
Researchers demonstrate the ability to fuse atoms inside room-temperature metals - MindGods
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fusiontokamak-not-included
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the8472
Getting things to fuse is "easy" in the sense that you can do it on the lab
bench with a farnsworth hirsch fusor, but that has no hope of ever reaching
break-even. This article doesn't talk about break-even potential at all and
yet they jump to potential applications.

~~~
ramraj07
Is breaking even in such an experiment in violation of any thermodynamics
laws? Or is it that we just haven't figured it out?

~~~
xenadu02
In theory anything lighter can fuse toward Iron. Anything heavier can fission
the same direction. Splitting or fusing Iron requires input of energy even in
theoretical scenarios at 100% efficiency.

In practice a great many nuclear reactions are not chain reactions or don't
yield enough energy to be useful. Really large atoms kinda want to fission due
to the speed of light: forces can't propagate from one side to the other fast
enough to completely balance out. So splitting Uranium is a lot easier to make
useful because we have a head start as it were... if you leave it alone in a
box some of it will go ahead and split in pieces for you for free.

Fusion is just more difficult. If you leave hydrogen atoms confined in a box
approximately none of them will spontaneously fuse to form helium.

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trhway
>To overcome that barrier requires a sequence of particle collisions. First,
an electron accelerator speeds up and slams electrons into a nearby target
made of tungsten. The collision between beam and target creates high-energy
photons, just like in a conventional X-ray machine. The photons are focused
and directed into the deuteron-loaded erbium or titanium sample.

that way of X-ray generation is of very low efficiency. They should have put
that deuterium loaded erbium, titanium (or Pt or Pd like in the famous cold
fusion experiment) into the Sandia Z-machine. The typical target for the Z is
either LiD or frozen D, and i wonder why they have never tried more heavy
metals, especially Pt or Pd, loaded with D given how heavy nuclei is supposed
to help in the fusion based on the cold fusion effects and which this NASA
research seems to hint at too:

>But the lattice helps again. “The electrons in the metal lattice form a
screen around the stationary deuteron,” says Benyo. The electrons’ negative
charge shields the energetic deuteron from the repulsive effects of the target
deuteron’s positive charge until the nuclei are very close, maximizing the
amount of energy that can be used to fuse.

Honestly, my best bet is that Musk, who needs at least fission or even better
fusion for Mars (space is the only business case for any plausible peaceful
fusion), would soon start a venture for it. The inertial confinement, either
Z-machine style or laser (modern lasers are much more efficient than NIF) is
clearly the way to go, especially for space and when you need real result
instead of large government sponsored research.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Honestly, my best bet is that Musk, who needs at least fission or even better
fusion for Mars (space is the only business case for any plausible peaceful
fusion)_

An interesting assertion. What are some of the reasons why you're certain that
fusion will not be a useful source of energy in peacetime/civilian
applications? Is it likely to be "too cheap to meter," as we were promised
fission power would be, or do you think it'll always be too expensive to be
practical?

~~~
trhway
Cheapest electricity is natural gas one. Imagine a natural gas plant with free
natural gas. That would decrease the electricity price by about 1/3 (fuel
price is up to 2/3 of natural gas based generation, and the generation is
between half and 2/3 of electricity price). The fusion power plant ideally is
equivalent of that free natural gas power plant. Though it can't be further
from it on practice. Any feasible in the observable future fusion involves
neutrons. That in addition to affecting reactor design - cost and complexity
of building, operating and maintenance - brings in the whole regulatory regime
just a notch lighter than fission. Taken together we'd be lucky to match the
current natural gas - I personally think no chance in hell. Carbon emission of
natural gas isn't an issue because nobody [who matter] cares about it today,
and then, when the issue is finally forced for resolution, adding carbon
sequestration would still be a comparatively minor expense. And that not even
talking about already free fusion used in solar and wind based generation -
hard to beat economics of that fusion reactor.

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NiceWayToDoIT
Reading this kind of news makes me very excited but again afraid at the same
time, thinking is it again one more case of Fleischmann–Pons defamation in
progress. As it sounds very much as saturation of palladium bar with isotopes
of hydrogen.

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dummydata
From the article: “What we did was not cold fusion,” says Lawrence Forsley, a
senior lead experimental physicist for the project. Cold fusion, the idea that
fusion can occur at relatively low energies in room-temperature materials, is
viewed with skepticism by the vast majority of physicists. Forsley stresses
this is hot fusion, but “We’ve come up with a new way of driving it.”

~~~
NiceWayToDoIT
How they define "cold fusion" temperature, if we look previous lab fusion
experiments they all had very narrow point of fusion, welding arc has
temperature of 10000 F withing few millimetre, that is what most of those
previous so called cold fusion experiments did. But in reality fusion should
occur at 100 million K. Cold fusion is refereed as room temperature, is there
some trick in defining room temperature?

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LatteLazy
Just 20 more years and we'll have cheap, safe, limitless energy!

~~~
beambot
To be fair, the timeline was predicated on spending levels that were never
met. In fact, funding levels never made it above the "fusion never" threshold:
[https://i.imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png](https://i.imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png)

Interestingly, the projected budget was $100B-$300B in 2020 dollars. Certainly
puts $4T stimulus plan into perspective!

~~~
credit_guy
I have seen this graph many times before on HN. I'm not sure how accurate it
is. Maybe the investments in fusion have recently ramped up (the graph ends in
2012), but the end point of the "actual" fusion investment shows something a
little less than half a billion dollars. Is this supposed to be worldwide
investment, only US, only US Department of Energy, or what?

Anyway, just in 2019 the US DoE got a budget allocation of more than half a
billion dollars ($564 MM to be precise, see [1] page 162). ITER's financial
statements for 2019 ([2], page 43) shows member contributions of € 400 MM,
which is again about half a billion dollars.

If we could manage to add up all the various research budgets for fusion, we
would probably be quite a bit above the "never fusion" line, we could maybe
reach the "moderate level" in the graph (the orange line).

But the question is: is this needed? MIT alone has a fusion project (SPARC
[3]) that appears to be ahead of ITER. A spin-off of that project is the
Commonwealth Fusion Systems [4], which managed to raise about $200 MM of
funding entirely from private organizations.

Is it possible that we'll see a repeat of the Human Genome Project scenario,
where the US Government invested $10 BN and more than a decade of reasearch,
only to see a private company (Celera [5]) come in an steal the thunder at the
finish line, with only a 20th of their budget?

My point is that as society progresses, there is a time when a certain thing
becomes achievable on a medium budget, which only 50 years before would be
impossible on an infinite budget. Just think about sending a rocket to the
Moon in 1920 or creating an mRNA-based vaccine for the coronavirus in 1970. It
is very, very likely that if the US government had allocated $50-100 BN for
fusion research in 1970, we would not be any closer to fusion today. However,
today, 50 years later, we are at a point where fusion appears achievable only
based on private investments.

[1]
[https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/05/f62/fy-2020-...](https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/05/f62/fy-2020-doe-
sc-fes-congressional-budget-request.pdf)

[2]
[http://e.issuu.com/embed.html?d=2019_iter_annual_report&u=it...](http://e.issuu.com/embed.html?d=2019_iter_annual_report&u=iterorganization)

[3] [https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc](https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celera_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celera_Corporation)

~~~
keenmaster
Fusion seems like a rare opportunity to do remarkable impact for human society
while also making a remarkable profit. Frankly, if I was a billionaire, I
would treat fusion investments as half-charity. That's why I don't understand
how so many billionaires have pledged to give a large % of their wealth away
but the most promising privately funded fusion energy project only has $200
million in funding. That kind of discrepancy increases my respect for tech
evangelists, Ray Kurzweil, etc...because marketing the future might bring it
closer. We need more of that.

~~~
credit_guy
Bill Gates is doing just that, but with fission rather than fusion. If the aim
is to fight climate change, then fission is a proven technology, while fusion
is a very risky bet.

~~~
keenmaster
Great. We should build standardized SMRs everywhere ASAP. Nonetheless, we
don't have to pick between SMRs and fusion reactors. We can do both. The
riskiness of fusion can be counteracted by taking an investing-as-charity
approach to the whole field. If a billionaire is fine moving humanity closer
to a low scarcity, carbon-free future without necessarily getting a
commensurate payout, they should invest in fusion. Additionally, if they
continuously invest in fusion and spread their investments across multiple
fusion "bets," they can maximize their chance of making an outsized return.

------
badinsie
DO NOT BE MISTAKEN This is the same Pons & Fleischmann Cold Fusion effect. I
will not argue semantics but Pons & Fleischmann, and Andrea Rossi are also due
credit for researching this phenomenon. it makes sense if you think about
it... imagine a 3D metal lattice...only say 8 atoms... you tightly pack as
much Hydrogen as possible in the middle of the lattice.... everything is under
immense heat and pressure.... spinning like crazy.... you hit it with a jolt.
or a hammer.... and everything sorta smashes into each other and explodes. or
maybe this is the 'inverse beta decay' / controlled electron capture method.

~~~
fernly
It is certainly reminiscent of P&F, in loading a metal matrix with deuterium.
And the effect this paper documents could ... conceivably ... possibly ...
maybe explain the erratic and fugitive positive results that P&F-style
experimenters sometimes produced. But I don't think your certainty is well-
founded yet.

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colordrops
Is there any reason this couldn't be used for general purpose energy? They
work for NASA so perhaps they are just mentioning propulsion to keep their
funding.

~~~
DennisP
I'm guessing because it'd be expensive and have a low power output. That'd
make it uncompetitive for a power plant, but fine for a deep space mission;
you'd need very little fuel, so as long as the device itself isn't too
massive, it'd be great.

~~~
gh02t
Not sure about the low power output. With the caveat that I'm a nuclear
engineer but _not_ a fusion expert, from what I understand the deuterium
density is actually quite high compared to plasma-based systems like tokamaks.
NASA's press release says the deuterium density in their lattice confinement
process is a billion times more dense than the plasma in a magnetic
confinement system ([https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/science/lattice-
confinement-...](https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/science/lattice-confinement-
fusion/)), though I note it's not clear exactly what they mean. So that is
promising.

If they can figure out how to sustain a chain reaction or otherwise extract a
net energy gain it might still be useful as battery even if they end up having
to put more energy to fabricate the fuel in than you get out. Something like
how current RTGs are used, except I expect it would have _much_ higher energy
density.

This is all speculation, however, and there is a lot of work left.

~~~
DennisP
Interesting point. I just guessed at a plausible reason to focus on deep
space, I don't know whether that's actually the case.

It seems like it couldn't have too much power density though, or the solid
lattice would melt.

~~~
gh02t
The lattice melting is probably not a major issue, you just have to cool it to
remove the heat as it's generated. At a basic level you face the same problem
in a fission reactor and the solution is straightforward -- extract the heat
into some sort of working fluid (or gas) to keep the fuel from melting.
Fission reactor fuel is actually not even terribly dissimilar to the stuff
described in the article, most often it's fabricated as a sintered powder.

Again, this is super early so this is all wild speculation, but generally
engineering challenges are easier to solve than fundamental science problems.
Of which there remain a few. That said, most of the problems with MCF are
engineering issues and we still don't have that working yet either so...

