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That's just the Montgomery Scott effect: always tell 'em it's 30 years away. If you honestly believe there are professionals who know, then I have a couple of bridges to sell you.
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We're also not the professionals that keep telling us it's 30 years away
with a certain amount of funding. Without the funding, the researchers have said it will never happen.
http://focusfusion.org/index.p... [focusfusion.org]
Unfortunately, fusion research has been laughably underfunded since that quote (which I can't seem to find on the internet, but someone has it I am sure).
Hovercar? (Score:1)
Re:24/7 here we come... (Score:5, Funny)
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According to my translation table "30 years from now" is never.
Call me when it will "be out next year," then there's a chance I'll see it in my lifetime.
"30 years" is code for "I'll be out the door before the bill comes due.".
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"avoids many of the problems likely to confront conventional fusion power plants.""
Where is this magic industrial park when I can drive down a row of conventional fusion plants?
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We have been expecting cold fusion in 30 years for about 50 years now.
Start expecting it in five. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have been expecting cold fusion in 30 years for about 50 years now.
Actually it's HOT fusion we've been expecting in 30 years for a long time. (Cold fusion, other than the apparently useless muon-catalyzed form, was a "maybe it's possible - no apparently not" flash in the pan)
But THIS one is big: It's not that it lasted 5 ms. It's that it lasted 5 ms WITHOUT DECAYING. That almost certainly means that:
- either they've completely solved the instability issues and it's just a matter of scaling up (and using superconductors or adequate cooling so they can run continuously),
- or they've solved them well enough to hold the plasma ball together until it's paid for itself several times over, then make another one (repeat continuously) and it's just a matter of scaling up (and using superconductors or adequate cooling so they can putt-putt-putt continuously).
Now if other problem show up (but aren't a fundamental refutation of this indication of stability) we might end up expecting fusion in five years for another fifteen or so. But I think the "30 years forever" thing has just been evicted from fusion and is living with its brother in copyright extension.
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Re:24/7 here we come... (Score:5, Funny)
35, actually. Everyone knows fusion power plants become available in 2050.
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2500MW output, here we come!
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Expect 24/7 operation in 30 years.
And the energy it produces will be too cheap to meter.
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ITER is expected to be finished in 2019 and start full experiments in 2027. It isn't expected to maintain fusion pulse for more than few minutes or generate any electricity. Once/if they make real research progress, next stage may be DEMO, it may be 2 GW plant, but is not expected to be commercial and is basically vaporware. First commercial station will be after DEMO some time too far in the future.
And in between, we already have very stable fusion plant up in the sky every day. It is called "Sun" and prov
Re: 24/7 here we come... (Score:2)
"Too cheap to meter" is typical central-planning nonsense. Fusion power only needs to be cheaper than everything else by a margin to ensure its selection and expensive enough to repay the capitalists that are risking their fortunes to make it happen. Fortunately for us, bureaucrats can only forestall markets - fantasy never works in the long game.
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Well, I tried to feed the DC, but had my polarity reversed.
record ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't understand the difference between this record compare to current record of holding plasma, which is about 16min.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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They are using A different technique. Instead of using external magnets the plasma uses it's own magnetic field.
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They are using A different technique. Instead of using external magnets the plasma uses it's own magnetic field.
Can't they just get a LOT of the stuff and let the plasma use its (w/o an apostrophe, by the way) own gravity for containment?
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Yup. Totally doable, just look outside this night and you will see millions of those devices, smart people call them stars. The tricky part could be to bring one of them to earth without annihilating us.
So you're saying it's just an engineering problem, right?
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Light is just fine actually.
Re:record ? (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.sciencemag.org/phy... [sciencemag.org]
There's a link explaining the differences.
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unfortunately the source is a dead link, see foot note 18 here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Here a 60sec burn, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] :)
Can't put my hand on other video I'd seen in the past, one of which was 7min. I keep searching, must still be there somewhere
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6min30 for a Tokamak design, record date is 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
some video of it: http://www-fusion-magnetique.c... [www-fusion...que.cea.fr]
So 1000sec in 2012 is not a shock to me.
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Maybe the previous record was limited by some physical feature instead of "just" energy supply even if the energy one lasted much shorter time.
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I think it is here and it's 6 and a half minutes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Long way to go (Score:2)
So I wish them luck, but to do what they want means they need 3 billion degrees to ignite and they are at 10 million. Over two orders of magnitude seems difficult. I like that their reaction is not radioactive though. It means if they ever do hit the 3 billion, the reaction will not destroy the equipment from the radiation.
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No, it will just destroy the equipment from the intense heat and radiation flux.
The point of aneutronic fusion isn't lifelong operation. You pretty much forfeit any chance of that when you deal with the power fluxes necessary for fusion. The point of aneutronic fusion is elimination or reduction of high-level radioactive wastes which are extremely dangerous and take centuries to decay.
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They also don't need to breed Tritium which is a big plus.
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Not all forms of fusion require tritium. D-D is much easier than aneutronic fusion.
Not that far when you think "voltage" (Score:4, Interesting)
to do what they want means they need 3 billion degrees to ignite and they are at 10 million
Each electronvolt is equivalent to 11,500 degrees Kelvin. So they need to run at about 200 kV instead of 870V. Piece of cake.
This is whyFarnsworth fusors are tabletop "gassy vacuum tubes" and the issues with polywell machines are things like geometry and electromagnet wiring rather than applying excitation energy.
Kelvin is the same size degree as celsius but offset by a couple hundred degrees so zero is absolute zero. At 3 billion degrees the difference between water freezing and absolute zero is noise. If TFA's degrees are fahrenheit the offset is still noise but scale the voltage back to 144 kV.
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So they need to run at about 200 kV instead of 870V. Piece of cake.
The symbol for electronvolt is eV, which is a unit of energy and to not be confused with a volt.
This is whyFarnsworth fusors are tabletop "gassy vacuum tubes" and the issues with polywell machines are things like geometry and electromagnet wiring rather than applying excitation energy.
First off, there is a big difference between something like a fusor which is basically accelerating a beam of particles to some amount of eV that is similar to the applied voltage, and something going for a thermal distribution with same amount of eV spread out with a tail of the distribution that does most of the reactions. Also, you don't just easily scale up voltage past several 10s of kV, as you start reachi
Re:Not that far when you think "voltage" (Score:5, Informative)
First off, there is a big difference between something like a fusor which is basically accelerating a beam of particles to some amount of eV that is similar to the applied voltage, and something going for a thermal distribution with same amount of eV spread out with a tail of the distribution that does most of the reactions
Fusors and polywells aren't about beams. They're about assembling a plasma object that is already hot, by compressing it during the assembly.
The fusor does this by having two concentric spherical electrodes, the inner one skeletal, with a large voltage between them. Positive ions fall inward essentially radially, accelerated by the field until they pass through the inner electrode, and fly on orbits that pass through the center of the spheres. They "pile up" as they pass through the center, thus mapping the acceleration voltage directly into compression temperature as well as high average density. (Unfortunately a small number of ions hit the inner electrode on each pass and are lost. So though it's a great fusion-neutron source breakeven isn't in the cards.)
The polywell does the same thing to electrons - with the added tweak that the inner electrode contains a set of magnet coils that get the electrons to travel in paths that mostly miss the electrode. As they orbit through the center the high average density there is effectively a third high-voltage negative electrode, producing a radial electric field between this "virtual electrode" at the center and the inner physical electrode. Positive ions fall in toward the virtual electrode (nearly neutralizing it) and again you get a high density and inward velocity, mapping the electric field into temperature.
It looks to me like the field-reversed configuration does the same sort of thing, compressing the plasma in a way that maps the electric fields (both directly applied and created by the magnetic field change) into particle acceleration during the compression, and thus into temperature. Unlike Tokamaks and similar devices, you don't "put a low-density plasma in a (magnetic) can" and then have to heat it up. You heat it by squeezing it when you initially assemble it, accelerating the particles toward each other, and that maps your compression forces into temperature - which turns a moderately high voltage into a relative particle speed that has a hysterically high number when expressed as temperature (at the same time that you're also raising the density) Hold it together long enough, don't let it interact with solid matter to cool it, and you've got the holy trinity for fusion. No ongoing heating required.
Also, you don't just easily scale up voltage past several 10s of kV, as you start reaching a lot of material limits for break down (even in vacuum), and engineering gets more difficult for 100+ kV in a small space.
So:
- Expand the space (which also gives you more plasma volume and thus more power output at a given density), and
- Keep anything but ionized, under-control, gasses out of the working region
100+ kV is not all THAT difficult to handle in an industrial-sized volume. Air at atmospheric pressure has a breakdown of about 40,000 v/in (though this drops as pressure is lowered). A clean vacuum (except for the working plasma itself) isn't too tough either: Television picture tubes worked fine with no arc-over at acceleration voltages of about a kilovolt per diagonal inch (i.e. 25 kV for a 25" picture tube) and far more than a kV per inch inside the tube. A machine twenty feet across would have substantially lower electric field at 200 kV.
Which is not to say that there won't be issues trying to scale this. But I wouldn't expect anything insurmountable from what you've alluded to here.
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It looks to me like the field-reversed configuration does the same sort of thing, compressing the plasma in a way that maps the electric fields (both directly applied and created by the magnetic field change) into particle acceleration during the compression, and thus into temperature.
Then again, this machine also builds TWO plasma donuts and crashes them into each other (where they combine) at "a million kph" - no doubt also by electrical-field acceleration. Another opportunity to scale up the heating by
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Fusors and polywells aren't about beams.
The fusor only achieves fusion by directly accelerating particles between the two electrodes such that it is acting like a single stage linear accelerator. This is the only example where your voltage directly controls energy. The ability of the fusor to hold anything thermally is really, really bad, and the reactions are pretty much from those that have been directly accelerated. It is basically accelerating a beam of particles, between the two electrodes. The pile up is actually a problem, because the
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The work might be being done in America - land of the Fahrenheit [wikipedia.org], if not land of Fahrenheit [wikipedia.org] - but since non-Americans are involved then there is no chance that they'll be working in Fahrenheit.
That's a pretty big if.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not when... but if.
So, basically, not in anyone's lifetime that is alive right now.
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Woo hoo! (Score:1)
Great, but (Score:2)
Tri-alpha's tech is really amazing, it really is. I've read a couple of their papers. They are a talented group and they've got the funding as well.
But let's not kid ourselves here. Fusion is not going to be a realistic energy source any time soon. Further, even if we had fusion power, we probably wouldn't use it, as we already have far cheaper sources of clean power available: http://reneweconomy.com.au/201... [reneweconomy.com.au]
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An actual fusion plant (not holding my breath here) would be able to generate base load much more efficiently than either wind or solar and in any location you can think of. They could also be built anywhere you want to put them, reducing the issues with transmission.
There's definitely a place for it, and that place is to definitively replace fossil fuel and nuclear plants.
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The entire 'base load' argument is a red herring; energy storage is already fairly mature and will only get better over time. Further, the major users of electrical power - large industries - rarely need constant power and usually schedule their power needs according to availability. This has nothing to do with being 'green'; they do this to minimize costs and have been doing this for as long as electrical power has been in wide use.
Base load power is actually a burden in many circumstances because you have
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Only if you build fusion plan right now for the fraction of the cost of fission plant. But it is not going to happen of decades at least. It is highly unlikely that storage will not get many times cheaper by then.
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You can't have stored wind or solar for anywhere near the cost of fission, why set the goal posts so low for fusion?
Energy storage is very expensive, it isn't just around the corner from being affordable.
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What is the cost of fusion, why should it be cheap? You really have little idea what it will be or when it will be on Earth at all. Most likely at least first plants will have very high capital cost, just like fission, and will not be viable without taxpayer subsidies.
Storage costs are going down rapidly, around 8-14% per year. At that speed, storage will use increase and it would fund further development of storage technology. By the time fusion will be ready, storage costs will be irrelevant.
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Storage costs are going down rapidly, around 8-14% per year. At that speed, storage will use increase and it would fund further development of storage technology. By the time fusion will be ready, storage costs will be irrelevant.
Too cheap to meter huh? Or perhaps you don't understand that what you say is impossible?
Storage always costs more than production, and always will. Decreasing trends don't last forever, and it will slow down, and in fact, it can only get so cheap. Solar is about on par with nuclear without the storage, and is getting cheaper, but can only be so cheap.
BUT, what you tried to say which I was responding to was this:
Only if you build fusion plan right now for the fraction of the cost of fission plant.
So, what you are doing is moving the goal posts. Fission already costs a fraction of solar an
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Storage always costs more than production, and always will. Decreasing trends don't last forever, and it will slow down, and in fact, it can only get so cheap.
Any arguments why it only can get so cheap? It doesn't make any sense to me. Sure trends can change, but it doesn't look likely with all that increasing funding in battery research and increasing demand for storage. I can get a quote from local home solar PV installers with or without battery backup (Tesla Powerwall or whatever). Cost difference for 5.5kW is just $16k vs $23k, plus you have backup in case of grid outage. It isn't enough for seasonal storage, but enough for daily.
Only if you build fusion plan right now for the fraction of the cost of fission plant.
So, what you are doing is moving the goal posts. Fission already costs a fraction of solar and offshore wind, without the storage requirement. Why would you expect that fusion should cost a fraction of a fraction of all other power generation methods?
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/a... [eia.gov]
You are contradicting yourse
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I feel as though you may not understand what the base load is.
It is the base, the floor, the amount of power that is used (almost) all of the time. Base load generators are big, they are cheap, and they tend to throttle very poorly.
Energy storage would help with peaking power, and that is a huge win. Base load sources are optimized for the most amount of power for as little money as possible, peaking power is highly variable, so they generally require compromises in efficiency. Energy storage can help with
Fusion power (Score:1)
Forget power production, Fusion power will give us the stars. We would do our local planets with fission, but environmental impact is too costly.
Fusion has been 10 Years away for 60 years (Score:2)
I'll believe it when I see it.
I kept superheated gas stable for 5 minutes once.. (Score:2, Offtopic)
I'll give it 20 years. (Score:2)
5 milliseconds is long enough (Score:1)
5 milliseconds of power? Hook that up to my TV and that will be just long enough to see all the good parts from the Fantastic Four movie.
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Aneutronic fusion again? (Score:1, Insightful)
Wheee - yet another team using the promise of Aneutronic (but not really) fusion to build hype and probably bilk the uninformed out of donations. Boron / Proton fusion is literally 500 times harder than D + T fusion. D + T fusion is by far and away the easiest target for achieving fusion, but we haven't even been able to do that to the degree needed for useful power generation.
Walk before you run, or in this case, walk before anti-grav-hover boot soccer tournaments.
This looks familiar from 37 years ago (Score:3)
As far as I can tell from the article this looks familiar from 37 years ago.
Check out the Trisops [wikipedia.org] project.
Disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia article and a co-author on the cited paper.
Re:This looks familiar from 37 ... CORRECTION (Score:4, Informative)
CORRECTED LINK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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As far as I can tell from the article this looks familiar from 37 years ago.
As I read the article in your (corrected) link, the project 37 years ago got the plasmid to form and last for 5 MICROseconds, then ran out of money and got mothballed for a couple decades and had their equipment reactivated in a (never heard from again) lab around the turn of the millenium.
Maybe if they'd had funding to keep going, and figured out what these guys did (or something else) to keep things stable for three orders of magn
Please captain, help me out to understand... (Score:3)
Ok, so I've got a huge interest in fusion research. But as a lot of people in /., I don't have enough knowledge to understand how big of a deal it is.
First, 5ms look kinda small, especially when we got no reference as comparison. What was the precedent record? What was the longest fusion was kept "stable" before? Or is it the first time fusion are reached something that could be called a "stable" stabe for "x" time?
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What was the longest fusion was kept "stable" before?
Fusion reactions have gone on for several minutes in some large machines. But that is in tokamaks, which is a different beast with different pros and cons, and also a lot more funding and experience. Things like FRCs on the other hand tend to only last microseconds in a lot of other setups, so this is a big improvement there, and they also require a lot less equipment and energy to form.
At the end of the day though, you need a combination of how long you can holds stuff, how hot it is, and how much stuff
Potential barrier (Score:1)
CONgress is screwing up. (Score:2)
Just as O and the dems did his AE subsidies , right now, the GOP should be working with O to re-start American nuclear R^D and esp. the Development.
WIth a 5B / year fund for say the next 4-6 years, invested into a number of start-ups, we could have multiple companies trying various approaches.
At the same time, we need to deal with the waste and
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In a breakthrough like this, you "win" by leeching.
As researchers solve the intermediate steps, they will publish (no-one will believe unverified results) in order to get continued funding. This research will not be government top secret so you will only ever be one step behind. One party will make the final breakthrough but others won't be far behind. Yes there could be patents, but that won't stop other governments for something like this.
I'm just glad there are still governments that aren't this cynical
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So Oliphant really was a smartipants! (Score:1)
The other big question is... (Score:1)
If this will ever become competitive with other sources, given that it will require a large amount of equipment and a lot of staff to run it and long transmission lines, etc., vs. hills full of windmills and rooftops full of PV panels feeding right into homes and stores. "Too cheap to meter....?" We've heard that before.