Nuclear Fusion...a two decades away great hope

So just in the past few days, MIT announced a breakthrough in much more powerful magnets to confine the hydrogen isotope plasma so it would fuse and generate fusion energy like our sun.

Well those who know me, can rest assured I was a bit skeptical, even though I have great faith in MIT (they are almost as qualified as Cornell). But The Guardian, who I also have great faith in, is confirming my skepticism.

The Guardian view on nuclear fusion: a moment of truth

New Fusion Power Prospect - the Dynomak

I have made 6 posts about fusion status, and I confess none have been very optimistic for near term economical fusion power generation....BUT.... now we have....

The Dynomak.....a fusion reactor envisioned to be small enough to fit on a truck. That sizing is so desirable, because local power generation is so much more secure from severe weather events, and because the best fusion power candidate to date is the ITER Tokamak, which is HUGE, and hugely expensive.

I am optimistic....and it is this kind of human ingenuity that may save us as a species, as well as our planet Earth, and the other plant and animal species who we depend on, and in turn depend on a livable planet.

LENR - Low Energy Nuclear Reactions

Now with a headache and an overwhelmed brain, I offer the best two links I could find on the title subject.

First, from New Energy Times: LENR is Not "Cold Fusion" - A Crucial Distinction

And second from Wikipedia when I searched for LENR and got: Cold Fusion
In paragraph 5 of this link the authors make the statement: A small community of researchers continues to investigate cold fusion, now often preferring the designation low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR).

What is my opinion at this point? It would be great if LENR could be developed as a green energy source, but I am not optimistic, especially since the science can not be explained. If after researching it further, you come to a different conclusion, I would love to hear it. I did sign up for email headline notices from New Energy Times, but did NOT subscribe to their full publication at $40/yr.

Fusion Power Optimism at NIF

NIF = National Ignition Facility, and they have very recently used high power lasers to compress a Hydrogen fuel pellet enough to achieve a fusion reaction releasing more energy than the laser beams contained. According to the BBC, this was a first in the quest for power generation via nuclear fusion, which is combining light atoms, as opposed to conventional nuclear fission, which involves splitting heavy atoms, like uranium.

More on this in Class 5. Optimistic Bill

ITER - Thermonuclear Fusion

Image from the Belgian portal to ITER

We talked a bit about fusion energy production in our last Osher class, so I felt it worthwhile to refresh my knowledge of where this stands. The title link is to a page on the ITER site which has a very good summary of fusion research to date, and an outlook for the future.

If you like what you read on the linked page, please browse the site more fully. It is amazing technology and an easy to navigate site! There are also several other approaches to controlled nuclear fusion which I will review in the future, but ITER is the biggest, most researched, and most funded approach.

Note: ITER was originally an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. Now ITER is just ITER, but for Latin lovers, it can also be The Journey.

Aneutronic Fusion

Aneutronic fusion is fusion that takes place without generating any neutrons. This is desirable because high energy neutrons make material they interact with radioactive. One of the most studied aneutronic fusion reactions is one proton (hydrogen nucleus) reacting with one Boron-11 nucleus to create 3 Helium nuclei and a great deal of energy. The title link takes you to a page on the the Focus Fusion web site with an excellent animation of this reaction.

If you like what you see, you then can spend many more days studying Focus Fusion's approach, technology, and tests results to date. One of the more intriguing aspects of this approach is that high energy Helium nuclei generated by a proton-B11 fusion reaction are positively charged, and can thus be directly converted to electricity, bypassing the heat-to-steam cycle of coal and conventional nuclear power plants.

Why have I presented this topic in a Climate Blog? Because this technology does not generate any CO2 or other greenhouse gases, and it has the potential to become a major source of power generation, although that is seemingly quite far away at present.

Laser Fusion at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

Laser fusion, also known as Inertial Confinement Fusion, uses extremely powerful lasers to heat and compress a deuterium/tritium fuel pellet to a temperature and density where fusion will take place. It has been studied since the 70's. One of the main problems has been making powerful-enough lasers. The other challenge has been the accuracy with which the laser beams must impact the fuel pellet. If the impact is not perfect, the pellet does not implode precisely enough to achieve the needed density for fusion.

In the linked Newsweek article, Edward Moses, head scientist at the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, portion of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, believes they have overcome these problems and will demonstrate productive laser fusion (more energy out than in) some time in the next year.

Fusion energy producing devices

The above link is to the sustainable energy page of the finbliz web site, which now contains summary information and links to ITER, Focus Fusion, and Z-pinch sites. IF one of these concepts can be made to work on a large and economical scale, then truly the world will never run out of energy.

My assessment? ITER's large Tokamak plasma containment device will work, but because of its huge size, complexity and costs, will it ever do so economically? Focus Fusion's "Dense Plasma Focus" device almost seems "to good to be true", but its compact low-investment machine is certainly good from an economic perspective. Z-pinch at present can not fire repeated pulses, so this issue needs to be solved. Would I keep working on these concepts? Most definitely yes, as the stake is monumental. Bill