New Mars Forums

RGClark

Member

From: Philadelphia, PA

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 765

Website

Fusion power in the offing?

Yes, I know they have been saying nuclear fusion is just over the horizon for the last 50 years. But multiple reports have shown  advances from different approaches that suggest significant progress is being made.

Also, the White House convened a summit on the U.S. maintaining leadership in fusion power:

Energy leaders are convening at the White House for a summit on the commercialization of clean fusion energy
Jeanne Jackson DeVoe, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
March 17, 2022, 8:22 a.m.
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2022/03/ … ion-energy

  Robert Clark

Last edited by RGClark (2022-03-17 16:12:42)

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Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):

      “Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,441

Re: Fusion power in the offing?

For RGClark ... best wishes for success with this interesting new topic with fusion as a theme...

Hopefully it will gather contributions as we go forward ...

For those who might be interested, here is a list of all the topics our members have created with fusion in the title:

Index» Search» Topics with posts containing 'fusion'
Pages: 1
Search results

Topic    Forum    Replies    Last post

Fusion power in the offing? by RGClark
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    0    Today 16:23:46 by RGClark

The fusion age has begun. by Adaptation [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    104    2022-03-12 16:35:58 by SpaceNut

Fusion 360 Autocad Digital Design software by tahanson43206
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    1    2022-01-30 09:31:51 by tahanson43206

Hybrid nuclear fission fusion technologies by tahanson43206
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    12    2022-01-05 13:11:09 by tahanson43206

Companion for Fission/Fusion as a power source for all human needs by tahanson43206
Life support systems    10    2022-01-02 16:37:02 by Calliban

NASA funds Direct Drive Fusion Propulsion by Tom Kalbfus
Interplanetary transportation    3    2021-10-03 14:45:52 by tahanson43206

Nuclear Fusion in Orbit or Deep Space High Vacuum by tahanson43206
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    3    2021-08-16 11:36:44 by tahanson43206

Fission / Fusion as a power source for all human needs by Calliban
Life support systems    1    2021-06-18 13:23:28 by tahanson43206

Fusion propulsion crowdfunding by Rusakov
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    9    2021-02-22 16:52:18 by tahanson43206

A hot fusion reactor by Rusakov
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    2    2020-10-29 19:59:45 by tahanson43206

Lattice Fusion by tahanson43206
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    2    2020-09-28 17:11:18 by tahanson43206

Cold fusion for real? by louis
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    1    2018-06-08 07:18:34 by louis

LENR/cold fusion looks real and Japan is leading the way by louis
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    12    2018-02-01 16:27:58 by Void

Fusion Power, and Why I'm Skeptical of It by JoshNH4H [ 1 2 ]
Science, Technology, and Astronomy    36    2017-11-30 04:49:53 by elderflower

Kinetic impact induced fusion by Antius
Interplanetary transportation    10    2016-10-27 11:50:45 by JoshNH4H

Can we use Lockheed's 100 Megawatt Fusion reactor for a Mars Mission? by Tom Kalbfus
Human missions    5    2016-05-08 12:53:26 by Tom Kalbfus

Low Exhaust Velocity Fusion Rocket by JoshNH4H
Interplanetary transportation    9    2014-10-21 03:03:58 by Spaniard

More credible than Cold Fusion, and maybe a source of Nitrogen by Void
Terraformation    1    2013-03-02 08:35:53 by Terraformer

Cold fusion (LENR) is for real - NASA says so by louis [ 1 2 ]

(th)

louis

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 7,208

Re: Fusion power in the offing?

I don't believe they are anywhere near close in developing a practical machine for power generation. If it happens it will likely be several decades away.

I think we are already very close to meeting all our energy needs at a reasonable cost with wind, solar, hydro, tidal, sea current, wave, waste to energy, biofuels, geothermal, heat pumps and osmotic generation coupled with storage through lithium batteries, iron-air batteries, hydro and green hydrogen.

Yes, I know they have been saying nuclear fusion is just over the horizon for the last 50 years. But multiple reports have shown  advances from different approaches that suggest significant progress is being made.

Also, the White House convened a summit on the U.S. maintaining leadership in fusion power:

Energy leaders are convening at the White House for a summit on the commercialization of clean fusion energy
Jeanne Jackson DeVoe, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
March 17, 2022, 8:22 a.m.
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2022/03/ … ion-energy

  Robert Clark

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Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com

Calliban

Member

From: Northern England, UK

Registered: 2019-08-18

Posts: 3,796

Re: Fusion power in the offing?

This link discusses the latest breakthrough.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/10/europea … sults.html

A fusion energy production of 59MJ over 5 seconds.  That is just shy of 12MW.  That is mostly neutron energy deposited in the tokamak walls (about 10MW) and about 2MW deposited as thermal energy into the plasma by alpha heating.  In contrast, about 700MW of electrical power are consumed to maintain both magnetic confinement and plasma heating.
https://news.newenergytimes.net/2021/10 … s-reactor/

If that 12MW power output can be captured as heat in the reactor walls and converted to electric power with 50% efficiency, this latest experiment would have generated about 1% as much electrical energy as it consumed.

One of the critical limitations in magnetic fusion is the achievable magnetic pressure provided by the confinement coils.  The plasma is thermalised, meaning that the energy of individual particles follows a gaussian distribution.  To contain the plasma reliably, the magnetic field pressure must exceed the thermal pressure of the plasma (which is a function of average temperature) by a factor of 20-100.  This limits the achievable plasma pressure to 5-10 bar.  The reaction rate within the plasma, scales with the square of plasma pressure.  At the maximum practically achievable plasma pressure with state of the art superconducting magnets (~100T), the achievable power density of a tokamak is no more than a few MW per cubic metres.  This is 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than a fission reactor and as we have seen, power generation is far too small to achieve breakeven.

One partial solution to this problem is to scale the whole system up.  This naturally increases confinement time, possibly allowing a tokamak to reach breakeven in spite of the above limitations.  But the resulting reactor will be huge and scaling up will do nothing to improve the power density of magnetic confinement fusion which remains extremely poor.  Ultimately, a workable machine may be achievable.  But an economically viable powerplant probably is not, unless a way can be found to substantially increase plasma pressure without introducing plasma instability problems.

Inertial confinement fusion faces an entirely different set of problems, which really deserve a topic of their own.  In many ways, it does appear more promising than magnetic confinement, because the plasma density in an imploding pellet is several orders of magnitude greater.  But driving compression using lasers is very inefficient.  Ion beams are far more efficient, but the technology is relatively less mature.  I believe that IC fusion could be a near term prospect.  I will explain more in upcoming posts.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-18 05:49:06)

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"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."