FUSION POWER: Next ITERation?

The Economist ^ | Sep 3rd 2011 | print edition

[wolf78]

Generating electricity by nuclear fusion has long looked like a chimera. A reactor being built in Germany may change that.

AS THE old joke has it, fusion is the power of the future—and always will be. The sales pitch is irresistible: the principal fuel, a heavy isotope of hydrogen called deuterium, can be extracted from water. In effect, therefore, it is in limitless supply. Nor, unlike fusion’s cousin, nuclear fission, does the process produce much in the way of radioactive waste. It does not release carbon dioxide, either. Which all sounds too good to be true. And it is. For there is the little matter of building a reactor that can run for long enough to turn out a meaningful amount of electricity. Since the first attempt to do so, a machine called Zeta that was constructed in Britain in the 1950s, no one has even come close.

At the moment, the main bet being placed by fusion enthusiasts is on ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a research machine that can hold 840 cubic metres of hot, gaseous fuel. It is being bolted together at a projected cost of €15 billion ($22 billion) in the south of France. ITER is what is known as a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped device invented in Russia at about the same time Zeta was active.

[...]

A stellarator is a tokamak with twists in it. The consequence of its Daliesque geometry is that every particle inside the machine experiences the same forces as it travels around. A stellarator therefore needs only one magnetic field to manage the plasma, and can be run indefinitely rather than just for a few minutes.

[wolf78]

Possible breakthrough? We'll see in 2014. Because other than ITER (Where every nation wants access to the know-how, so there's either haggling over who builds the important parts or they just build the same screw ten times) Wendelstein is mostly on schedule and budget.

[wolf78]

As a geeky personal note: Stellarators are just very, very cool ;)

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

There is also no other way out of the energy bottleneck.

That said, there needs to be more than one approach, like the Manhattan Project. I think a kinetic containment is much simpler and more likely to produce >1.0. (Like a giant internal combustion fusion engine since fusion is scalable as large or small as you want.)

[econjack]

I thought Italian engineer Andrea Rossi and Professor Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna demo’ed a cold fusion reactor last January...not true?

[freebilly]

I thought Italian engineer Andrea Rossi and Professor Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna demo’ed a cold fusion reactor last January...not true?

Wanna buy a bridge...?

[Moonman62]

It looks like a Möbius strip.

[agere_contra]

There is also no other way out of the energy bottleneck.

Thorium looks good.

[muawiyah]

The physics behind hot fusion and cold fusion must necessarily be different. There are also two different "nuclear" forces at work. Hot fusion depends on the strong nuclear force. Cold fusion depends on the weak nuclear force.

Due to our great need for powerful atom bombs and hydrogen bombs to counter the Soviet Threat we put most of our money into the study of the strong nuclear force and virtually nothing into the weak nuclear force, consequently we have tens of thousands of highly educated physicists and engineers who know everything there is to know about making bombs, and virtually none with enough knowledge to come up with a working "strong nuclear force" fusion reactor!

Worse, NONE of them have any interest at all in dealing with the electro-weak force.

That's where Rossi and Focardi come in, as well as many other scientists and research engineers whose primary training is in physical chemistry.

More recently their approach to providing energy through manipulation of the electro-weak force has received some serious attention ~ particularly as projects like "hot fusion" have utterly failed even while wasting hundreds of billions of dollars. Hot fusion is like Keynesian Economics ~ lots of promise, lots of theories, NO GO.

Given the dominance of the hot fusion proponents in the world of physics it has been difficult for the cold fusion enthusiasts to get the financing necessary to proceed along lines of theory in the electroweak force that seem to have promise.

Which is where "self financing" comes into play. It's not exactly like "selling bridges" but there are folks throughout the world of strong nuclear force studies who see impending doom for their work if even one guy comes up with a working electroweak device that produces energy in commercial quantities. They are squealing like pigs at the moment, and if this Italian device works at all, you'll hear screams like monkeys in the zoo!

[marktwain]

I thought Italian engineer Andrea Rossi and Professor Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna demo’ed a cold fusion reactor last January...not true?

Their "demonstrations" always lack the sort of evidence to prove the system to skeptics. If you are not skeptical, they are convincing. The demonstrations do not allow anyone to examine all the connections to the machine, for example, or to determine if there are any hidden connections. The measurements are never complete and convincing.

When these deficiencies are pointed out, the demonstrators say, well, just wait until we are on the market. This demonstration was not meant to prove anything. The market will prove that our products work.

They are supposed to have a 1 megawatt demonstration in October, with products on the market by the end of the month. I remain skeptical.

[RayChuang88]

It could be a couple of decades before we see the first commercial "hot" fusion powerplant--that's too long to wait!

Meanwhile, a new technology that was actually successfully demonstrated during the 1960's called the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) could become available within a decade. Amazingly safe, LFTR's use a lot less actinide fuel to generate 1,000 MW than a similar generating capacity uranium reactor, and best of all, LFTR's generate very little radioactive waste, and the waste generated only has a half-life under 300 years, which means you don't need expensive storage facilities for the waste.

With perhaps hundreds of standardized-design 1,000 MW LFTR's operating all over the USA, we could satisfy American electrical needs for hundreds of years without unsightly large-scale wind farms that could be potentially dangerous to birds or solar power arrays that hog tens of square miles of land.

[marktwain]

With perhaps hundreds of standardized-design 1,000 MW LFTR's operating all over the USA, we could satisfy American electrical needs for hundreds of years without unsightly large-scale wind farms that could be potentially dangerous to birds or solar power arrays that hog tens of square miles of land.

We could, but the dumbed down left opposes it because it would be good for the capitalist United States. It is ok for France to have nuclear power. It is ok for Japan to have nuclear power, but the United States must be crippled because ... well, because it has been the most successful idea on the face of the earth.

[RayChuang88]

The "dumb-down" Left obviously doesn't know the advantages of LFTR's:

1. It uses thorium-232, which is 4-5 times more common than uranium.
2. The fuel for the reactor is thorium-232 dissolved in molten sodium fluoride salts, far cheaper to make than uranium-235 pellets assembled into fuel rods.
3. It doesn't require a lot of fuel to power the reactor.
4. Because the reactor doesn't need pressurized reactor vessels, it's also a lot safer in design.
5. In case of any emergency, the fuel can be dumped from the reactor in seconds, stopping the reaction quickly for a fast reactor cool-down.
6. By using Brayton-cycle turbines to generate electricity, we eliminate the enormous expense of cooling towers and/or needing to locate the reactor near a large body of water.
7. The waste generated by a LFTR is very small, and the waste only has a half-life of under 300 years. That meanas the waste can be dumped into any salt dome or disused salt mine for permanent storage at very low cost.

In short, LFTR's address most of the issues and concerns from the environmentalists about nuclear reactor designs. So what are we waiting for?

[marktwain]

In short, LFTR's address most of the issues and concerns from the environmentalists about nuclear reactor designs. So what are we waiting for?

Do you really think the opponents of nuclear power are interested in logic, facts, and reason? Their assumptions about reality are far different from yours.

[Wonder Warthog]

"That said, there needs to be more than one approach, like the Manhattan Project."

There are several. IMO, the most likely to be successful is the "Bussard polywell" approach. A real nice "twist". It uses magnetic confinement to contain a cloud of electrons (due to low mass of electrons, they are FAR easier to magnetically contain) to create one electrode of an electrostatic confinement system (cf "Farnsworth Fusor"). Funded by the Navy and in "second round" (scaleup) of funding.

See "Talk-Polywell" for a forum that addresses this (and some other smaller efforts (Focus Fusion, and ever Rossi's LENR)).

[count-your-change]

My fishin reactor is going to built on the mental Theorium.

The danger to the public is low and the cost even lower since it’s all mental and all theory.
The date of delivery doesn’t have a deadline, it IS a dead line.

Let’ all cheer the Fishin Generator from the back of a boat!

[SpaceBar]

Looks more promising than Rossi’s coffee can stuffed with shredded newspaper.

[cartan]

I already know who is not going to like this devilish machine…

[wolf78]

We could, but the dumbed down left opposes it because it would be good for the capitalist United States. It is ok for France to have nuclear power. It is ok for Japan to have nuclear power, but the United States must be crippled because ... well, because it has been the most successful idea on the face of the earth.

The thing is: France has a lot of nuclear power because a.) France wanted the bomb and b.) it therefore socialized the energy sector. The "secret" behind France's nuclear power success is socialism.

In short, LFTR's address most of the issues and concerns from the environmentalists about nuclear reactor designs. So what are we waiting for?

AFAIK most of the problems with molten salt and high-temperature reactors are engineering challenges rather than the basic physics, e.g. corrosion. So trying to commercialize LFTR is a big financial risk (albeit one that promises great rewards). Few are willing to bet the firm, so what you'd need to get the ball rolling would be huge government loan guarantees. After Solyndra I don't see that happen.

[wolf78]

(cf "Farnsworth Fusor")

[Ancesthntr]

“There is also no other way out of the energy bottleneck.”

To echo agere_contra, yes there is: thorium. Here is an excellent article on the subject (which also debunks some other alledged solutions to the energy bottleneck): http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=183373

FYI, thorium is not a permanent solution - according to the above article, thorium from coal (and the liquified coal that we can use for our vehicles) will “only” last for about 200 years...more than enough time to develop fusion and some better battery technology to store all of that energy.