[HN Gopher] Fusion and Magic
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Fusion and Magic
Author : curmudgeon22
Score : 42 points
Date : 2021-06-30 16:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.laphamsquarterly.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.laphamsquarterly.org)
| Animats wrote:
| Lockheed's Skunk Works is still plugging away on fusion, on their
| own money.[1] They don't talk about it much. But they're hiring
| for that project, so it continues.
|
| [1] https://lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-
| fusion.htm...
| alexgmcm wrote:
| For anyone interested in the current state of the art of plasma
| physics and fusion technology I strongly recommend the book "The
| Future of Fusion Energy" by Jason Parisi and Justin Ball.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Future-Fusion-Energy-Jason-
| Parisi/dp/...
| mikewarot wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me to learn that all the UAP/UFO incidents
| were just advanced US craft, powered by some form of fusion.
|
| Fusion requires very strong superconductors. Those can be made
| from plastic, according to some old patents. The critical
| temperature of this material far exceeds the decomposition point
| of the plastic, 1000 degrees K.
|
| If you put all the pieces together, you should be able to pull
| off Boron 11 fusion in a manner similar to the Polywell, and
| extract most of the energy directly as high voltage DC.
|
| You could then use that high voltage DC to power a field effect
| lifter.
|
| That's my guess at the how fusion could be magic. Extrapolated
| from spending way too much time surfing the web.
|
| One day I want my own personal Megawatt box powered by this
| technology. It should be about the size of a 2 drawer filing
| cabinet with a small display for setting the output parameters,
| and a set of 480, 220, 110, 12 volt, and USB-C outputs.
| Animats wrote:
| _It wouldn 't surprise me to learn that all the UAP/UFO
| incidents were just advanced US craft, powered by some form of
| fusion._
|
| Triangular aircraft zipping around U.S. Navy vessels may have
| been things like this.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k
| mikewarot wrote:
| I couldn't do that, I'd lose it in the sky, even if I was
| flying it.
| Animats wrote:
| Whoever's flying that thing is very good. They seem to be
| using an ordinary Futaba R/C plane controller. The tiny
| aircraft pulls out of power dives and goes to straight and
| level at low altitude, screaming past the observers at over
| 450 MPH several times without any problems.
|
| That little delta-winged thing with a German/Austrian jet
| engine has better performance than some reported UFOs.
| Here's the engine.[1] That's a 2017 model. Costs US$3,390.
|
| [1] https://www.ultimate-jets.net/collections/behotec-
| turbines/p...
| throwaway77384 wrote:
| > Those can be made from plastic, according to some old patents
|
| Citation needed
|
| > If you put all the pieces together, you should be able to
| pull off Boron 11 fusion in a manner similar to the Polywell
|
| Citation needed
|
| > and extract most of the energy directly as high voltage DC.
|
| Citation needed
|
| > You could then use that high voltage DC to power a field
| effect lifter.
|
| Citation needed
|
| > One day I want my own personal Megawatt box powered by this
| technology. It should be about the size of a 2 drawer filing
| cabinet with a small display for setting the output parameters,
| and a set of 480, 220, 110, 12 volt, and USB-C outputs.
|
| Imagine just handing everyone a Megawatt of energy, to do with
| as they please. We'd be living in a very different world.
|
| However, for any of the above to be believable, there have to
| be some reputable sources to look at, no? Why is no one working
| on this and why isn't there more news of this, when this can
| just be done by 'putting all the pieces together'?
|
| I am just as enthusiastic as the next guy about progress, but
| these extraordinary statements require extraordinary evidence
| IMO
| mikewarot wrote:
| Plastic superconductor -
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US5777292A/en https:/
| /patents.google.com/patent/US6804105B2/en?inventor=Kevin+P.+S
| hambrook
|
| Polywell - Fuses Boron 11
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
|
| Extract energy directly
| https://www.helionenergy.com/our-technology/
|
| There are MANY working on fusion, see page 26 of this:
| https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2102/ML21026A315.pdf
|
| Field Effect Lifter - Dedicated Lifters Homepage (2006)
| http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/liftbldr.htm
|
| It was late night, and I didn't feel like pulling all the
| links together for a some speculation.
| zopa wrote:
| Those patents aren't for superconductors. They claim "a
| material with a conductivity in excess of 10^6 S/cm."
| That's not too far off from copper at around 6*10^5 S/cm.
| Pretty good for a polymer if it works I imagine, but not
| superconducting.
|
| Just because someone names their company "ROOM TEMPERATURE
| SUPERCONDUCTORS," doesn't mean they've made a fundamental
| physics breakthrough.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Human nature does not change, not even at gun-point. This is what
| technology is, to change the world around us, so our brittle
| little society does not break down and we within it. Technology
| is the anti-thesis to ideology that believes one can
| fundamentally alter human nature. But due to our exponential
| insatiable nature, all technology in the end would become
| exponentially powerful. Handing out WMD-Gadgets to glorified
| monkeys at the end of the curve. No flying cars due to 9/11.
|
| Philosophy aside, i was always fascinated by the ability to
| produce plasma with lasers - if need be in midair.
|
| I added that to a game i develop, were the basic containment
| field for fusion is "augmented" on the fly, by printing plasma-
| circuitry into the outer layers and running currents through
| that. Its just scifi, in reality the interior of a reactor is to
| chaotic and unstable for such things, but its fun to imagine.
| Like printing a coil shaped laser lightning rod.
|
| https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/fet-open-laser...
| bullen wrote:
| You still need a real keyboard and monitor to be productive
| (Steve mostly increased consumption) and the best solar panel and
| battery will always be the tree (the best fusion reactor is the
| sun).
|
| All the inventions that enabled the final medium; the 3D MMO,
| where invented in the 70's (personal computer and TCP) and 90's
| (HTTP and OpenGL).
|
| Refinements to both have now peaked, the Jetson Nano (10W) as
| client with OpenGL ES 3 that has VAO and the Atom 8-core (25W) as
| server with 1Gb/s fiber home hosting.
|
| Enjoy this while it lasts, and please; make something open that
| others can use to make something!
|
| Also stop chasing infinite growth, instead settle on the peak.
|
| Finally; own what you do!
| puchatek wrote:
| This is very beautiful written. I haven't finished it yet but i
| already made a mental note to check it more by the author just
| for the prose alone.
| lallysingh wrote:
| I couldn't stand it. No structure, just more words until it was
| done.
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| Great stuff, but it's important to realize that even with all the
| amazing work being done, _fusion will almost certainly not be
| available fast enough to save us from climate change_. It 's a
| phenomenal longer-term prospect, but in the next couple of
| decades we need to look to other technologies (fission being the
| obvious point of discussion) and building political will to take
| meaningful action.
| mchusma wrote:
| While I certainly agree fission is great, I think fusion is a
| great thing to work on if you are concerned about climate
| change. Specifically, it's the type of thing that would likely
| enable cheap carbon removal.
| NortySpock wrote:
| How is a complicated fusion reactor going to be cheaper than
| solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries?
|
| I think fusion reactors are only going to make sense farther
| out in the solar system, like Mars, Ceres, and beyond.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Solar and Wind have recently hit economies of scale that they
| are already outperforming many past fission plants in year-
| over-year growth, power output, etc. Solar is fun because it's
| the cheapest "fusion" system possible, just using some of the
| waste fusion from the big ball in the sky. It is a sort of
| "fusion magic".
|
| There's a lot of hope that solar and wind installations outpace
| a lot of other energy investments and do offer us a road
| towards "saving us" from climate change. (Though how dirty we
| generate power is still only one part of the climate change
| problem, we still need a lot more solutions to carbon capture
| the dirt we've already emitted.)
| GoodJokes wrote:
| You definitely sound like an expert with italics like "save us
| from climate change."
| GoodJokes wrote:
| This is a cool thread because now I found all the people who can
| tell the future on it. How useful!
| ncmncm wrote:
| There will never be so much as a single erg of commercially
| competitive power generated by Tokamak fusion. The only way to
| understand the current state of government-backed fusion research
| is purely as a way to keep hot-neutron physicists and contractors
| employed between weapons projects.
|
| Other approaches may be useful for, e.g., spacecraft propulsion,
| but Tokamak is burning up the budget. It will need to be
| jettisoned before we can get much progress on the others.
|
| But right now, every cent that diverted into fusion from building
| out solar, wind, and storage for them pushes us closer to
| imminent worldwide disaster.
| alexgmcm wrote:
| > as a way to keep hot-neutron physicists and contractors
| employed between weapons projects.
|
| This far more true of ICF than MCF (i.e. tokamak) approaches.
|
| With the excellent results from MAST, it seems the spherical
| tokamak approach could allow for a much smaller tokamak to
| built than previously thought - given the size of the tokamak
| is strongly related to the capital costs (which are the biggest
| economic hurdle by far) this is great news for economic fusion
| power.
|
| With the plans for STEP (UK), the US Pilot Plant (in design,
| seems it will follow similar route to STEP) and the CFETR
| (China) and the planned experiments at ITER - I suspect
| economic fusion will be outright proven by 2040 and perhaps
| even delivering commercial power to the grid by 2050.
|
| Fusion doesn't have the same fundamental physical limits that
| solar and wind do. That said, I think this sort of zero-sum
| approach to science is what is going to lead us to imminent
| worldwide disaster.
|
| In the Manhattan Project they pursued both the Fat Man and
| Little Boy designs simultaneously despite the cost - this needs
| to be our approach with the energy crisis, we can't afford to
| try and pick winners, the cost of failing to do so is far
| higher than the cost of funding multiple avenues.
| ncmncm wrote:
| We already know the outcome of Tokamak fusion research:
| _certainly nothing for, at minimum, decades_. Even if it
| could be made to work, it would take decades more to build
| out reactors, at conservatively a $100-billion apiece. We
| certainly won 't be building dozens of $100-billion reactors
| until after the first one works long enough to prove itself.
|
| All this time, solar, wind and storage costs will continue on
| down. Fusion will certainly never be cheaper than fission,
| which today costs more _just to operate_ than building out
| new solar. So power from fusion reactors would always be the
| most expensive alternative. There can never be an
| economically rational choice to build a terrestrial Tokamak
| fusion plant.
|
| Meanwhile, we already know the _far and away_ cheapest
| sources of electric power ever: solar and wind. They start
| producing immediately. The $100 billion for the first fusion
| plant, _someday_ , would buy a great deal of solar and wind
| _today_ , and more all the time, displacing carbon sources
| _immediately_. Thus, every cent diverted from those to fusion
| brings the disaster ever closer.
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