Lockheed says makes breakthrough on fusion energy project

[bananas]

Source: Reuters

Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire told reporters.

In a statement, the company, the Pentagon's largest supplier, said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year, and build a prototype in five years.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/us-lockheed-fusion-idUSKCN0I41EM20141015

[bananas]

1. Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details

Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details
Lockheed Martin aims to develop compact reactor prototype in five years, production unit in 10
Oct 15, 2014 Guy Norris | Aviation Week & Space Technology

<snip?>

Although the company released limited information on the CFR in 2013, Lockheed is now providing new details of its invention. Aviation Week was given exclusive access to view the Skunk Works experiment, dubbed “T4,” first hand. Led by Thomas McGuire, an aeronautical engineer in the Skunk Work’s aptly named Revolutionary Technology Programs unit, the current experiments are focused on a containment vessel roughly the size of a business-jet engine. Connected to sensors, injectors, a turbopump to generate an internal vacuum and a huge array of batteries, the stainless steel container seems an unlikely first step toward solving a conundrum that has defeated generations of nuclear physicists—namely finding an effective way to control the fusion reaction.

“I studied this in graduate school where, under a NASA study, I was charged with how we could get to Mars quickly,” says McGuire, who earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scanning the literature for fusion-based space propulsion concepts proved disappointing. “That started me on the road and [in the early 2000s], I started looking at all the ideas that had been published. I basically took those ideas and melded them into something new by taking the problems in one and trying to replace them with the benefits of others. So we have evolved it here at Lockheed into something totally new, and that’s what we are testing,” he adds.

To understand the breakthroughs of the Lockheed concept, ...

<snip>

[grahamhgreen]

5. Well, that's much more informative. Let's see what they have in a year....

[Treant]

2. Interesting, but...

Still not completely carbon-neutral. It's a lot better, though.

We'd still have to separate deuterium from ocean water, and spallate tritium from lithium which will have to be mined.

It'll be fascinating to see if this bears out or whether, like every other fusion announcement, quietly disappears. Not because it's buried, but because it simply doesn't work.

[grahamhgreen]

3. What, is the stock slipping?

This is what I got out of it:

"If it proves feasible"
&
"Lockheed shares fell 0.6 percent to $175.02 amid a broad market selloff."

[Treant]

7. Not on the market yet

Plus falling 0.6% wasn't all that bad in today's selloff.

If it works, and if it can be used in the public grid, expect Lockheed to make a (blank)-ton of money.

[grahamhgreen]

8. id love to see them get into tis and out of war (at least to some degee)

[exboyfil]

4. Fusion power will always be just 10 years

away.

[Adrahil]

16. Ummm.....

Until recently, it was always 50 years away. Great strides in the last few years.

[pangaia]

6. Ready in a decade?

Come on you guys, get the lead out...so to speak.

[Playinghardball]

9. Here is a video about the breakthrough. Restarting the Atomic Age

[bananas]

14. Ten years til use in military vehicles, twenty til commercial availablity.

At time stamp 3:23 he says:

"Ten years? We have great military vehicles.
Twenty years? We have clean power for the world."

[Nihil]

20. It's so predictable it would be funny were it not also so sad.

There's nothing quite like making devices to kill more people in a shorter time to get
the old inventive brain cells functioning is there?

[TRoN33]

10. I wonder... Will Lockheed share that tech with rest of us or is it exclusive...

For the rich and elite and their corporations? This tech will led to more breakthrough in medical, science, technology, and many countless applications. It will change the way how we live on this world unless rich and elites block it from us.

NASA just made a breakthrough with once deemed unworkable space thrusters that will speed up the space travel, from Earth to moon in less than hour instead of few days. Mars? Potentially few months instead of current best opium speed, three years. Fusion would accelerate that much faster, Earth to moon in few minutes and to mars in maybe few days.

It's up to Lockheed and government how they would decide to share it with rest of the world or make it exclusive only for elites.

[Dreamer Tatum]

12. You're kidding, right?

They'll clamor to roll it out all over the world, to everyone.

[Calista241]

13. They'll make zillions of dollars in licensing fees.

It will still have to be competitive with other fuel sources, or people simply won't adopt it. Lockheed will make so much money it'll be obscene.

It remains to be seen if it'll actually work. And, didn't they make a big announcement about the skunk works closing a couple years ago?

[Orsino]

23. But they should be careful about flying until then.

Big Oil is not dying quietly.

[Calista241]

24. We'll still need oil for the foreseeable future.

As a lubricant if nothing else.

[Adrahil]

17. They'd be glad to sell it to anyone, I'm sure. NT

[Phlem]

11. Curious how much said reactor will cost.

Last edited Wed Oct 15, 2014, 06:09 PM - Edit history (1)

I'm thinking clean energy is great but it won't be free. We need free energy for the masses meaning buying your own equipment, making your own and getting off the grid, not being forever tied to it and course, clean. Like hydrogen fuel cells. Using solar for electrolysis and storing your hydrogen in a tank.

[tclambert]

15. It could fit on a large airplane.

For a long time the Air Force has wanted planes that could stay aloft for days at a time. Air cruisers. Airborne aircraft carriers. Lots of sci-fi possibilities here.

[daleo]

18. I will believe it when I see it

I will go ahead with installing solar panels in the meanwhile.

[Mister Nightowl]

19. So, which Muslim country will they be testing it in?

[Adrahil]

21. Not sure what you mean? NT

[hunter]

22. Oh boy, enough energy that we can turn the entire biosphere into humans!!!

And everything else into automobiles, highways, airliners, and trash. Great mountains of trash.

I can't wait.



That's probably how Idiocracy or WALL-E happened.

If I didn't think this news was bunk I'd lose all hope for earth's future. Instead it's just Lockheed standing in front of the lab door whispering, "Don't go in there, it's secret" to con clueless legislators, military people, and investors out of even more money.

Fusion powered aircraft carriers and submarines and power plants will not improve anything. We already have nuclear power and fossil fuel power and look what we do with that.

If anyone really wants to "save the world" it will involve universal literacy, equal rights for men and women, comprehensive sex education for all children, and universal access to birth control.