Pretty thin on details but fingers crossed it’ll be a goer.

Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire told reporters.

In a statement, the company, the Pentagon’s largest supplier, said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year, and build a prototype in five years.

In recent years, Lockheed has gotten increasingly involved in a variety of alternate energy projects, including several ocean energy projects, as it looks to offset a decline in U.S. and European military spending.

Lockheed’s work on fusion energy could help in developing new power sources amid increasing global conflicts over energy, and as projections show there will be a 40 percent to 50 percent increase in energy use over the next generation, McGuire said.

If it proves feasible, Lockheed’s work would mark a key breakthrough in a field that scientists have long eyed as promising, but which has not yet yielded viable power systems. The effort seeks to harness the energy released during nuclear fusion, when atoms combine into more stable forms.

“We can make a big difference on the energy front,” McGuire said, noting Lockheed’s 60 years of research on nuclear fusion as a potential energy source that is safer and more efficient than current reactors based on nuclear fission.

Lockheed sees the project as part of a comprehensive approach to solving global energy and climate change problems.

More

“Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.”

Imagine a world free of wind farms, it’s easy if you try.

Are they saying it is only 10 years away?

“In a statement, the company, the Pentagon’s largest supplier, said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year, and build a prototype in five years. “

If true that is the biggest news in industry, science and finance in centuries, they are not a woo company.
However their share price has not gone through the roof so no one in finance is taking them seriously on this.

>>>Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.<<<

I’m not making any comment on the above until I hear
what Christine Milne & Adam Bandt have to say on the subject!

Design

The device is 2×2×4 meters in size. It is cylindrical shaped. It has a vacuum inside with high magnetic fields, made using electromagnets. Uncharged deuterium gas is injected. It is heated using radio waves, in much the same way a microwave heats food. When the gas temperature reaches over 16 electron-volts, the gas ionizes into ions and electrons. This plasma exerts a pressure on the surrounding magnetic fields. This plasma pressure is counterbalanced by the magnetic field pressure in a beta ratio:

\beta = \frac{p}{p_{mag}} = \frac{n k_B T}{(B^2/2\mu_0)}

The plan is to reach a high-beta ratio. Plans call for a compact 100 MW machine. In October 2014, Reuters reported that Lockheed Martin “would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year, and build a prototype in five years.” The company hopes to be able to meet global baseload energy demand by 2050. Here are some other characteristics of this machine:

I wonder they will use as the power source, is Helium 3 still the favourite

• small enough to fit on the back of a truck

I find it curious that they focus on something like that. Sure, the reactor might fit on a truck but surely there’d be other infrastructure necessary for the stable operation of such things? Which would make it somewhat bigger than a truck?

The magnetic field increases the farther out that the plasma goes, which pushes the plasma back in.
It also has very few open field lines (very few paths for the plasma to leak out; uses a cylinder, not a Tokamak ring).
Very good arch curvature of the field lines.
The system has a beta of about 1.
This system uses deuterium.
The system heats the plasma using radio waves.

The machine was designed by Dr. Thomas McGuire who did his PhD thesis on fusors at MIT. Chase said that “the fuel (two isotopes of hydrogen) has six orders of magnitude higher energy density than oil. You can’t make a bomb from it, and it has no meltdown risk. It’s very different from nuclear fission reactors.”

furious said:

• small enough to fit on the back of a truck

I find it curious that they focus on something like that. Sure, the reactor might fit on a truck but surely there’d be other infrastructure necessary for the stable operation of such things? Which would make it somewhat bigger than a truck?

It’s first application will be in submarines so has to be compact. Maybe.

Cool

AwesomeO said:

furious said:

• small enough to fit on the back of a truck

I find it curious that they focus on something like that. Sure, the reactor might fit on a truck but surely there’d be other infrastructure necessary for the stable operation of such things? Which would make it somewhat bigger than a truck?

It’s first application will be in submarines so has to be compact. Maybe.

Thermal stations also use non truck sized infrastructure. e.g. coal mines.

>>Chase said that “the fuel (two isotopes of hydrogen) has six orders of magnitude higher energy density than oil

That’s fine for a science forum but on a holiday forum we can say

Chase said that “the fuel (two isotopes of hydrogen) has six times higher energy density than oil

Peak Warming Man said:

>>Chase said that “the fuel (two isotopes of hydrogen) has six orders of magnitude higher energy density than oil

That’s fine for a science forum but on a holiday forum we can say

Chase said that “the fuel (two isotopes of hydrogen) has six times higher energy density than oil

Cancel that and strike it from the record.

I wonder they will use as the power source, is Helium 3 still the favourite

deuterium. abundant in seawater.

Sounds too good to be true, but would be awesome.

Imagine having a 100 megawatt powerplant in your own backyard, could run some serious power tools.

Skunkworks has done great work, if it were any other organisation claiming this I’d dismiss it immediately.

> the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

Keep in mind that a full size uranium (or plutonium) fission reactor, complete with cooling system but excluding radiation shielding, can easily be built small enough to fit inside a basketball. So a fusion reactor small enough to fit on a truck is not too far-fetched.

Could deuterium be found on other planets in our solar system, perhaps in frozen water ice.

yes.

Because deuterium is destroyed in the interiors of stars faster than it is produced, and because other natural processes are thought to produce only an insignificant amount of deuterium, it is thought that nearly all deuterium found in nature was produced in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, and that the basic or primordial ratio of hydrogen-1 (protium) to deuterium (about 26 atoms of deuterium per million hydrogen atoms) has its origin from that time. This is the ratio found in the gas giant planets, such as Jupiter. However, different astronomical bodies are found to have different ratios of deuterium to hydrogen-1, and this is thought to be as a result of natural isotope separation processes that occur from solar heating of ices in comets. Like the water-cycle in Earth’s weather, such heating processes may enrich deuterium with respect to protium. In fact, the discovery of deuterium/protium ratios in a number of comets very similar to the mean ratio in Earth’s oceans (156 atoms of deuterium per million hydrogens) has led to theories that much of Earth’s ocean water has a cometary origin

wiki

Carmen_Sandiego said:

Are they saying it is only 10 years away?

in 20 or 30 years it will only be 10 years away

In all seriousness though, AFAIK they’ve barely scratched break even if even that, at the largest research facilities in the world.

To say you’re going to produce a net-output MINI fusion reactor in a year seems like complete Bunnings.

mollwollfumble said:

Skunkworks has done great work, if it were any other organisation claiming this I’d dismiss it immediately.

> the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

Keep in mind that a full size uranium (or plutonium) fission reactor, complete with cooling system but excluding radiation shielding, can easily be built small enough to fit inside a basketball. So a fusion reactor small enough to fit on a truck is not too far-fetched.

The first working uranium fission reactor (controlled) was not the size of a basketball though…

Dropbear said:

In all seriousness though, AFAIK they’ve barely scratched break even if even that, at the largest research facilities in the world.

To say you’re going to produce a net-output MINI fusion reactor in a year seems like complete Bunnings.

The prototype is 5 years away, it is the the lego model that is only a year away.

Dropbear said:

mollwollfumble said:

Skunkworks has done great work, if it were any other organisation claiming this I’d dismiss it immediately.

> the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

Keep in mind that a full size uranium (or plutonium) fission reactor, complete with cooling system but excluding radiation shielding, can easily be built small enough to fit inside a basketball. So a fusion reactor small enough to fit on a truck is not too far-fetched.

The first working uranium fission reactor (controlled) was not the size of a basketball though…

It was actually about the size of the back of a truck…

Dropbear said:

In all seriousness though, AFAIK they’ve barely scratched break even if even that, at the largest research facilities in the world.

To say you’re going to produce a net-output MINI fusion reactor in a year seems like complete Bunnings.

There’s a good thread on xkcd about this reactor:
Skunk Works reveals compact fusion reactor?
See especially the posts by cjameshuff.

PM 2Ring said:

There’s a good thread on xkcd about this reactor:
Skunk Works reveals compact fusion reactor?
See especially the posts by cjameshuff.

Thanks, that was interesting.

In a related question are there any processes on earth that equate to the energy required for fusion. Ie I sometimes read that lightning is hotter than the surface of the sun but that is not where the fusion is happening.

And in another question, say you built a tiny sun the size of a pinhead, what sort of energy would that radiate?

http://patternizer.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/the-ecumenopolis-iter-and-the-road-to-sustainable-energy/

so if the pinhead is 0.5 grams then you would get… “Using just 0.5 grammes of hydrogen fuel, ITER is set to produce around half a billion Joules of energy per second (0.5 Giga-Watts).”

ChrispenEvan said:

half a billion Joules of energy per second (0.5 Giga-Watts).”

This is very odd. Reputable major company making very big claims but somehow not much buzz.

I guess the thing is because it is Skunkworks, they aren’t going to publish their findings.

Peak Warming Man said:

Peak Warming Man said:

>>Chase said that “the fuel (two isotopes of hydrogen) has six orders of magnitude higher energy density than oil

That’s fine for a science forum but on a holiday forum we can say

Chase said that “the fuel (two isotopes of hydrogen) has six times higher energy density than oil

Cancel that and strike it from the record.

adds to quotes thread

For desert tonight I’ll be having a couple of cream filled pastry puffs coated in classic Belgian chocolate.
If they are as decadent as they sound I’ll probably eat the lot.

decadent

From the Latin meaning “ten teeth”

decadent

From the Latin meaning “ten teeth”

AwesomeO said:

In a related question are there any processes on earth that equate to the energy required for fusion. Ie I sometimes read that lightning is hotter than the surface of the sun but that is not where the fusion is happening.

I assume you’re talking about natural processes, and not stuff happening in particle colliders. :)

Lightning can raise the temperature and pressure of the air in its vicinity to that required for some fusion reactions, but it’s very transitory, so a lightning bolt doesn’t provide the containment required for sustained fusion. However, there is some experimental evidence that lightning can induce a small amount of nuclear fusion, probably deuterium-deuterium, since it’s one of the easiest fusion reaction to achieve. But deuterium is a fairly rare isotope of hydrogen: on Earth only 0.0156% of hydrogen is deuterium, so don’t expect a lot of fusion from your typical thunderstorm.

See Neutron generation in lightning bolts for a short summary.

However, we do get some extremely high energy processes in the upper atmosphere when high energy cosmic ray particles (mostly protons) collide with atoms, a process known as cosmic ray spallation . But these collisions don’t result in nuclear fusion, as the high speed cosmic rays tend to shatter any nuclei they hit, so these reactions are mostly classed as fission.

See Wikipedia for further info.

---

AwesomeO said:

And in another question, say you built a tiny sun the size of a pinhead, what sort of energy would that radiate?

Not much. To keep a pinhead sized fusion reaction going you need to supply a lot of energy from outside to contain it, and the energy released by fusion tends to be smaller than the energy put in to initiate and contain the reaction. But it’s actually possible for amateurs to build a simple fusion reactor, if you don’t mind the neutron flux. :)

See Fusor

Here’s a picture of a home-made one from that Wiki page:

FWIW, the energy output of the Sun’s core is quite low in terms of energy produced per cubic metre, it’s just that there are a lot of cubic metres in the core of the Sun. :)

Wikipedia says

The energy production per unit time (power) of fusion in the core varies with distance from the solar center. At the center of the Sun, fusion power is estimated by models to be about 276.5 watts/m³.

The power production density of the core overall is similar to the metabolic production density of a reptile. The peak power production in the Sun’s center, per volume, has been compared to the volumetric heat generated in an active compost heap.

The low power outputs occurring inside the fusion core of the Sun may also be surprising, considering the large power which might be predicted by a simple application of the Stefan–Boltzmann law for temperatures of 10 to 15 million kelvin. However, layers of the Sun are radiating to outer layers only slightly lower in temperature, and it is this difference in radiation powers between layers which determines net power production and transfer in the solar core.

PM 2Ring said:

See Fusor

Here’s a picture of a home-made one from that Wiki page:

That reminds me – I was going to look into building one of those when I had some spare time – and now I have some spare time :)

Carmen_Sandiego said:

PM 2Ring said:

See Fusor

Here’s a picture of a home-made one from that Wiki page:

That reminds me – I was going to look into building one of those when I had some spare time – and now I have some spare time :)

Standard mad scientist lab gear

Carmen_Sandiego said:

PM 2Ring said:

See Fusor

Here’s a picture of a home-made one from that Wiki page:

That reminds me – I was going to look into building one of those when I had some spare time – and now I have some spare time :)

Excellent! BU & Weirdgran will be jealous. :)

PM 2Ring said:

Carmen_Sandiego said:

PM 2Ring said:

See Fusor

Here’s a picture of a home-made one from that Wiki page:

That reminds me – I was going to look into building one of those when I had some spare time – and now I have some spare time :)

Excellent! BU & Weirdgran will be jealous. :)

Yes

PM 2Ring said:

Excellent! BU & Weirdgran will be jealous. :)

I showed them a design for one a year or so ago and they needed some alone time.