Private funding of fusion research

It may be difficult to separate "theory" from "application," but let''s see if this helps facilitate the discussion.
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Peter Schmelcher
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Private funding of fusion research

Post by Peter Schmelcher »

Mostly General Fusion and Tri Alpha
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2016042 ... ess-fusion
Has a link to a TED talk by General Fusion founder.
-Peter
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Richard Hull
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

Post by Richard Hull »

Interesting.... Just last evening I received an e-amil from a fellow who heads up a number of hedgefunds and investment groups asking for my opinion on the future of fusion research as relates to power production. Wise that he seeks information from someone who has done fusion and has not one iota of money from other sources or who has a job in the fusion biz, (or lack of biz)...

I spent a good deal of time crafting my response. I append it here.

*********************************************************

Sir,

I assume you picked up on my efforts via Fusor.net. I, of course, have done and continue to do fusion here. If you have read many of my postings, you will note I am extremely negative on fusion's future as a power source. The motto I use regularly and have on several t shirts is ....."Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be." I have made a bold prediction in my writings to all who would see a fusion powered future.

No baby born in the last minute of your reading this, anywhere on this planet, will ever live so long as to see one watt of fusion based electrical energy issue from a household electrical outlet.

Is that negative enough for you? Fusion is a very different animal from fission. Fission involves a nascent stored energy in matter just itching to be released. To release megawatts of fission power you need only bring two fissile materials close to one another and the energy pours out! It cannot help but do it! Coal is like fissile material. A single match can release millions of watts of energy stored in coal once it is burning.

Fusion relies on bringing matter together that resists with a force of unprecedented power. Thus, monstrous power must be brought to bear to achieve fusion. What is even worse, fusion, when producing power, wants to blow the fuel so far away that the reaction ceases instantly. The H bomb works on this principal. It is so powerful and successful that the designers absolutely delight in releasing the power of this incredible, absolute repulsion of the fuel particles to one another, blowing the unburned super heated fuel out in millionths of a second, leveling cities. How do they do fusion in an H bomb?

They take fusion fuel, (deuterium and tritium) and build an atomic Fission" bomb around it. The fission bomb, of about 100 kilotons, super-heats and compresses the fusion fuel core to do fusion. Finally, the 5 megatons of fusion energy generated can't be contained and blows all unburned components outward. It seems real honest to goodness fusion energy will be limited to the possibility of killing folks en mass for many decades to come.

Nikola Tesla had a prophetic statement around 1900 that has been lost in time. When I read it, I was amazed at his insight. I will paraphrase.......

Nature's great wheel work awaits man's further harnessing. This wheelwork is of amazing power and if this wheelwork be of a self renewing and infinite nature pulled from the very essence of space itself, and if man can wrest forth this power to his enrichment, then he will have conquered the universal engine and joined the Gods. However, if this wheelwork be such that the near infinite stored energy is held only within the matter of the universe, then man will be forever be reduced to an evermore intelligent and creative hunter-gatherer.

If one is of a scientific bent, and has done fusion, and witnessed its pitiable and languishing returns on energy when attempts are made to make it controlled and available 24-7-365, one is forced to see us as hunter-gatherers. Nature has dictated that fusion fuels WILL NOT BURN casually, while fission fuels seek to burn with gay abandon from atomic bombs to well controlled fission electrical plants. Why is this so?

The universe of matter, 14 billion years after the big bang, consists of 99% fusion fuels, that is, hydrogen and most of the rest helium, (which can also fuse). The tiniest of a fraction of a percent of all the remaining matter is rock and metals. The tiniest fraction of this tiny fraction of a percent are fissionable metals that are so disseminated and disbursed that they cannot ever fission without an active intelligence mining the ore and carefully concentrating the fissile materials to bring them together to create energy. Coal is buried and will not burn without an active intelligence mining or harvesting it and applying a tiny bit of seed energy needed to set it alight.

If there were stored energy in fusion fuels like hydrogen and helium and fusion began you would have a wild fire on your hands! The universe would be a huge multi-billion light year sized fuel dump and would burn itself out in a heartbeat.

Nature is no dummy. She only allows fusion in hydrogen and helium when gravity assembles hundreds of quintillions of tons of the lightest elements, (fusion fuels). A tiny core within this giant diameter mass becomes so dense that it is crushed far beyond the point of turning the gases to metals. Only then can fusion begin. Hundreds of trillions of megatons of energy are released every second in an attempt to blow the hell out of the newborn star. But no! It is too late for this stellar H bomb to blow itself apart. Gravity is now the ruler and not fusion energy. The outer gas just expands and heats to incandescence. Gravity continues its relentless pressure allowing the fusion to continue. Why doesn't the star just burn all its fusion fuel up? Again, nature steps in. She has made hydrogen fusion so terribly inefficient per unit volume that the fuel is limited in its fusion burn rate! The hydrogen fuel is under an ultra slow burn, controlled fusion reaction, forever limited by the physics of the universe! Stars, even the fast burners, last for billions of years.

Know the science and cogitate long and hard. Fusion doesn't want to happen by its very nature and its fuel source that is everywhere around us, vehemently refuses to do a nuclear burn. Give me a fission based atom bomb and I can give you a flash of real fusion energy.

The fissionable materials on earth that are just itchin' to burn are so widely scattered that they just don't burn in this day and age. This is much like coal or gas or wood or any other matter that contains genuine extant stored energy be it chemical or nuclear.

Fusion fuels contain no innate, internal store of nuclear energy.

I would not invest one scintilla of my money on fusion returning one dime over the next 100 years. Even this fusion effort assumes an absolutely stable, long term, functioning world economy, without nuclear wars or pandemics interrupting world governments from spending billions of the money, yearly, on the fusion quest.

Nuff' said.

*****************************************************

If he was looking for a glowing report on how fusion energy would be "real soon now", he came away relatively savaged and disilliusioned

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Nick Peskosky
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

Post by Nick Peskosky »

Richard,

As always you have penned an interesting and grounded take on the present/future outlook of experimental efforts pursuing the commercialization of fusion power. I think it warrants noting that you are not 100% correct about the existence of a natural fission reactor. I present the curious case of the natural fission 'reactor' discovered at the Oklo uranium deposit in Africa. It seems that even the randomness of dispersion in fissile metals has at least in one instance lead to successful (even if periodically sustained) fission without "active intelligence".

http://www.ans.org/pi/np/oklo/
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Richard Hull
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

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Nick I have known about Oklo reactor for years and in missive above you will note I carefully noted and cover my Oklo butt by saying..."in this day and age."

A billion or more years ago the u-235 content in all uranium was higher and a massive U mineral deposit could react due to moderation by ground water...Burn for a few thousands of years, boil off the water and poison itself with shortish half life posions it created only to start up again in a few thousand years once the nuclear poisons decayed and ground water insinuated itself back into the cooling deposit.

Due to the chemical nature of uranium and its accumulation in nature near the surface of earth large tight deposits of high concentrations of uranium just aren't found. Oklo was a great rarity and freak of nature, even back then. Giant rich uranium deposits are found, but they are veinous and not in a giant cavernous ball.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Nick Peskosky
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

Post by Nick Peskosky »

A well placed caveat indeed. Bounds are always important when talking about "this day and age" against the backdrop of cosmological nuclear processes.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

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I have often been curious about the original U ratios of the super nova that produced the original solar nebula. I would expect and see little reason why the ratio would not have been about 50:50 If you have the unfathonable energy to create uranium via fusion, I would imagine one mass number would be as likely as the next. As the super nova's localized energy waned (microseconds to seconds), magic numbers and other nuclear fusion concerns might have continued production of more favored isotopes causing some enrichment.

If the earth formed in a manner where there was 25% u235 any earth bound reactors would have burned out long before Oklo geologically formed and got started.

It must have been very rare (oklo type reactors) as the u235 content of mined U is rather constant world wide and it was only the depletion in the specific Oklo U that keyed us into its past existence.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Peter Schmelcher
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

Post by Peter Schmelcher »

Richard I generally agree but I have a softer prospective on research. Research is always a good thing when some one else is paying. The value of the research done for the cost is subjective and disappointing for you and me but billionaires have different standards.
Another art museum or a trip to fusion Vegas, as they say you can’t take it with you.

The General Fusion founder had an interesting prospective and a graph that I liked.
-Peter
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Richard Hull
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

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Laberge is, e Pluribus unum, (one of many), his idea is simplistic, which is always a plus. The fly that is always in the ointment.....Will it work? The thought of a reciprocating steam-fusion engine is interesting. Like he said "real soon now". Sounds familiar doesn't it?

It is wonderfully ironic that he proposes a steam powered fusion engine. At its core, the compression prinicple is a mechanical mechanism. These are subject to wear and breakdown as all mechanical devices are wont to do, especially the hammered armature.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Andrew Robinson
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

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While I totally agree, I felt it necessary to comically say... Richard, you're such a buzz kill! :)
I can wire anything directly into anything! I'm the professor!
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Trust Richard to pour cold water on the fusion reaction ;)

I have more confidence in this bunch of amateurs, from mere 15 year old kids to really old blokes this team here on Fusor.net are far more enthusiastic and have more drive than all the funded scientists at ITER, JET and TRI-ALPHA together, who clock off and go home at 5 every day to catch the latest cooking show.

I think we are going to see a Q=1 soon, guys like Doug Coulter, Andrew Selzmann are pushing the barriers back, and I hope to join them soon, and once others see progress, they will join in.

We need more innovators, people who go on to try new things after having done Richards 6" spherical grid fusor.

The coulomb force is nothing but a psychological barrier in your mind.

Steven
http://www.gammaspectacular.com - Gamma Spectrometry Systems
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Sesselmann - Various papers and patents on RG
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Richard Hull
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

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As always, for the past 70 years, we await power ready fusion, but remain buoyed by all the "real soon nows" that seem to be the super positive sign posts to fusion.
My bet remains on the lucky donkey, but I won't go so far as to say "real soon now" I think that is a copywrited statement.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: Private funding of fusion research

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Have to both agree and disagree; fusion power (a reactor that produces far more power than it consumes) will be available within thirty years even at current rates of advancement. AS for wall power - that might not be available for fifty or more years like Richard is saying. The sheer cost of a fusion reactor will eclipse fission power (I would speculate at least an order of magnitude at best, once the technological barriers are crossed.)

Current fission power is far too expensive to be economically viable today but it still can be built within a cost structure that we can tolerate (as taxpayers.) The issue is that even when fusion gets well over break why would one substitute a far more expensive power system for a cheaper fission plant that already costs significantly more to run than a gas based power plant?

Also, even the radiation waste issue for a fusion plant will easily be on a par with fission plants making them no better (waste wise.) Worse, the neutron threat to the walls of a fusion reactor will make any such reactor an utter nightmare to operate (much less shut down and dispose of); so such fusion reactors will be experimental only until all economic fission fuel sources are exhausted first (sea water is close to viable as a uranium source and that could give us close to a thousand years of low carbon power even without the dirty and dangerous breeder.)

So, until better fission reactors are built again - natural uranium fueled ones, that is - why bother with fusion? That is, we know fusion will not be clean (waste wise) and will be highly more costly than fission. Just trying to lower carbon footprint can be done with fission and is a very mature technology with known risks and costs (that are carefully hidden by government underwriting ...but so is kerosene for our far too cheap jet transport services ... .)

Investing in fusion energy by anyone but a government is foolish. Scientific research in fusion does make sense since it does have future potential.
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