Miklos Porkolab with MIT's Levitated Dipole Experiment, which helped tame plasma turbulence.
Posted on 01/15/2005 9:23:09 AM PST by ckilmer
Fusion Redux
BY JIM WILSON Photo by Donna Coveney/MIT
After being virtually abandoned, fusion power is poised for a comeback. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the stars. For more than 50 years, scientists have been trying to bring that power down to Earth. Fusion generators are appealing because they produce none of the pollutants associated with fossil- and nuclear-fuel power plants. Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in Plainsboro, N.J., estimate that a 1000-megawatt nuclear fusion plant would produce about 4 pounds of waste a day, compared to 31,000 tons from a coal-fired plant of a similar capacity. And while some radiation would be created, there would be none of the lethal radioactive wastes formed when fission reactors split uranium atoms.
Lighting The Fire Fusion occurs when the cores of hydrogen atoms--which naturally repel each other--are compressed so tightly they fuse. This produces new atoms of helium while liberating enormous amounts of energy. Fuse a few pounds of hydrogen atoms at once and you can obliterate a large portion of a Pacific island, as the Atomic Energy Commission demonstrated during its 1950s-era hydrogen bomb tests. If, however, the fusion reaction could be controlled, the energy could be recovered and used to produce steam to spin the turbines of electric generators.
Wet Matches Initially, scientists believed the most difficult task would be achieving the 100 million-degree temperatures at which deuterium and tritium--two rare forms of hydrogen--fuse. Using ordinary hydrogen was ruled out because it would require temperatures far above those that existing materials could contain. Using deuterium alone was considered, but also ruled out because of temperature limits.
After spending an estimated $50 billion of taxpayer money, scientists have learned how to light the fire. The problem is to keep it burning. Just as the flame atop a candle dances in a breeze, a fusion reaction is buffeted by currents that develop inside the magnetic "bottle" that contains the swirling plasma.
Year after year, projected dates for the debut of fusion generators moved further into the future. "In 1980, the U.S. government determined that the energy crisis was over and that the development of new energy technologies would be left to the private sector," says Stephen Dean, president of Fusion Power Associates, a fusion education group based in Gaithersburg, Md. In 1996, the Department of Energy (DOE) snuffed out the candle completely when it cut off U.S. contributions to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The $14 billion project will instead be built with Canadian, European and Japanese support, and most likely be constructed near Clarington, Ontario. Although the Canadian government has begun work on an environmental impact statement, no date has been set for the groundbreaking.
With no fusion funding in sight, young scientists in the United States turned their backs on the science that undergirds fusion machines--plasma physics. Last year, the National Research Council (NRC) soberly reported that among the 1300 physicists in the 25 leading university research departments, only three young scientists, holding the rank of assistant professor, were experts in plasma physics.
A New Dawn This year brought the first signs of improvement in more than a decade. In February, Raymond Orbach, chancellor of the University of California at Riverside, won congressional approval as the new director of the DOE Office of Science. A professor of physics, Orbach previously held visiting professorships in England, France and Israel. The fusion community sees his appointment as exactly the combination of technical and diplomatic skills the United States needs to build bridges after turning its back on ITER. "President Bush is particularly interested in the potential of ITER, and has asked us to seriously consider American participation," Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham told the Conference of G8 Ministers who met in Detroit in May.
The DOE also has promised researchers more money, offering to increase the roughly $225 million-a-year budget for the Fusion Energy Science Program to as much as $377 million by 2006.
There had been optimism about fusion energy generation before, but this time it is more firmly grounded in science. "Theory and modeling are now able to provide useful insights into instabilities and to guide experiments," the NRC concluded in its 2001 study of plasma physics. "Many of the major experimental and theoretical tools that have been developed are now converging to produce a qualitative change in the program's approach to scientific discovery."
More to the point, the chief limitation of the first generation of fusion machines--the inability to control turbulence in a roiling mass of magnetically confined plasma--has begun to yield to technical solutions, explains Miklos Porkolab, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Plasma Science and Fusion Center in Cambridge. "We have shown that, in principle, it is possible to eliminate turbulence," he says. "To me, this is just a mind-boggling achievement. With adequate federal funding, a prototype nuclear fusion reactor could be tested within 30 to 40 years. A commercial reactor could be deployed by the middle of the century."
Well, I got the impression the writer thinks throwing more government money at the problem represents progress. I guess for liberals that would be an acceptable definition. I didn't see any info on any real progress though. It's still 20 years in the future just like it was 20 years ago.
ping for later reading
energy independence bump
It seems that ITER is in it's stalemate between allies of France that Japan began to consider a partnership with US and few other countries from South East Asia as France considers to work with EU for this. Fusion reactor is not just an ideal system to provide electricity but also may be used to breakdown compounds of trash into atoms by the extremely high temperature. Breaking the bonds of compounds of trash into atoms, pure atoms could be obtained allowing recycle.
"1000-megawatt nuclear fusion plant would produce about 4 pounds of waste a day, compared to 31,000 tons from a coal-fired plant of a similar capacity"
31,000 tons per day?
cBS alert
I agree, but fission power is available today and the waste problem could be solved by any politician worth a d*mn.
I don't know what breakthru will give fusion the bumb it needs, but it will always be a problem to contain and to siphon off the extra energy we want it for.
yeah I know. it was curious how far in the future the scientist put the completion of the projects.
there are a couple of other approaches to fusion in process right now.
don't konw which one will work best but it does seem this one is heavily freighted with bureaucracies.
You apparently missed the statement and accompanying photograph that MIT has solved the plasma turbulence problem.
What goes in, must go out. 7000 to 9000 tons per day in, 7000 to 9000 tons waste (excluding a very small amount of mass to energy conversion E=MC2).
It's a lot cheaper just to light farts like the rest of did in college...
Also, calculation does not take into account
some of waste product is tritium, which is very hard to contain
and is a projected significant health threat from the fusion cycle economy
not to mention neutron activation issues in the wall of the fusion reactor
What the article fails to say:
Both the deuterium + deuterium reaction and the tritium + deuterium reaction are potent sources of neutrons.
Why is neutron production a concern? Neutron activation of materials in the reactor is one reason. However, the most important reason, those neutrons can be used for plutonium production. Would we want to sell a fusion reactor to Saddam Hussein, if he were still in power. Other questionable sales would include, North Korea, Syria, Iran, etc.
That deserves a sucking dry of the public fisc Bwah Hah Hah Hah Hah.
acoustic fusion might be the better way to go.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1321476/posts?page=2
How would it be solved?
Don't forget the weight of the oxygen in the output. I refuse to count CO2 or H2O, but some of the nastier stuff, like SO2 and nitrogen oxides do count.
That is how they probably got from 7k tons to 21k tons per day of waste.
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