Nuclear fusion is coming, says noted VC

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9866626-54.html

February 7, 2008 7:14 AM PST

Nuclear fusion is coming, says noted VC

Posted by Michael Kanellos

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.--Nuclear fusion will move from the lab to reality in a few years, a noted venture capitalist says.

"Within five years, large companies will start to think about building fusion reactors," Wal van Lierop, CEO of Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, said in an interview at the Clean Tech Investor Summit taking place here this week. In three to four years, scientists will demonstrate results that show that fusion has a 60 percent chance of success, he said.

If van Lierop were some crazy guy off the street with an old stack of Omni magazines, you could dismiss him. Fusion--which extracts energy from nuclear reactions without the dangers associated with nuclear fission--has been studied for decades, but has yet to go commercial. Van Lierop, however, isn't a random individual. He is one of the earliest and more active investors in clean tech: Chrysalix started investing in clean energy in 2001. The firm's limited partners include BASF, Shell, and Rabobank.

Chrysalix's optimism is pinned on an angel investment the company made in General Fusion, a Canadian company that says it has found a way to hurdle many of the technical problems surrounding fusion. The company's ultimate plan is to build small fusion reactors that can produce around 100 megawatts of power. The plants would cost around $50 million. That could allow the company to generate electricity at about 4 cents per kilowatt hour, making it competitive with conventional electricity.

The company uses a technique called Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) model. In this scenario, an electric current is generated in a conductive cavity containing lithium and a plasma. The electric current produces a magnetic field and the cavity is collapsed, which results in a massive temperature spike.

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http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1364/1/

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[phantom power]

1. I think I'll dismiss him anyway.

Omni magazines or otherwise.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. General Fusion's Approach

http://www.generalfusion.com/t5_general_fusion.php

General Fusion's Approach

General Fusion is using the MTF approach but with a new, patented and cost effective compression system to collapse the plasma.

GF will build a ~3 meter diameter spherical tank filled with liquid metal (lead-lithium mixture). The liquid is spun to open up a vertical cylindrical cavity in the center of the sphere (vortex). Two spheromaks (magnetized plasma “smoke ring”) are injected from each end of the cavity. They merge in the center to form a single magnetized plasma target. The outside of the sphere is covered with pneumatic rams. The rams use compressed steam to accelerate pistons to ~50 m/s. These pistons simultaneously impact the outside of the sphere and launch a spherical compression wave in the liquid metal. As the wave travels and focuses towards the center, it becomes stronger and evolves into a strong shock wave. When the shock arrives in the center, it rapidly collapses the cavity with the plasma in it. At maximum compression the conditions for fusion are briefly met and a fusion burst occurs releasing its energy in fast neutrons. The neutrons are slowed down by the liquid metal causing it to heat up. A heat exchanger transfers that heat to a standard steam cycle turbo-alternator to produce electricity for the grid. Some of the steam is used to run the rams. The lithium in the liquid metal finally absorbs the neutrons and produces tritium that is extracted and used as fuel for subsequent shots. This cycle is repeated about one time per second.

The use of low-tech pneumatic rams in place of sophisticated high power electrical systems reduces the cost of the energy delivered to the plasma by a factor of 10 making such a power plant commercially competitive. Because the fusion plasma is totally enclosed in the liquid metal, the neutron flux at the reactor wall is very low. Other fusion schemes struggle with a high neutron flux at the wall that rapidly damages the machine and also produces some radio-active material. Frequent robotic replacement of the then radio-active plasma facing components is a costly problem for many fusion machines.

General Fusion has patented this technology and believes that a reactor working on this principle could be built at a much lower cost than using the old magnetic and laser fusion approaches. Such a power plant would make fusion a commercially viable clean power source.

Interesting...

[FogerRox]

12. Heres a scale prototype device (wb-6, circa 2005)

Schematic magnetic fields

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. This diagram is of Bussard fusion device

I'm hoping the folks at EMC2 pull it off.

However, this device is quite different.

[FogerRox]

19. have you been to

http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php

[OKIsItJustMe]

22. No, I haven't. Perhaps I'll check it out.

Thanks for the pointer.

[OKIsItJustMe]

23. Would you suggest it over

http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/

[FogerRox]

26. Thats MSimons blog ,many of us @ talk polywell blog. MSimon is quite the prolific blogger

I think at this point talk polywell is polywell central. But iecfusiontech is nearly one and the same as talk polywell.

[tridim]

6. Someone will figure it out eventually, I wouldn't dismiss it outright.

We have a massive fusion reactor in the sky, so it's not as if it's not possible. What we don't have yet is the energy to match the gravitational energy of the Sun.

This one isn't cold fusion either, unless I'm reading it wrong.

[phantom power]

7. I'm rooting for the fusion guys. I really am.

There's a couple dark-horse approaches with champions who think they can leapfrog the BFM(*) approach. After 30 years of reading Omni magazines, my attitude toward such things is something like "I'll reserve my celebration until somebody actually makes it work." Coincidentally, this is also my basic attitude toward claims about cheap solar and massive electric grid storage systems.



(*) BFM = "Big Fucking Magnet"

[FogerRox]

13. No its not cold fusion and probably based on the POPS paper

but way to complicated to be practical. Try Polywell fusion.

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. I have great hopes for polywell fusion

Focus Fusion would be just fine with me.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760

I'll take just about any working fusion scheme that comes along. (With the notable exception of bombs.)

[FogerRox]

20. Umm, I think Lerner may be ah, ahh, nuts.

[FormerDittoHead]

2. Looks like it would fit into a De Lorean right about here...

edit: miss spelled due to the name of the picture file:
"back-to-the-future-car-dolorean.jpg" Otherwise, I really wouldn't know how to spell it.

[malakai2]

3. But does it run on banana peels and beer cans?

.

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. ahem ... De Lorean

(Check the back bumper.)

[NNadir]

8. You would have to know zero about nuclear technology to believe this.

Most anti-nukes on this site qualify for knowing zero about nuclear technology.

Any fusion technology depends on access to tritium and there are zero potentials for making tritium without fission technology.

In fact, the world supply of tritium, collected over more than 50 years of fission technology - mostly in Canada - is about 18 kg, which in the fucking stupid theory that we need fusion technology - would be enough to run one 500 MW(th) fusion power plant for six months.

In fact, the anti-nuke cult wouldn't know a safe form of energy if it bit them in the ass, which in fact, actually happens. Every single anti-nuke cult member I have encountered over the years is completely oblivious to the external cost of energy.

The most we can expect from dumb anti-nuke sockpuppets is daily announcements about new solar breakthroughs and zero announcements of new solar exajoules.

[speedbird]

10. ITER will breed its own tritium

or at least they will try to.

http://fire.pppl.gov/isfnt7_giancarli.pdf

[FogerRox]

14. ITER/Tokamak or toridial fusion wont work, Polywell is more promising.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/27/211948/500/175/377150

[FogerRox]

11. "Any fusion technology depends on access to tritium " Quite wrong

Both Polywell and IRRC POPS, dont envolve tritium. What you did was to assume any fusion technology is Tokamak fusion. Of course toridial fusion wont work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBfsq80EgOs

Dr Nebel formerly of Livermore, is working in Santa Fe on Polywell & currently using DD fuel, the goal of polywell is to use P-B11.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/13/224458/454/929/436375


http://www.askmar.com/Fusion_files/Some%20Physics%20Considerations.pdf

I love solar and wind, but I assume you want to talk about fusion right........

[TheWraith]

25. Actually, I believe they're running the Polywells on proton/boron reactions, tritium free.

Even if we went with a deuterium/deuterium fuel cycle, we wouldn't be limited by tritium supplies--in fact, a d/d cycle would be tritium positive.

[FogerRox]

27. Polywell is being run on DD, the goal is to use PB-11.

DD fusion requires about 25% less ion acceleration than Pb-11, making DD test devices easier to build and run. THough theory says DD break even occurs at 1.5 meters, while PB-11 break even would occur at 2 meters, and 500MW net power should occur at 3 meters. The current WB-7 is about 30cm.



The current device being tested in Santa Fe is WB-7, the same size as WB-6, whose 30cm magnetic core is pictured here:



At http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php we have assembled an open source engineering proposal (WB-7x)that is the same size, but doesnt use capacitor banks to power a test run, it will use grid power, as well as LN2 cooling of magnets. Long story short is to build a device that can run on the order of 100's or 1000's of seconds, not the milliseconds that WB-6 and 7 were/are limited to.

WB-7x would be capable of much higher ion acceleration levels, aka potential well strength. Which should yield increased neutron counts over previous DD fueled devices. WB-7x would also have the power to explore the resonance spike in the 50 to 65 Kev (acceleration) area where theory says PB-11 will fuse.

Being the first to PB-11 fusion would be a huge blow to the ITER Tokamak projects.

Regardless, Polywell scaling laws must be explored. So building a device double the size of WB-7 is a logical step. WB-6 &7 operated in pulsed mode, on the order of 3 milliseconds, where fuel ions were puffed in as a gas. This is because the lack of magnet cooling, and not using grid amps to power test runs. These constraints have kept the cost down on these small test devices, but have also limited their performance.

Eventually superconducting magnets will be used, likely at the proof of concept 500MW net power generator size of 3 meters.

[TheWraith]

28. Cool. Anybody scrounging parts to build it yet?

Seriously, after some of the shit I've seen people online do when they put their minds to it, I could see it happening.

[FogerRox]

29. The WB-7 test runs should be done by this summer, the word is

if WB-7 validates the WB-6 results, then the project will be Manhattenized. AS it is, there a number of folks that have built "basement" fusors, and put videos on you tube. I hear these were built for well under $5000.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fusor+IEC+fusion&search_type=

DR Bussards former assistant, Tom Ligon built a fusor in the late 1990's...

[OKIsItJustMe]

30. Nice choice of T-Shirt

I assume that's the cover of the issue with his article in it. (That's where I first read about Bussard's research.) I probably still have it (somewhere...)

[FogerRox]

31. LOL, good guess, Tom had a second article printed in '07 IIRC

[TheWraith]

32. Hey, it's the reincarnation of Abe Lincoln! Or at least his beard. nt

[diane in sf]

9. That's fine, wind and solar are here right now.

[OKIsItJustMe]

16. Yes they are (as you know, I'm a fan of both)

However, viable nuclear fusion would be a big deal.

[FogerRox]

18. Completely replacing oil is a big deal, yes. IT is the future of the human race.

[Nihil]

21. Good luck to them.

It's always interesting (in an academic way) to watch the latest attempt
to carve even bigger hats for the statues ... and to hear the novice priests
tell us that "This one will really sort out all of our problems - just watch!"

:popcorn:

[hunter]

24. Liquid Metal and steam powered rams...

This is a national emergency, call the secret service, someone has stolen the papers of Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Loveless


This would be great stuff for a steampunk novel.