The long wait for fusion power may be coming to an end

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/long-wait-fusion-power-may-be-coming-end-ncna833251

Renewable energy sources like solar and wind account for a growing share of the world’s electric power. That’s no surprise, given concerns about the carbon emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants and their harmful effect on the climate.

Nuclear energy offers some advantages over renewables, including the ability to make electricity when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. But today’s nuclear plants use fission, which splits atoms of rare metals like uranium. Fission creates radioactive waste and can be hard to control — as evidenced by reactor accidents like those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Another form of nuclear energy known as fusion, which joins atoms of cheap and abundant hydrogen, can produce essentially limitless supplies of power without creating lots of radioactive waste.

Glad to see so many projects underway in the article.

EnigmaO01 said:

Glad to see so many projects underway in the article.

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You're right. The U.S. DOE walked away from development of fusion in 1997. They were doing tokamak research just outside Princeton, NJ. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak_Fusion_Test_Reactor

JacksinPA said:

You're right. The U.S. DOE walked away from development of fusion in 1997. They were doing tokamak research just outside Princeton, NJ. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak_Fusion_Test_Reactor

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My uncle was a nuclear engineer that worked on the Princeton reactor. He also installed nuclear reactors in aircraft carriers.

Our country needs clean safe and cheap electrical power if we are to stay relevant in the world of commerce, manufacturing, and trade. I consider this very good news indeed.

https://phys.org/news/2018-03-laser-heated-nanowires-micro-scale-nuclear-fusion.html

Laser-heated nanowires produce micro-scale nuclear fusion with record efficiency

Nuclear fusion, the process that powers our sun, happens when nuclear reactions between light elements produce heavier ones. It's also happening—at a smaller scale—in a Colorado State University laboratory.


Using a compact but powerful laser to heat arrays of ordered nanowires, CSU scientists and collaborators have demonstrated micro-scale nuclear fusion in the lab. They have achieved record-setting efficiency for the generation of neutrons—chargeless sub-atomic particles resulting from the fusion process. Their work is detailed in a paper published in Nature Communications, and is led by Jorge Rocca, University Distinguished Professor in electrical and computer engineering and physics. The paper's first author is Alden Curtis, a CSU graduate student

A lot of people say fusion power is just around the corner, yet .... we've been waiting decades for it. So far it's a massive engineering problem- while people can produce a fusion reaction in a lab setting, they cannot sustain it long enough to draw power from it. I believe we need a massive tech leap in something like advanced magnetism before this dream becomes reality.

The irony will be when they find out fusion happens
in a palladium foil roll in a deuterium solution!:mrgreen:

PoS said:

A lot of people say fusion power is just around the corner, yet .... we've been waiting decades for it. So far it's a massive engineering problem- while people can produce a fusion reaction in a lab setting, they cannot sustain it long enough to draw power from it. I believe we need a massive tech leap in something like advanced magnetism before this dream becomes reality.

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I think that cryogenic superconductor magnets might be a promising approach. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_confinement_fusion

Just a couple small hurdles to overcome:

Madia says the decades needed to bring the ITER reactor to full operation reflect the huge engineering challenges still facing fusion researchers. These include building reactor walls that can withstand the intense heat of the fusion reaction — about 150 million degrees Celsius (270 million degrees Fahrenheit), or 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.

And then there’s the challenge of creating superconducting materials that can generate the powerful magnetic fields needed to hold the fusion reaction in place.

I gotta wonder what would happen in the event of containment failure and they release 270 Million degrees??

That be some serious burn...

djl

bmr528 said:

Just a couple small hurdles to overcome:

Madia says the decades needed to bring the ITER reactor to full operation reflect the huge engineering challenges still facing fusion researchers. These include building reactor walls that can withstand the intense heat of the fusion reaction — about 150 million degrees Celsius (270 million degrees Fahrenheit), or 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.

And then there’s the challenge of creating superconducting materials that can generate the powerful magnetic fields needed to hold the fusion reaction in place.

I gotta wonder what would happen in the event of containment failure and they release 270 Million degrees??

That be some serious burn...

djl

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Yup. Much like an H-bomb.

I would think that containing the fusion reaction as a plasma without getting near the reactor walls is the possible answer. The walls could be made with an ablative ceramic lining that could be replaced during scheduled maintenance. As far as the cryogenic superconducting magnets, they've made a lot of progress with rare earth magnets containing elements like samarium. The only down side to rare earths is that most of the world's supply is in China where they naturally treat it as a strategic reserve.