They all have become masterful in fooling themselves regarding the level of advancement regarding even the two major record holders in the magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) and the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) fields. They assume that by 2040 we will be mass producing commercially competitive fusion power plants and that they will have no problem in generating all the tritium that is required for their own operation. It simply serves as a distraction away from investing the annual billions of USD being directed into these numerous experimental endeavors then plowing the funds into energy sources such as wind and solar. Virtually all nuclear energy promoters, are in line with the vast majority of Earth's other 8.0+ billion humans, who continue to assume that we still have at least 20 years left to turn this 'Titanic' around using their favorite nuclear technology. They have become masterful in excluding the following warnings from their consciousness. I urge readers to search for the following two article titles. IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster (TheGuardian) UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change' (TheHill) * This statement was made 5.8 years ago.
General Fusion’s neutron yields are impressive, but when they turn to DT plasmas, will they be able to breed tritium without the presently difficult (and perhaps impossible) step of isotopically enriching the lithium to increase the Li6 content.
General Fusion stated that their experiment generated 600 million fusion neutrons per second but the fusion reactions lasted less than a microsecond. Do the math and you will see it is not as impressive as you first assumed. The famous 12/05/2022 NIF laser shot resulted in the generation approximately 1 x 10E+18 fusion neutrons for a reaction that only lasted for about 80 pico seconds before 96% of the unfused fuel was blasted away from the reaction center and sucked into the target chamber vacuum pumping system. Learn how experimenters manipulate their presentations in the quest to elicit more investment funding.
A reply asks about the breeding blanket’s thickness and if there have been simulations of the breeding. The blanket thickness needs to be about a metre in order to absorb most of the 14 MeV neutrons. There are simulation papers on breeding and the breeding ratio in the literature but there is no experimental experience, and nor can there be on the scale required. Can a billion dollar reactor be built on a vague assumption that it will work??
It is a common misconception that increasing the Li6 content increases the tritium breeding ratio. To prove my point, consider a 2 meter thick FLiBe blanket having natural isotopic ratios: Be9=0.1428... Li6=0.0217... Li7=0.2640... F19=0.5714... According to OpenMC's simulation, the TBR of this natural FLiBe mixture is 1.25. When I increase the enrichment to 100% Li6 (0% Li7) the TBR dropped to 1.08. And, most interestingly, when I decreased the amount of Li6, so there was 100x as much Li7 as Li6, the TBR increased to 1.26.
- Thank you for the correction. I admit that my one microsecond figure was a guess. Thank you for pointing out that the measured fusion reactions lasted for 0.000,275 second. That would mean that the number of fusion neutrons released would be around 600,000,000 x 0.000,275 = 165,000 fusion neutrons. What purpose may have been served by stating the neutron number in terms of neutrons per second? Perhaps the experimenters eventually aim to have their ‘implosion’ reactions last for a full second. The 165,000 neutrons compares with the 12/05/2022 NIF experiment that generated ~ 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 neutrons during the 0.000,000,000,08 second that reaction lasted before explosively blowing 96% of the unfused fuel away from the reaction center ‘hot spot.’ NIF began operating in 2009 after being succeeded by a series of five other laser driven inertial confinement (ICF) fusion experimental machines that ‘proved’ NIF would achieve a ‘scientific breakeven’ fusion reaction by 2012. It missed that goal by a factor of over 100. The funding continued since its primary purpose has always been as a thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb) research tool. After a decade of tweeks, costing many additional billions of USD, it finally achieved the long sought after goal of ‘scientific breakeven’ reaction which involved pumping the lasers with more than 100 times the energy than resulted from the fusion reaction, which remains many, many, orders of magnitude away from anything that could be considered a nuclear fusion energy, commercially practical, pilot power plant.
@ - General Fusion employs a variation of Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF). In such cases the fusion ‘burn’ is expected to last for only a tiny fraction of a second before the fusion reactions blasts much of the unfused fuel away from the ‘hot spot’ where conditions are optimal for fusion to occur. There will be limited propagation, of the fusion reaction, before disassembly happens. In the proposed power plant designs there will need to be lengthy recovery times between each ‘shot,’ with the fusion time lasting only a tiny fraction of the time between each ‘shot’ cycle. If the ‘ON’ duty cycle is 0.01 then the fusion energy, emitted during each ‘shot,’ will need to be 100 times greater than the average thermal energy generated by the power plant. In the case of a power plant designed to produce an average thermal energy of 100,000,000 watt-hours the averaged energy of each fusion energy pulse would need to be 100,000,000,000 watt-hours. The ‘scientific gain,’ Q-plasma value for pulsed experimental machines applies only to the short period of time fusion is actually occurring. It doesn’t apply to any lengthy recovery period between each pulse. Any consideration of a power plant design must consider the total averaged input energy into the facility to formulate the a Q-total value. In the case of today’s record breaking nuclear fusion experimental reactors their Q-total value, averaged over a 24-hour period, remains well below 0.01.
OK you’re using panels anyway which means segmented and you can have sensors watching the plasma in each area. It looks like the wave of energy travels around the reactor, and you can use a feedback loop to control the magnetic containment field. The feedback from panel one is fed into panel two so as the energy wave arrives, it can use the magnetic field to choke the energy.
Our reactor uses ion pressure instead of heat and we use an electromagnetic piston to compress the ions that are made by passing a small current through the neutral gas. we are looking for funding. The three prototypes cost us about £500 each. lit a 3 watt m.e.s lamp.
che los re banco pero se me hace dificil sostener la atencion cuando hablan sin mirar a la camara.. ¿no hay manera de ajustar el teleprompter para q les quede a la altura correcta?
Fusion... yes... when I was recent engineering grad, like yourself, there was equally optimistic news on fusion. Since then (40 years) we have managed to harness energy from the only, 'local', working, fusion reactor. And now we're creating a terawatt+ of power every day - pollution-free. Over the years it has become abundantly obvious that even if net power-positive fusion is ever created, the power will be far from pollution-free. In fact things are going to get radioactive pretty quickly and we'll be back to the fission nightmare were the instant a power plant is started, that is the last time that piece of land will be used for farming, housing or indeed anything other than a pit in to which vast quantities of money are poured for a hundred plus years (see Sellafield). To power our civilization on this planet, we only have to look to the sun, the wind and the inexhaustible supply of heat beneath our feet to supply every kWh of energy we will ever need.
Hello, thank you for your explanation, also in seawater as new fuel resource can produce minerals Iones, "ua-cam.com/video/sBO1ghQO4VA/v-deo.htmlsi=ccXDCv-9jAdocKQI"
we found a simple arrangement of a coil and tube by chance that starts by itself and changes deuterium to helium. Stop wasting money on the Tokomaks. I wish I understood them!
What did they go looking around for the cutest engineer to put on UA-cam? The rest of them are out in the lab or behind a computer. Lol., The entire industry had a meeting and they voted you to represent them. Lol
I love all the narrators updates on nuclear fusion, you benefit the whole world... These are the chats that I like....
They all have become masterful in fooling themselves regarding the level of advancement regarding even the two major record holders in the magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) and the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) fields. They assume that by 2040 we will be mass producing commercially competitive fusion power plants and that they will have no problem in generating all the tritium that is required for their own operation. It simply serves as a distraction away from investing the annual billions of USD being directed into these numerous experimental endeavors then plowing the funds into energy sources such as wind and solar.
Virtually all nuclear energy promoters, are in line with the vast majority of Earth's other 8.0+ billion humans, who continue to assume that we still have at least 20 years left to turn this 'Titanic' around using their favorite nuclear technology. They have become masterful in excluding the following warnings from their consciousness. I urge readers to search for the following two article titles.
IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster (TheGuardian)
UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change' (TheHill)
* This statement was made 5.8 years ago.
Thanks for the update - much appreciated.
Thanks Jasmine and team for all the fusion news this year, much appreciated!
General Fusion’s neutron yields are impressive, but when they turn to DT plasmas, will they be able to breed tritium without the presently difficult (and perhaps impossible) step of isotopically enriching the lithium to increase the Li6 content.
General Fusion stated that their experiment generated 600 million fusion neutrons per second but the fusion reactions lasted less than a microsecond. Do the math and you will see it is not as impressive as you first assumed. The famous 12/05/2022 NIF laser shot resulted in the generation approximately 1 x 10E+18 fusion neutrons for a reaction that only lasted for about 80 pico seconds before 96% of the unfused fuel was blasted away from the reaction center and sucked into the target chamber vacuum pumping system.
Learn how experimenters manipulate their presentations in the quest to elicit more investment funding.
A reply asks about the breeding blanket’s thickness and if there have been simulations of the breeding. The blanket thickness needs to be about a metre in order to absorb most of the 14 MeV neutrons. There are simulation papers on breeding and the breeding ratio in the literature but there is no experimental experience, and nor can there be on the scale required. Can a billion dollar reactor be built on a vague assumption that it will work??
It is a common misconception that increasing the Li6 content increases the tritium breeding ratio. To prove my point, consider a 2 meter thick FLiBe blanket having natural isotopic ratios: Be9=0.1428... Li6=0.0217... Li7=0.2640... F19=0.5714... According to OpenMC's simulation, the TBR of this natural FLiBe mixture is 1.25. When I increase the enrichment to 100% Li6 (0% Li7) the TBR dropped to 1.08. And, most interestingly, when I decreased the amount of Li6, so there was 100x as much Li7 as Li6, the TBR increased to 1.26.
- Thank you for the correction. I admit that my one microsecond figure was a guess. Thank you for pointing out that the measured fusion reactions lasted for 0.000,275 second. That would mean that the number of fusion neutrons released would be around 600,000,000 x 0.000,275 = 165,000 fusion neutrons. What purpose may have been served by stating the neutron number in terms of neutrons per second? Perhaps the experimenters eventually aim to have their ‘implosion’ reactions last for a full second. The 165,000 neutrons compares with the 12/05/2022 NIF experiment that generated ~ 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 neutrons during the 0.000,000,000,08 second that reaction lasted before explosively blowing 96% of the unfused fuel away from the reaction center ‘hot spot.’
NIF began operating in 2009 after being succeeded by a series of five other laser driven inertial confinement (ICF) fusion experimental machines that ‘proved’ NIF would achieve a ‘scientific breakeven’ fusion reaction by 2012. It missed that goal by a factor of over 100. The funding continued since its primary purpose has always been as a thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb) research tool. After a decade of tweeks, costing many additional billions of USD, it finally achieved the long sought after goal of ‘scientific breakeven’ reaction which involved pumping the lasers with more than 100 times the energy than resulted from the fusion reaction, which remains many, many, orders of magnitude away from anything that could be considered a nuclear fusion energy, commercially practical, pilot power plant.
@ - General Fusion employs a variation of Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF). In such cases the fusion ‘burn’ is expected to last for only a tiny fraction of a second before the fusion reactions blasts much of the unfused fuel away from the ‘hot spot’ where conditions are optimal for fusion to occur. There will be limited propagation, of the fusion reaction, before disassembly happens. In the proposed power plant designs there will need to be lengthy recovery times between each ‘shot,’ with the fusion time lasting only a tiny fraction of the time between each ‘shot’ cycle. If the ‘ON’ duty cycle is 0.01 then the fusion energy, emitted during each ‘shot,’ will need to be 100 times greater than the average thermal energy generated by the power plant. In the case of a power plant designed to produce an average thermal energy of 100,000,000 watt-hours the averaged energy of each fusion energy pulse would need to be 100,000,000,000 watt-hours.
The ‘scientific gain,’ Q-plasma value for pulsed experimental machines applies only to the short period of time fusion is actually occurring. It doesn’t apply to any lengthy recovery period between each pulse. Any consideration of a power plant design must consider the total averaged input energy into the facility to formulate the a Q-total value. In the case of today’s record breaking nuclear fusion experimental reactors their Q-total value, averaged over a 24-hour period, remains well below 0.01.
Thanks for the update! much love :)
OK you’re using panels anyway which means segmented and you can have sensors watching the plasma in each area. It looks like the wave of energy travels around the reactor, and you can use a feedback loop to control the magnetic containment field. The feedback from panel one is fed into panel two so as the energy wave arrives, it can use the magnetic field to choke the energy.
You use AI to keep track of everything and keep adjusting the magnetic field
Our reactor uses ion pressure instead of heat and we use an electromagnetic piston to compress the ions that are made by passing a small current through the neutral gas. we are looking for funding. The three prototypes cost us about £500 each. lit a 3 watt m.e.s lamp.
Thanks. But please get a boom mike or a röde clip-on mike. Too much echo when listening on large av system.
thanks for the udates
che los re banco pero se me hace dificil sostener la atencion cuando hablan sin mirar a la camara.. ¿no hay manera de ajustar el teleprompter para q les quede a la altura correcta?
This is such a race!
Sound was nearly unintelligible.
Fusion... yes... when I was recent engineering grad, like yourself, there was equally optimistic news on fusion. Since then (40 years) we have managed to harness energy from the only, 'local', working, fusion reactor. And now we're creating a terawatt+ of power every day - pollution-free.
Over the years it has become abundantly obvious that even if net power-positive fusion is ever created, the power will be far from pollution-free. In fact things are going to get radioactive pretty quickly and we'll be back to the fission nightmare were the instant a power plant is started, that is the last time that piece of land will be used for farming, housing or indeed anything other than a pit in to which vast quantities of money are poured for a hundred plus years (see Sellafield).
To power our civilization on this planet, we only have to look to the sun, the wind and the inexhaustible supply of heat beneath our feet to supply every kWh of energy we will ever need.
Hello, thank you for your explanation, also in seawater as new fuel resource can produce minerals Iones, "ua-cam.com/video/sBO1ghQO4VA/v-deo.htmlsi=ccXDCv-9jAdocKQI"
we found a simple arrangement of a coil and tube by chance that starts by itself and changes deuterium to helium. Stop wasting money on the Tokomaks. I wish I understood them!
What did they go looking around for the cutest engineer to put on UA-cam? The rest of them are out in the lab or behind a computer. Lol., The entire industry had a meeting and they voted you to represent them. Lol