Radical Hydrogen-Boron Reactor Leapfrogs Current Nuclear Fusion Tech (newatlas.com) 185
HB11 Energy, a spin-out company originating at the University of New South Wales, claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected. Along with this announcement, the company also announced a swag of patents through Japan, China and the USA protecting its unique approach to fusion energy generation. New Atlas reports: The results of decades of research by Emeritus Professor Heinrich Hora, HB11's approach to fusion does away with rare, radioactive and difficult fuels like tritium altogether -- as well as those incredibly high temperatures. Instead, it uses plentiful hydrogen and boron B-11, employing the precise application of some very special lasers to start the fusion reaction. Here's how HB11 describes its "deceptively simple" approach: the design is "a largely empty metal sphere, where a modestly sized HB11 fuel pellet is held in the center, with apertures on different sides for the two lasers. One laser establishes the magnetic containment field for the plasma and the second laser triggers the 'avalanche' fusion chain reaction. The alpha particles generated by the reaction would create an electrical flow that can be channeled almost directly into an existing power grid with no need for a heat exchanger or steam turbine generator."
HB11's Managing Director Dr. Warren McKenzie clarifies over the phone: "A lot of fusion experiments are using the lasers to heat things up to crazy temperatures -- we're not. We're using the laser to massively accelerate the hydrogen through the boron sample using non-linear forced. You could say we're using the hydrogen as a dart, and hoping to hit a boron , and if we hit one, we can start a fusion reaction. That's the essence of it. If you've got a scientific appreciation of temperature, it's essentially the speed of atoms moving around. Creating fusion using temperature is essentially randomly moving atoms around, and hoping they'll hit one another, our approach is much more precise." He continues: "The hydrogen/boron fusion creates a couple of helium atoms. They're naked heliums, they don't have electrons, so they have a positive charge. We just have to collect that charge. Essentially, the lack of electrons is a product of the reaction and it directly creates the current."
The lasers themselves rely upon cutting-edge "Chirped Pulse Amplification" technology, the development of which won its inventors the 2018 Nobel prize in Physics. Much smaller and simpler than any of the high-temperature fusion generators, HB11 says its generators would be compact, clean and safe enough to build in urban environments. There's no nuclear waste involved, no superheated steam, and no chance of a meltdown. "This is brand new," Professor Hora tells us. "10-petawatt power laser pulses. It's been shown that you can create fusion conditions without hundreds of millions of degrees. This is completely new knowledge. I've been working on how to accomplish this for more than 40 years. It's a unique result. Now we have to convince the fusion people -- it works better than the present day hundred million degree thermal equilibrium generators. We have something new at hand to make a drastic change in the whole situation. A substitute for carbon as our energy source. A radical new situation and a new hope for energy and the climate."
HB11's Managing Director Dr. Warren McKenzie clarifies over the phone: "A lot of fusion experiments are using the lasers to heat things up to crazy temperatures -- we're not. We're using the laser to massively accelerate the hydrogen through the boron sample using non-linear forced. You could say we're using the hydrogen as a dart, and hoping to hit a boron , and if we hit one, we can start a fusion reaction. That's the essence of it. If you've got a scientific appreciation of temperature, it's essentially the speed of atoms moving around. Creating fusion using temperature is essentially randomly moving atoms around, and hoping they'll hit one another, our approach is much more precise." He continues: "The hydrogen/boron fusion creates a couple of helium atoms. They're naked heliums, they don't have electrons, so they have a positive charge. We just have to collect that charge. Essentially, the lack of electrons is a product of the reaction and it directly creates the current."
The lasers themselves rely upon cutting-edge "Chirped Pulse Amplification" technology, the development of which won its inventors the 2018 Nobel prize in Physics. Much smaller and simpler than any of the high-temperature fusion generators, HB11 says its generators would be compact, clean and safe enough to build in urban environments. There's no nuclear waste involved, no superheated steam, and no chance of a meltdown. "This is brand new," Professor Hora tells us. "10-petawatt power laser pulses. It's been shown that you can create fusion conditions without hundreds of millions of degrees. This is completely new knowledge. I've been working on how to accomplish this for more than 40 years. It's a unique result. Now we have to convince the fusion people -- it works better than the present day hundred million degree thermal equilibrium generators. We have something new at hand to make a drastic change in the whole situation. A substitute for carbon as our energy source. A radical new situation and a new hope for energy and the climate."
Heinrich Hora? (Score:2)
Geez, THAT guy is still around? I remember when he was trying to sell this stuff to Jimmy Carter.
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Uh huh. It sure "sounds" like they did from the investment guy (McKenzie). The literally have been talking about this exact approach for over 4 years now. Just send money.
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It sounds like they've managed to make this efficient, clean, and low cost. Not a good time to (whoever you are and whatever you've accomplished) out things down in this age of anti-human environmentalism.
But at the same time, easy to experiment with in places where such people are not a factor.
Re:Hear him out (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like they've managed to make this efficient, clean, and low cost.
Nah, it sounds like they're full of shit. From the article: " the director of an Australian company that claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected"
But also from later in the article that same director says: "First milestone is demonstrating the reactions, which should be easy."
So they haven't even demonstrated a reaction, but it's already working a billion times better than expected?
At lease they are bad at being snake oil salesmen - so whoever loses their money investing in this deserves to.
Low expectations? (Score:2)
So they haven't even demonstrated a reaction, but it's already working a billion times better than expected?
A billion times zero is still zero.
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Yeah, but it is a BILLION zeros.
Re:Hear him out (Score:4, Interesting)
So they haven't even demonstrated a reaction, but it's already working a billion times better than expected?
From the article:
Indeed, says Hora, experiments and simulations on the laser-triggered chain reaction are returning reaction rates a billion times higher than predicted. This cascading avalanche of reactions is an essential step toward the ultimate goal: reaping far more energy from the reaction than you put in. The extraordinary early results lead HB11 to believe the company "stands a high chance of reaching the goal of net energy gain well ahead of other groups."
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Simulations are only as good as the people who write them, and usually a lot worse. The proof is in the physical demonstration.
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The other key word there is "experiments", such as this one [fusenet.eu], from a French team in 2013.
There's some reality behind the simulations, and these guys aren't the only ones working on this. But of course there's no real certainty until they build a working reactor, which is still many years away.
Re: Hear him out (Score:2)
Read the article. The people being interviewed clearly don't know what they're talking about. They are trying to raise money based on "there's higher powered lasers, it'll work this time!" Fund them at your own risk.
Re: Hear him out (Score:5, Informative)
There's tons of peer-reviewed papers, and people are jumping to conclusions based on the wording of a popular media article. This is just silly. Also silly is the claim that there were attempts to "sell this to Carter" when the technologies involved didn't exist before the past decade.
For the record (since I took the time to actually dig):
* This is at its core ICF (Inertial Confinement Fusion). Or to put it plainly: trying to get a bunch of fusion to happen before the target blows itself too far apart ;)
* They're focused on p-B fusion, which is a well recognized reaction - aneutronic and with abundant, cheap fuel, but with a huge reaction barrier to overcome v. D-T fusion.
* Acceleration of the hydrogen is conducted by ultrashort laser pulses, which is a well-established technology. More specifically, they use chirped pulse amplification, which spreads out the (imperfect spectrum) pulses in time by wavelength, amplifies the broader pulse, then re-merges it into an ultrashort pulse of intense power. Again, this is well established.
* According to the papers cited, a number of experiments have repeatedly shown anomalously high p-B fusion rates when ignited via ultrashort laser pulses vs. expectations that existed from thermal plasmas. These appear to be due to secondary reactions: the high-energy alpha transfers sufficient energy to multiple boron atoms in an energy range with a high fusion cross section for them to initiate further p-B reactions.
* To amplify the fusion yield to the point of being useful for energy production, they initially investigated further confinement via static magnetic fields, but they were insufficient. But since these are extremely short (picosecond pulses) that are igniting the p-B reactions, they're able to utilize brief but intense (~1500T) magnetic pulses induced by a second laser to assist in confinement.
* The alpha particle yield (helium nuclei) are used directly to generate a charge (kinetic energy converted to electricial via deceleration across a charge gradient); this is very mature technology. As it's nonthermal, it's not limited by the Carnot limit that heat engines are limited by.
Very interesting approach. I'd need to take a lot of time to dig through other papers on the topics see what objections or nuance there might be to the proposed approach, though.
Re: Hear him out (Score:4, Insightful)
** high energy alphas transfer sufficient energy...
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Wait, you're breaking all the rules and reading more than the title or summar?
Quit doing that, you're going to run all the negativity.
Where's my reactor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where's my reactor? (Score:5, Informative)
They did think of this, but dismissed it. This guy has been selling the idea laser fusion for literally 40 years now. Not sure why this is coming out now (again). They talked about this exact approach (CPA) over three years ago. Must be needing a new funding round.
Re:Where's my reactor? (Score:5, Interesting)
They talked about this exact approach (CPA) over three years ago. Must be needing a new funding round.
Or maybe they got the machine built and it worked? That would be nice.
They claim that, by using a fast, tuned, laser pulse to swat the protons into and through the boron lump (rather than just heating the pellet until the surface vaporizes and the reaction squeezes the remainder into a tiny ball for a tiny fraction of a second) they can get an avalanche going in the ball (where the flying alpha particles bash more protons and borons together), for a nine-orders-of-magnitude improvement over "ordinary" laser-initiated inertial-confinement schemes like the Ignition Facility at Livermore.
If it works you're practically done. Get some p + B11 fusion going in the middle of a vacuum chamber and nearly all the fusion energy appears as kinetic energy of the helium nuclei flying away. Just collect it as DC with a few electrodes (at about a megavolt).
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The difference is that now, laser technology has advanced to the point you need for this type of fusion to work.
How is this fusion? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How is this fusion? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm unfamiliar with this unit of energy "Wikipedia article". Is there a Energy -> Mass conversion to Library of Congresses?
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But GP is correct, there is a lot of essential information left out of that article.
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For non-English speakers or those who haven'read a lot of pretentious writing, there is a missing comma, it should say "8.7 MeV, as per Wikipedia article". It means "according to the Wikipedia article".
Your interpretation is reasonable due to the missing comma, and is admittedly much funnier.
Re:How is this fusion? (Score:4, Funny)
For non-English speakers or those who haven'read a lot of pretentious writing, there is a missing comma, it should say "8.7 MeV, as per Wikipedia article". It means "according to the Wikipedia article".
Your interpretation is reasonable due to the missing comma, and is admittedly much funnier.
Sometimes, an extraneous comma is the problem: Eats, Shoots and Leaves [wikipedia.org]
Re: How is this fusion? (Score:2)
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How is this fusion? You are taking a large isotope (boron) and splitting it into alpha particles. This sounds more like radioactive decay, or fission, than fusion.
If this works it would fuse hydrogen with boron to create an unstable isotope of carbon that very quickly splits into three helium nuclei. Strictly speaking it's a fusion-fission reaction.
The idea isn't new.
Re:How is this fusion? (Score:5, Informative)
How is this fusion?
Boron 11 (5 protons, 6 neutrons) and Hydrogen 1 (a bare proton) fuse to form Carbon 12. This is the fusion reaction - the one difficult part of the process.
Carbon 12 is the commonest carbon isotope (98.93% of natural carbon). Normally it's rock-stable. But the newly fused nucleus is in an excited state. It quickly (at nuclear reaction time scales) springs apart into a Helium 4, a Beryllium 8. The Beryllium 8 then (also nuclear-reaction fast) springs apart into two more Helium 4s.
The flying Helium 4s share 8.7 MeV of energy as kinetic energy. The first one comes off with a well defined fraction of that energy. The other two split apart carrying the rest - but its distribution between the two varies somewhat, depending on the angle of their split versus their line of flight.
Nevertheless, you can collect something near 90% of the fusion energy as DC electricity, just by decelerating the flying helium nuclei with positively charged electrodes and then letting them grab electrons from the electrodes (at positive voltages in the ballpark of DC interstate transmission lines) and wander away as helium gas. From there it's stock electronics to shove it into the grid or otherwise make use of it. (You can scavenge much of the rest of the energy, too, if you're ambitious.)
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Re: How is this fusion? (Score:2)
I have always had this problem with nuclear power, all this massive equipment and highly radioactive material to make what... fucking steam, like in 18th century James Watt steam. There had to be a better way to get the energy out of a reactor, and just maybe, these guys might have cracked it.
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p-B fusion is an old idea - almost as old as fusion itself. In fact it's long been the holy grail of fusion energy dreams precisely because it's both aneutronic and heavily symmetrical, making conversion to electricity easy.
The downside is the fusion cross section is a few orders of magnitude smaller than deutrium fusion and other such "easy" reactions, which means the energy levels have to be dramatically higher to trigger the reaction.
Nevertheless, Dr. Bussard's Polywell team successfully demonstrated p
Re: How is this fusion? (Score:2)
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Worldwide energy consumption is 21,776,088,770,300 kWh/yr.
I can't do the math but I don't think there's enough boron in the known universe.
Where'd you get that number? Wikipedia gives something 3 x four orders of magnitude less for total energy consumption (and drop it more than another order for just the part delivered as electricity.)
You also forgot to multiply by the voltage and by the numbers of hours in a year, to go from amps to kWhr/year. Your three alphas - 6 protons - come off at a total of 8.7 M
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It's not that simple. You're taking a proton and inserting it into a boron nucleus. That nucleus then falls apart because it would rather be two heliums.
Re: How is this fusion? (Score:2)
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They're going to call it Mr Fusion. It's a bit too large for compact cars, but it would probably fit a De Lorean, say.
Re:Where's my reactor? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's amazing that the tens of thousands of scientists working of fusion over the years haven't thought of this yet.
p + B11 fusion is hard. It takes about ten times the ignition energy of d + t and runs about a third as fast.
Lots of people are working on getting it to happen right now - and have been for decades. This guy happens to be the one who's using very energetic, very short, laser pulses to swat protons into/through a hydrogen/beryillium ball.
The laser trick to focus all the energy into a very short, very powerful, pulse is just getting perfected. The next generation of the devices is expected to be powerful enough to break down the vacuum into electron-positron pairs (which is about as energetic as you can get with light, because it turns into particles when the electric field gets that strong.) So this is about the right time for such lasers to also be powerful enough to try igniting p + B11.
Re:Where's my reactor? (Score:4, Interesting)
We have recently learned how to use lasers to accelerate particles approaching the speed of light. Neither the knowledge of how to build the lasers needed nor technique for acceleration was available until recently.
Its pretty cleat that commercial fusion power generation is at hand, and yes, some reactor designs will be small and efficient for homes and vehicles.
The interesting idea known for a long time is that the deuterium - boron nuclear reaction yields alpha particles which means direct electrical generation. Unlike deuterium - deuterium or deuterium - tritium reactions there is no need for lots of heat and turbine driven generators.
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Temperatures needed for this reaction are unrealistically high, so a random heat brute force reactor is easily dismissed, We can't even do that with deuterium - tritium which requires temperatures 10 times lower.
However focused relativistic beams of hydrogen io
Believe it when someone else duplicates the result (Score:2)
Let us not have a repeat of cold fusion. (Though the Val Kilmer's The Saint, 1997, was a good movie, that was fiction.)
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I will think about believing it when someone else duplicates the results. Preferably several someones, and better yet, someone with both reputation and pedigree.
Fine with me. I'll wait and see what Greta has to say about all this . . .
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I will think about believing it when someone else duplicates the results. Preferably several someones, and better yet, someone with both reputation and pedigree.
Fine with me. I'll wait and see what Greta has to say about all this . . .
"Nuklear bad"
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"nukulur"
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Regarding your tag line, I liked it better as "If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization". (smile)
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Re: Believe it when someone else duplicates the re (Score:2)
This is in a research state. It's has to be proven and improved. Normally some hurdles will be found and a way must be found to take them. Many times one of the hurdles is killing it before it turns into an actual product, although this one sounds very promising regarding that.
No Heat exchanger or Steam Generator!?!?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
That is far more important than (or rather explains) the huge efficiency increase.
All nuclear (and fossil fuel) power plants are really just a steam engine connected to heat source. Some theoretical stuff use a heat exchanger, but most do not because they are inefficient.
All power plants except for solar photovoltaic use rotating magnets to produce electricity. This technique claims to avoid all that, acting more like solar power than anything else.
.
The direct conversion of any other kind of energy to electricity is a huge innovation, on par with discovering how to make an electric light. It is a major breakthrough that will change the world.
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You: Horseless carriage?? Pfft, I'll believe it when I see it.
Thankfully people explore outside your box of reality.
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smrt
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That's not clear. If he can covert Boron into alpha particles, those would be pretty easy to convert to heat, and should yield helium as a residue.
It's a question of whether the process will work as described. Also requirements for energy input compared to energy released. And a few other questions.
It definitely needs to be repeated by someone else independent of the company. That he's been pushing this idea for a long time isn't proof that it's no good, just that it takes a lot of development. But it'
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That's not clear. If he can covert Boron into alpha particles, those would be pretty easy to convert to heat, and should yield helium as a residue.
It's a question of whether the process will work as described. Also requirements for energy input compared to energy released. And a few other questions.
It definitely needs to be repeated by someone else independent of the company. That he's been pushing this idea for a long time isn't proof that it's no good, just that it takes a lot of development. But it's also no proof that it's a good idea.
Regarding pushing the idea for a long time. The breakthrough claim seems to be more in the recent development of lasers up to the task.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I believe it already. I just ordered a modestly sized HB11 fuel pellet to try it out for myself.
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Is what what you get after fusing eleven H1-Bs into a pellet?
Where else do you think indium comes from?
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Sure, it would be great. Problem is, it doesn't make sense. The article (and quote from the article in the summary) is pretty much babble.
But the big thing: why Boron? Helium3 is easiest for this trick. Okay, fair, it's rare, but presumably if you were serious about this, you'd show it works in the easy case first. Second and third easiest is Lithium (six and seven). It's not rare. You'd *definitely* get it working with Lithium first, before moving on to Boron.
Re:Skeptical, but hoping (Score:4, Informative)
Boron-proton fusion is a well-known fusion path. It just hasn't really been tackled previously because of the high energies needed. But in your assessment I think you're neglecting one of the really huge advantages of this fusion path -- it creates -no neutrons-. AFAIK all of the other lighter-element fusion paths do.
There're a few reasons why this is important.
One is that the shielding required is almost nil. You can have a spectacularly radioactive alpha source behind a few sheets of paper and practically nothing will get through.
Another is that there aren't any side-reactions. The vessel that you fuse in doesn't get radioactive, itself. In theory you could a PBe fusor open right after it's done, let it air out a bit, and then walk through it unprotected. A tokomak that's been running, on the other hand, will build up a supply of radioisotopes within the substance of its construction the more it's used.
This also has positive implications for the durability of the vessel. You don't have to worry about it breaking because some of it's been transformed into something else.
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When you're talking about shooting protons at nuclei, the difference between gasses and solids is pretty insignificant. Put your helium 3 in a glass bead. There's no need to cool it. If, for some reason, there are really important reasons to have a solid target, lithium is not only solid but an easily worked metal. You don't cool the pellet when it's reacting. That would be stupid. The whole point is to heat the thing up. The article describes it as knocking boron atoms about, but fast moving atoms is what
A billion times better? So they know nothign. (Score:5, Interesting)
When your theoretical predictions are wrong by a factor of a billion, that isn't a *good* thing. It means either your theory or your experiment is completely wrong so any future predictions are worthless.
You can do beam fusion - where a beam of atoms is directed at a target and some fuse. Works for Deuterium on deuterium, deuterium on tritium works very well - is used in commercial high energy neutron sources. Hydrogen on boron would certainly work to cause *some* fusions.
Meanwhile laser driven accelerators are a known technology. Not a lot of applications (for detailed technical reasons) but they do work.
The problem with beam / collision fusion is that the cross section is so small that you don't end up generating net energy. Not insanely far off, but too far for even a 100% efficient accelerator to work.
There is probably no practical way to "aim" the beam at the nucleus - the target is too small for any technology anyone has imagined. (but not fundamentally impossible as far as I know).
So it sounds like they built a beam driven fusion machine using a laser accelerator to generate the beam. It worked better than their (obviously badly flawed) predictions, but that doesn't mean it works well enough. Unless they can somehow aim the particles, I don't see any hope for breakeven.
Waiting now for someone to say its "quantum"......
Re:A billion times better? So they know nothign. (Score:4, Funny)
My guess is it uses quantum entanglement to double the output.
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Under the intense field the protons are going to oscillate back and forth under the optical electric field - note, the electrons will do this even more, as they are ~ 1/2000 as massive. With a beam, you only interact once, here the protons may interact for the lifetime of the pulse - which is very short. The question is the fusion yield vs the energy needed to drive the field. Muon catalyzed fusion worked very well - but the cost to create the muons was too high.
Re:A billion times better? So they know nothign. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that when the beam particle and target get close but not close enough for fusion, the particle is deflected. Very quickly what started as a beam becomes basically a hot plasma with the particles moving randomly, The laser can keep adding energy but its a lot like a plasma fusion machine then.
Its the same limit for farnsworth fusors. The (very clever) design attempts to recirculate the fairly high energy beam particles (usually Deuterons) but the scattering quickly makes the motion random.
I think there has been a lot of work put into this type of fusion concept, but the math is pretty straigthforward and as far as I know, it never gets near breakeven. (other than by making a huge high temperature machine that is really a plasma machine).
The tri alpha colliding plasma machine has the same issues. Initially the motion is fairly linear, but it quickly scatters into random. I can't do the calculation myself, but I think I remember a study from one of the national labs where they concluded that it wasn't much better.
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And to be clear they are not claiming breakeven:
Re: A billion times better? So they know nothign. (Score:2)
Everything is always 10 years out and heâ(TM)s actually applying longer. If something is longer than 10 years out it usually means they havenâ(TM)t got a clue.
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Save the Profit (Score:2)
a new hope for energy and the climate.
Prioritized slightly lower than enforcing their patent rights on anyone else attempting to use it to save the planet, naturally.
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When do you get the sugar?
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When do you get the sugar?
I believe it comes with the chicks.
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Just be sure you don't count them before they hatch.
Aneutronic fusion (Score:5, Interesting)
Neutrons are the bane of nuclear reactors. Since they have no charge, we cannot confine them using electromagnetic fields, which means they are free to run amok and damage the surrounding structures.
Boron+hydrogen is great because it does not produce neutrons. The reaction just produces alpha particles (aka helium nucleus).
More on aneutronnic fusion at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
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B-H fusion is great - its just substantially more difficult than D-T fusion because the higher charge of the Boron atom makes the fusion barrier higher. That makes it even more difficult to get to breakeven
If this is real... (Score:2)
If this is real, it's incredibly important. However, and notably, they don't publicize efficiency numbers, something that, if this were close to real, they'd be trumpeting to the sky. As such, I'm still skeptical. I can too easily see this being just a pitch for additional funding.
In short, show me a reactor that actually produces energy.
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Deceptively simple ? (Score:2)
we have a process for this (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds a LOT like cold fusion. We've been here before. Prove it. Prove it, and prove it again. Until then, it's just a claim.
Bullshit. (Score:2)
I'm not into nuclear physics enough to disprove the claim that they are generating alpha-radiation. Hmm. Firing hydrogen (mass 1) into boron 11 (atom number 5, mass 11) and getting 3* He2+ sounds possible on a counting-particles basis. (If you're getting alpha particles it sounds as if you're doing fission and not fusion. And with these atoms that's likely to COST energy instead of produce it!). .... I did some calculations... This reaction does produce energy. on the order of 8Mev, but this is totally out
More than slightly misleading (Score:2)
It would be a leap frogging of other technology if it actually hit a breakeven point, but this is just a push to draw in funding.
Patents... Ignoring the existing fusion power plan (Score:3)
First of all... This is government-financed research, isn't it?
So it belongs to the people of the UK, and you can fuck off with your greedy greasy paws, right?
Secon of all, we already have a much better fusion reactor. You might have seen it at day, outside, in the sky!
This here might indeed be a fun thing.
But it's yet another tech depending on (relatively) short-term resources and (!) dependence on a corporation. Which of course will be you.
If you actually gave a fuck about humanity, you'd have invented it with the sole purpose of improving humanity and hence for everyone to enjoy it. That't make you an actual hero. Not a business thug.
(Ignore all this, if I misread, and they indeed plan for everyone to benefit from this.)
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Re: A swag of patents? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: A swag of patents? (Score:5, Funny)
A trolling of patents.
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I would go with the terminology used in the patents themselves. They almost always use the stilted term "a plurality" to refer to any amount more than one, even if already obvious to the reader, such as: "A memory device comprising a plurality of data values".
So I would say that these researchers have filed documents comprising a plurality of patents.
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I would go with the terminology used in the patents themselves.
Well what's the fun in that?
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Mocking lawyers with their own ridiculous terms is fun. Probably more fun if they got it, but you can't have everything.
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>I would suggest an innovation of patents.
I thought the proper term was a thicket.
After all, the entire purpose of a patent is to stop related innovation by other people unless they have the patent-holder's permission. The innovation is all in the past by the time a patent is filed.
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Re:A swag of patents? (Score:5, Informative)
A swag is a traditional Australian jargon going back to the 19th century, for a bundle of possessions, usually a bag + bedroll.
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Point being: this is from an Australian article, and swag originally meant an itinerant person's bundle of stuff, not bling.
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Seems like it still does if you look at most swag.
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A swag is a traditional Australian jargon going back to the 19th century, for a bundle of possessions, usually a bag + bedroll.
And here I always used SWAG for "Scientific Wild Ass Guess", as opposed to just a WAG.
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We always called the crap the company would hand out at team building events SWAG (Stuff We All Get) so ...
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Re: Cold Fusion and washing machines (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cold Fusion and washing machines (Score:5, Funny)
Also I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure you can't patent starting a nuclear fusion process.
Clearly not a lawyer, agreed.
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You must be new here.
Also, not a boomer.
Re:Cold Fusion and washing machines (Score:5, Interesting)
O.K. boomer. Instead of telling the poster he's definitely not a lawyer why not cite a source or patent law or something.
Because its common knowledge among those with a modest education that patents cover novel inventions. So if your ignition system is novel, ie not the way a star does it, it is entirely patentable despite the big glowing ball of nuclear fusion in the sky during the day. People with a modest education would have implicitly recognized this fact as the basis of the mockery that the poster provided.
Re: (Score:2)
What he said.
Re: Cold Fusion and washing machines (Score:2)
Hey!
You don't know that isn't how the sun got fired up! For all you know it could have been intergalactic sharks with friggin lasers on their heads...
Re: (Score:2)
There's really no reason to cite shit. If you've been here for the long term, then you've already seen many of this idiotic non-proposals. Yes, with completely obviousity to any smart slapdasher, you can always patent a "method for doing X". We've seen it time and time and time again here with all the idiots that took existing patents and addied "..with a computer" to it, and ended up with a brand new patented method.
Patenting light? No, too obvious. Patenting a method for generating light, yes you can.
Don'
Re: (Score:3)
> but copying the entire article is probably outright plagiarism.
It's lazy copyright infringement, not plagiarism.
Try this:
Using 10PW Chirp-Pulse Amplification lasers, a pellet of BH11 is fused inside a metal sphere. The fusion-product alpha particles' lack of electrons creates a net positive charge inside the vessel that can be drained from the system as electricity.