
Secretive fusion company claims reactor breakthrough - sparrowlisted
http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/08/secretive-fusion-company-makes-reactor-breakthrough
======
carapace
I keep wondering why this talk doesn't get more traction?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6z1vP4Eo8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6z1vP4Eo8)

Published on Aug 22, 2012 Google Tech Talks November 9, 2006

ABSTRACT This is not your father's fusion reactor! Forget everything you know
about conventional thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature plasmas, steam
turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a thing of the past.
Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial electrostatic confinement fusion
(IEC), an old idea that's been made new. While the international community
debates the fate of the politically-turmoiled $12 billion ITER (an
experimental thermonuclear reactor), simple IEC reactors are being built as
high-school science fair projects.

Dr. Robert Bussard, former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission and
founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2), has spent 17 years
perfecting IEC, a fusion process that converts hydrogen and boron directly
into electricity producing helium as the only waste product. Most of this work
was funded by the Department of Defense, the details of which have been under
seal... until now.

Dr. Bussard will discuss his recent results and details of this potentially
world-altering technology, whose conception dates back as far as 1924, and
even includes a reactor design by Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of the
scanning television).

Can a 100 MW fusion reactor be built for less than Google's annual electricity
bill? Come see what's possible when you think outside the thermonuclear box
and ignore the herd.

Google engEDU Speaker: Dr. Robert Bussard

~~~
jerf
Edit (whack entire previous post): See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell#History)
, which is current up to January of this year. That includes a link to a
presentation in January 2015 to Microsoft Research:
[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=238...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=238715&r=1)

I just found out about that video in the course of checking this comment out,
so I have not watched it. No idea what's in it.

Edit edit: Digging around an ethusiast forum at [http://www.talk-
polywell.org/bb/viewforum.php?f=10](http://www.talk-
polywell.org/bb/viewforum.php?f=10) , I see there's also a paper at arxiv.org
from Jun 1, 2015:
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.0133](http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.0133)

~~~
snarfy
I've watched both the 'Should Google Go Nuclear?' and Microsoft Research
videos on this topic.

Both are pretty good. The Google video has Bussard in it and was made not long
before he died.

The Microsoft paper talks about, well a lot of things, but I recall one of the
key research items was cusp confinement. The problem with using magnets to
control a plasma is the plasma will reject the magnetic field as its density
increases. The wiffle ball shape of the resulting plasma of the polywell
allows the field lines to penetrate the plasma even at higher density.

------
nine_k
In short: Tri Alpha demonstrated plasma confined for 5ms. So their concept
works.

Their next step is burning D-T fuel (needs 10x temperature increase). Their
goal is burning H-B fuel which requires much higher temperatures, but has
numerous advantages.

Update: "Tri Alpha is backed by Sam Altman, among other things." -> not at
all.

~~~
sama
::shudders:: Tri Alpha is not backed by me.

Helion is though, which I think has a much better chance of producing
commercial fusion power!

~~~
zamalek
Regardless of who eventually nails it, it's something that Earth desperately
needs _yesterday._

~~~
sama
That part I can agree with!

~~~
humbleMouse
Are you backing any thorium reactor projects?

~~~
sama
UPower will be able to use thorium.

~~~
humbleMouse
Very interesting, thanks for the tip.

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rubidium
They showed a "stable" reaction of 5 ms, which is quite good.

The video was quite nicely done. I recommend watching.

Caveat: As with all fusion companies, they're only 10-20 years from being
ready to market : )

~~~
chetanahuja
_" Caveat: As with all fusion companies, they're only 10-20 years from being
ready to market : )"_

And always have been ;-)

~~~
rquantz
No no, for the longest time it was 30 years.

~~~
guenthert
I do recall that it was said to be 50 years out and that was at an industry
fair in the mid eighties; so we _are_ getting closer ;-}

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guimarin
Fusion is one of those areas that would benefit greatly from Public R&D. It's
really sad that we've spent almost nothing on fusion research for the purposes
of producing affordable electricity in the last 20 years.[1][2][3]

1\. The NIF is and always has been a sideshow for the Nuclear Weapons
development research that goes on there.

2\. US last serious investment was the TFTR back in the 90s.
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/20/fusion-energy-
react...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/20/fusion-energy-
reactor_n_6438772.html)

3\. IMO ITER is a joke, too large scale.

~~~
oldmanjay
You have a fantastic mindset in that you can call multiple billions of dollars
"almost nothing"

Presumably, the operative fact here is that it would mostly be other people's
money, and no one minds spending that wildly

~~~
dntrkv
Yes, it is almost nothing when you look at the estimated spending required to
achieve fusion:

[http://i.imgur.com/FR0TsYF.png](http://i.imgur.com/FR0TsYF.png)

~~~
adwn
That graph is dug out whenever the feasibility of fusion is discussed. It's a
prediction from 1976 – you should know how credible decade-long predictions on
the progress of unproven technologies are.

~~~
noobermin
How does this address the graph? It probably doesn't predict the current
situation, but it certainly is consistent with it, that fusion funding is
below the "fusion never" line, and look, we have no fusion.

~~~
valhalla
I could be wrong, but the projections are extrapolations based on _obviously_
overly optimistic assumptions about the a) the federal government's desire to
fund large, multiyear scientific projects b) the ease of creating an
economically scalable fusion reactor

------
phasetransition
The summer of 1999 on the way to E&M class I rode the same bus to the physics
building as Dr. Hendrik Monkhorst. He is one of the founders of Tri Alpha
Energy, and I remember chatting with him about about aneutronic fusion. It was
very eye opening for a 19 year old undergraduate. I remember him espousing
commercialization within ten years, which now seems like prototypical
professorial optimism. It is an exciting milestone to see them have successful
confinement for a solid length of time.

------
ck2
Dumb question but since they are still only working on how to contain the
reaction, how exactly do you extract power from fusion?

~~~
jessaustin
Same way you produce electricity from any heat source: steam turbines.

~~~
_rpd
Interestingly, that isn't necessarily the case with aneutronic fusion ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Methods_for_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Methods_for_energy_capture)

------
arcanus
Fusion: only twenty years away. Always.

~~~
dntrkv
Those estimates might have worked out if funding wasn't continuously being
cut.

[http://i.imgur.com/FR0TsYF.png](http://i.imgur.com/FR0TsYF.png)

~~~
andy_ppp
Wow. We don't even spend a billion a year on Fusion research...

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amelius
Perhaps a stupid question, but why does the plasma need to stay confined for
long periods of time? If you can devise a process that performs a full power-
generating cycle, then no matter how long (or short) that cycle takes, you
will get net power out of it.

~~~
antognini
I believe there are two things:

1\. Ions in the plasma need to interact with each other for enough fusion
reactions to occur. For this to happen, the plasma needs to be somewhat dense
and the temperature needs to be very high. If the plasma escapes, the
temperature and densities fall off rapidly, and the nuclear fusion rate drops
quickly. (Nuclear fusion has an incredibly steep temperature dependence ---
the triple alpha process, for instance, goes as T^28 or something like that).

2\. When the plasma escapes, it interacts with whatever is containing it and
can destroy it very quickly.

But I'm an astrophysicist, not a nuclear physicist, so I could very well be
wrong. Plasma confinement is much easier in stars. Just let the gravity do the
work for you. :)

~~~
amelius
1\. This is, I would say, still no reason why the whole cycle can't be
performed in a very short time-frame.

2\. If the plasma escapes, I would say you could dump it into a large tank
(like a reservoir of water), and extract energy from it.

~~~
mng2
I forgot to address this in my earlier comment, but you don't worry about the
plasma escaping -- it is very delicate, generally orders of magnitude less
dense than air. Rather, keeping it alive is the difficult part. If the plasma
hits the wall of a fusion device in an uncontrolled manner, it will dump all
its energy into it. If the plasma picks up too many impurities, it will
radiate energy away in the form of bremsstrahlung. It is hard to keep the ions
hot enough to fuse while there are many phenomena conspiring against you.

------
danmaz74
> hydrogen-boron fusion, which will require ion temperatures above 3 billion
> degrees Celsius

3 billion degrees... that blows my mind.

~~~
junkblocker
Reminds me of this BBC infographic on hottest temperatures in the universe,
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/future/bespoke/20131218-tempera...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/future/bespoke/20131218-temperature/assets/images/temperature.png)
, very enlightening.

~~~
FiatLuxDave
Great infographic, but unfortunately it misses my favorite juxtaposition of
temperatures:

Surface temperature of a red dwarf star (e.g. Wolf 359) 2500 C

Melting point of tungsten: 3400 C

I find the idea of making balloon-like objects out of tungsten and gas, with a
density less than that of the star's photosphere, and floating them around on
the surface of a star to be intriguing. It would be a great location to put a
heat engine. A totally sci-fi idea, I know, but still interesting to think
about.

~~~
yongjik
Umm, actually, a "heat engine" needs both the source of heat and a place to
dump the waste heat into, so the surface of a star would be a bad place to
build one.

The only way of dumping heat would be to radiate it out to space, but
"radiation" is a very inefficient way of losing heat. Unless I'm missing some
really clever trick, soon your radiator will become about as hot as the
surrounding gas, at which point the efficiency (= (T_hot - T_cold) / T_hot)
drops to near zero.

* Not a physicist, so I might be wrong. :P

~~~
FiatLuxDave
You are correct that a heat pump needs both a heat source and heat sink.
However, radiation is quite effective at transmitting heat at high
temperatures. Black-body radiators emit as the fourth power of the
temperature, although real objects never emit quite as efficiently as ideal
black-bodies. It works pretty well for stars, though, since radiation is how
they lose the vast majority of their energy.

If the photosphere above the heat engine was opaque, then the heat engine
would not work. So it makes sense to keep the heat engine near or above the
top of the photosphere, without going high enough to overheat near the top of
the chromosphere.

It's mainly just a fun idea. I have no plans of trying to build one in the
near future. :)

* I am a physicist, but that is no protection against being wrong. ;)

~~~
marktangotango
FYI David Brin explored this idea in the novel 'Sundiver' (1980)[1]. In the
novel a laser is used to radiate heat out into space. This is the first book
of the Uplift Trilogy. Incidentally, the second book, 'Startide Rising' is
really great imo, and won a bunch of awards.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundiver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundiver)

~~~
FiatLuxDave
Aye, actually Sundiver is my favorite of David's books. I think his writing is
better in later books, but I enjoy the audacious technical ideas and the
classic 'closed room mystery' plot.

I met David earlier this year at the NASA NIAC symposium, and spent a nice
afternoon hanging out with him and Joe Haldeman and his wife. Very nice
people! We toured the Swampworks and launch sites at KSC, and talked about
practical methods for moving planets. It was a very enjoyable day.

~~~
marktangotango
Very cool. You seem to be familiar with him and his work, so I'll ask this; I
seem to recall that him and Vernor Vinge have sidelines doing 'scenario
planning' for government agencies, is that something you've ever heard of?
I've always wondered what that consisted of. Maybe I'm just searching for a
reason to explain Vinge lack of productivety and imagined that?

~~~
FiatLuxDave
I'm sorry. but I don't know much about that. However, you could ask them about
it. Most sci-fi authors I have spoken with are very open to answering
questions, as long as they are addressed in a respectful manner. I don't know
about Vernor Vinge, but I know that David Brin has a website that you could
email him at.

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eli_gottlieb
Call us when they're not so secretive.

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ogrisel
The cure for cancer and the solution to climate change announced on HN on the
same day! ;)

~~~
mason240
Come back tomorrow and you can experience it again!

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DrNuke
If only any of these passes the lab stage to start with engineering... ITER is
the only fusion machine 10-20 years away from demonstration, in 2015, and it's
too big to fail.

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onion2k
A 23m long machine is far too big to mount on a Delorean. They'll need to fix
that.

~~~
iwwr
While that is somewhat in jest, there are potentials for fusion to first make
it as a power source for spacecraft.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket#Electricity_gene...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket#Electricity_generation_vs._direct_thrust)

This has the advantage of not needing a power recovery system and the actual
power can be external (like solar) and the fusion engine would act more like a
souped-up ion engine (with correspondingly ultra-low thrust).

