The fusion age has begun.

Terraformer · 2012-01-21 18:08:30

Well, this should all be resolved one way or another within the next few months. If he bails out, it was a scam. If he doesn't...

louis · 2012-01-21 19:22:58

Terraformer wrote:

Well, this should all be resolved one way or another within the next few months. If he bails out, it was a scam. If he doesn't...

On that we can agree! I personally gave Rossi one year from his last public demonstration to provide something one could characterise more as proof - so that would be October 2012. Obviously working models going on sale is a pretty good proof and that is how he says he will give proof. If we get further postponements and the university tests he has promised don't materialise, then we will have to call it a scam or an exercise in delusion.

bobunf · 2012-09-15 23:19:36

My daughter got pregnant about the time of the last post in this thread. She's having the baby in a few weeks.

So what happened to the beginning of the fusion age?

bobunf · 2012-09-17 12:10:24

I did look around and found this: http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/ecat-t … investment

"The investors had the Swedish National Testing and Research Institute measure ecat output on September 6 in Bologna and apparently found that ecat wasn’t putting out any more energy than it was drawing in electrical power. That would indicate it wasn’t generating power. After seeing these results from an independent tester the investors apparently withdrew."

The site gives zero information about who is doing the writing; it's a source in the clouds, which does make one wonder. But the writer does go on to opine, "This doesn’t mean ecat is a failure merely that its performance did not impress the investors." Hmmm.

That suggests to me that we are dealing with a true believer, not an objective observer. Such an objective observer, confronted with what appears to me a black box with a wire running through it, would say something more akin to, "This failure impressed the investors negatively." Actually one does not need to write this at all, it's akin to saying, "The Sun rose in the east today."

There also seems to be considerable confusion as to when the test took place. There's a youtube video from June and this, supposedly from September 6, both in Bologna.

Maybe we don't need to wait till October?

Rusakov · 2012-12-22 02:18:19

There have been reports of a replication of LENR results by Toyota of a Mitsubishi reactor design. I don't think E-Cat is real, but I'm more open minded about LENR.

bobunf · 2012-12-22 10:50:57

What is this about Low-End Node Reduction? I didn't know Toyota was in the music business.

Oh, and a source would be nice. You know, there have also been innumerable reports of the end of the world.

Last edited by bobunf (2012-12-22 10:56:07)

Rusakov · 2012-12-22 12:53:07

bobunf wrote:

Oh, and a source would be nice. You know, there have also been innumerable reports of the end of the world.

Sadly, it looks like the sites that talk about it seem to be cold fusion sites. So my statement is probably untrue. I'll look for other sources, but I can't guarantee anything.

JoshNH4H · 2012-12-25 01:42:47

Bob- Unexplained acronyms seem to be a pet peeve for you; As a matter of curiosity, may I ask if this derives from standard or highly accepted style guides (MLA comes to mind, of course) or a personal opinion? I think that we all agree that there are circumstances (for example, SAM*, VHTR**, and CBA***) where the meaning is not commonly known, or clear, while in other cases (USA, EU, and JFK) where the reader can simply be expected to know the meaning. The question is therefore one of consistency and where the bar should be drawn. Can you point me to any discussion, or your personal opinion, on a test to determine which are acceptable and which are not?

On the whole, Cold Fusion "LENR" (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) experiments seem to be attributable to fraud and errors in the experimental setup, as well as misinterpretation of the data, either intentional or accidental.

Remember, just because it's not true doesn't mean that a lot of people won't believe in it. "Homeopathic" placebo medicine is a disappointing example. Some people still think that abstinence only education reduces teen pregnancy. Many people think that the FBI and the Bush administration was responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. 17% of Americans think Obama is a muslim and 25% think he was not born on American soil. All of these blatantly false claims involve similar lines of argument as cold fusion: "It hasn't been disproved that...," "Some people think that...," "X is suppressing Y because they want you to believe Z so they can make lots of money/save face/promote an agenda" Real science involves measuring all the available data and reading it to see what is true. For every one experiment that suggests that cold fusion reactions are occurring, a hundred or a thousand don't. Given confirmation bias, I would definitely be willing to bet that it's experimental error as opposed to a real effect.

*Sample Analysis at Mars, an instrument on the MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) Curiosity rover
**Very High Temperature Reactor, a general category of nuclear fission reactor
***Citizens for a Better Arizona, a grassroots political organization in the state of Arizona

louis · 2012-12-25 12:34:04

I think you need to get up to speed with what's going on.

This is one important source for recent experimentation:

http://www.quantumheat.org/

Perhaps you can contribute some ideas there for the testing procedures and say where they are going wrong (since they are finding anomalous heat).

JoshNH4H wrote:

Bob- Unexplained acronyms seem to be a pet peeve for you; As a matter of curiosity, may I ask if this derives from standard or highly accepted style guides (MLA comes to mind, of course) or a personal opinion? I think that we all agree that there are circumstances (for example, SAM*, VHTR**, and CBA***) where the meaning is not commonly known, or clear, while in other cases (USA, EU, and JFK) where the reader can simply be expected to know the meaning. The question is therefore one of consistency and where the bar should be drawn. Can you point me to any discussion, or your personal opinion, on a test to determine which are acceptable and which are not?
On the whole, Cold Fusion "LENR" (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) experiments seem to be attributable to fraud and errors in the experimental setup, as well as misinterpretation of the data, either intentional or accidental.
Remember, just because it's not true doesn't mean that a lot of people won't believe in it. "Homeopathic" placebo medicine is a disappointing example. Some people still think that abstinence only education reduces teen pregnancy. Many people think that the FBI and the Bush administration was responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. 17% of Americans think Obama is a muslim and 25% think he was not born on American soil. All of these blatantly false claims involve similar lines of argument as cold fusion: "It hasn't been disproved that...," "Some people think that...," "X is suppressing Y because they want you to believe Z so they can make lots of money/save face/promote an agenda" Real science involves measuring all the available data and reading it to see what is true. For every one experiment that suggests that cold fusion reactions are occurring, a hundred or a thousand don't. Given confirmation bias, I would definitely be willing to bet that it's experimental error as opposed to a real effect.
*Sample Analysis at Mars, an instrument on the MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) Curiosity rover
**Very High Temperature Reactor, a general category of nuclear fission reactor
***Citizens for a Better Arizona, a grassroots political organization in the state of Arizona

bobunf · 2012-12-27 12:12:44

There are three problems with excessive use of acronyms:

1. It makes the writing more difficult to understand, and has the potential to mislead the reader. As the writer, your job is to do the work for the reader and eliminate barriers to understanding what it is you are writing about.

2. Even when the acronyms can be decoded (say using a glossary at the back), it is distracting, annoying, and conveys a leaden bureaucratic tone. The reading becomes a chore. It is not fun, and fun is one of the reasons I come to New Mars, not to practice my skills with secret codes.

3. Excessive use of acronyms is an impolite affectation showing a gross lack of respect for the reader. It stems from multiple motives: wanting to appear superior; showing that you are in the know and hip; a way to camouflage a message in jargon, covering up its foolishness; a secret handshake identifying those in the “club.” All motives that are most off-putting.

Aside from all that, it’s just bad writing style for anything meant for a general audience. The Associated Press Stylebook, for instance, commands that if an abbreviation is so unfamiliar as to require being identified within parentheses, it should be avoided altogether.

This is the zero mysterious acronym stance. A bit extreme, but there it is. Deviations require good reasons. Even with familiar acronyms, the AP (we all know AP, right?) requires that the abbreviation or acronym be used only on second reference. Of course there are always exceptions:

 Certain abbreviations or acronyms are common enough to be used on first reference such as USA, UN, FBI, NASA or AP.
 Some acronyms are better understood than the actual words, e.g., USB, HTLM
 Sometimes texts contain repeated uses of a particular phrase that can be abbreviated to good effect. Writing out long expressions over and over again can break the flow of the text and actually impede understanding rather than improve it.

Obviously when not addressing a general audience, when preaching to the choir, the proper use of acronyms expands. Medical writing would be paralyzing if not for acronyms.

I don’t think the readers of New Mars can be categorized as any particular choir; we need to be addressed as a general audience. So, I find excessive use of acronyms in this context annoying because it is impolite, confusing, impedes communication, wastes my time and effort, and is frequently just plain belligerently presumptuous and rude.

bobunf · 2012-12-27 12:29:47

Louis, what a scam. These quantum heat characters are asking for money without giving:

> a physical address, not even a country
> the type of entity: corporation, profit or non-profit, sole proprietorship, or whatever
> where incorporated or registered; so you can find their filings
> the name of even one officer (if they have any), members of their board (if they have one), advisers (if they have any), etc. In fact, there are no names of anyone living except the donors, and all of those names are untraceable and quite possibly fake.
> no hint of what they will actually do with your money. Who are they going to write checks to, for what purposes?

A case of fraud piled on fraud?

JoshNH4H · 2012-12-27 21:28:57

Bob, I would accept that as being a pretty reasonable heuristic for a reasonable acronym-- though, in the context of Newmars and space advocacy, I contend that LEO is an acceptably common acronym... and I'm sticking to that one.

Louis: Given that the entirety of the scientific establishment is in agreement; given that fundamentals of logic insist that failing conclusive evidence to the positive one cannot treat any statement as the truth; and given that you must know that there are people out there, even if just one in a thousand, who will say anyone to illicitly get people's money; What reason do you have to believe in these isolated claims in the face of an overwhelming number of failures to replicate the results of so-called "cold fusion" experiments?

bobunf · 2013-01-03 15:59:53

Here is an example of acronym use from the Lowell Observer, the newsletter of the Lowell Observatory, the largest privately owned and operated observatory in the world:

“The Large Monolithic Imager (LMI), a camera built at Lowell Observatory and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), recently took a set of first-light images on Lowell’s 4.3 meter Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT). At the heart of the LMI is the largest charged-coupled device (CCD) that can be built using current fabrication techniques and the first of its kind to be made by the firm e2v. The 36 megapixel CCD’s active surface is 3.7 inches on a side. The LMI’s ability to provide much more accurate measurements of the faint light around galaxies separates it from cameras that use a mosaic of CCDs to produce images...”

The Observatory was founded 119 years ago by Percival Lowell, who was in search not only of life on Mars, but of Martian civilization. It is known as the source of the first evidence for red shift and the expanding universe, and for the discovery of Pluto.

The Lowell Observer addresses a lay audience, but an audience that is at least interested enough in astronomy to donate money to the institution. Thus, the audience is probably not completely ignorant. Nonetheless, note the careful and proper style with respect to acronyms.

Last edited by bobunf (2013-01-03 16:00:59)

bobunf · 2013-01-03 16:10:36

With the beginning of another year, I would like to note that it was 55 years ago that I expressed some skepticism about the enthusiasm for fusion power displayed by my high school friend, who would go on to become a nuclear physicist. Unlimited power from fusion was only 20 years away.

Now it appears that unlimited power from nuclear fusion is 50 years away, more or less. I'm still skeptical about hot fusion. Power from cold fusion, on the other hand, is just a fraud.

tahanson43206 · 2020-12-06 13:50:29

For SpaceNut .... there are 13 topics containing the word "fusion" in the title

I looked at several before deciding to bring this one back into view ... it has a nice mix of enthusiasm and skepticism, cold fusion and hot fusion, and perhaps other variations I missed.

SearchTerm:Fusion I think it is time for an update on the small scale projects as well as the gigantic National and International ones.
SearchTerm:Boron11 This isotope of Boron can react with a single Hydrogen nucleus to create an unstable Carbon atom that decays to three Alpha particles

Anyone up for a refresh on the state of the art of fusion research?

Edit#1: The article at the link below is a summary of a longer paper, written for a general audience.
http://fusionandthings.eu/2019/06/05/ne … difficult/

New calculations show proton-boron fusion is still difficult
June 5, 2019 Jack Hare Leave a comment

The article explains why the p-B11 reaction has not yet been achieved.

There are a number of citations available for TAE (Three Alpha) .... the citations include this with a 2012 update:

https://www.ialtenergy.com/tri-alpha-energy.html

Recent Events
Interestingly a recent presentation in August, 2011 from which a powerpoint presentation was posted, suggests current research is pursuing deuterium fusion. This can be a step along the process to aneutronic fusion, but was not spelled out.
Just out in at the end of October 2012 is a 79 page PDF file report on progress and plans, including ideas on proton-boron aneutronic fusion as part of their direction.
Although registered from 2002 the domain for the company had not elicited any visible information. Just recently it has published its website.
It has also released a publicly accessible video on its work, including comments from it founder Norman Rostoker, a number of scientists and board members involved in the work.

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tahanson43206 · 2020-12-07 14:52:08

The article about the link below is about both fusion and fission ...

US Space Force and NASA Looking to Privatize Nuclear Spacecraft Production
Mon, December 7, 2020, 8:30 AM EST
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / December 7, 2020 / US Nuclear (OTCQB:UCLE) is the prime contractor to build MIFTI's fusion generators, which could be used in the relatively near future to power the propulsion systems for space travel and provide plentiful, low-cost, clean energy for the earth and other planetary bases once our astronauts get to their destination, be it the moon, Mars, Saturn or beyond.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/us-s … 00716.html

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SpaceNut · 2020-12-10 20:25:39

America Finally Makes Plans for Its Own Nuclear Fusion Power Plant

ITER's is the big issue for nuclear power use and its success or failure in the 2030s will make a huge difference in our plans.

5f25b8db32d0018e8985f927d37e704f

For the first time, a major group of American scientists has agreed to work toward opening a nuclear fusion plant by the 2040s. The timeframe is intentional, letting scientists work on and learn from giant projects like Europe’s ITER and China’s EAST before designing a prototype of a fusion plant for the United States.

SpaceNut · 2020-12-28 17:32:06

Is nuclear fusion the answer to the climate crisis?

f734b08f046430bc20cf7c7b00b59129

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals … sics-basis

Nuclear fusion, the physical process that powers our sun, occurs when atoms are pushed together at extremely high temperatures and pressure, causing them to release tremendous amounts of energy by merging into heavier atoms.
Since it was first discovered last century, scientists have sought to harness fusion, an extremely dense form of power whose fuel – hydrogen isotopes – are abundant and replenish able.
Harnessing this form of nuclear power, though, has proven extremely difficult, requiring heating a soup of subatomic particles, called plasma, to hundreds of millions of degrees – far too hot for any material container to withstand. To work around this, scientists developed a donut-shaped chamber with a strong magnetic field running through it, called a tokamak, which suspends the plasma in place.
MIT scientists and a spinoff company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, began designing the new reactor, which is more compact than its predecessors, in early 2018, and will start construction in the first half of next year. If their timeline goes as planned, the reactor, called Sparc, will be capable of producing electricity for the grid by 2030, according to researchers and company officials. This would be far faster than existing major fusion power initiatives.

https://cfs.energy/

https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc

louis · 2020-12-28 17:37:16

And still it's - drum roll - 10 years away!

SpaceNut wrote:

Is nuclear fusion the answer to the climate crisis?
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/43pcl … 7b00b59129
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals … sics-basis
Nuclear fusion, the physical process that powers our sun, occurs when atoms are pushed together at extremely high temperatures and pressure, causing them to release tremendous amounts of energy by merging into heavier atoms.
Since it was first discovered last century, scientists have sought to harness fusion, an extremely dense form of power whose fuel – hydrogen isotopes – are abundant and replenish able.
Harnessing this form of nuclear power, though, has proven extremely difficult, requiring heating a soup of subatomic particles, called plasma, to hundreds of millions of degrees – far too hot for any material container to withstand. To work around this, scientists developed a donut-shaped chamber with a strong magnetic field running through it, called a tokamak, which suspends the plasma in place.
MIT scientists and a spinoff company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, began designing the new reactor, which is more compact than its predecessors, in early 2018, and will start construction in the first half of next year. If their timeline goes as planned, the reactor, called Sparc, will be capable of producing electricity for the grid by 2030, according to researchers and company officials. This would be far faster than existing major fusion power initiatives.
https://cfs.energy/
https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc

tahanson43206 · 2021-01-26 07:23:24

Here is an update on fusion research ... What makes this article (possibly) worth a glance that the companies involved are pursuing an old (1970's) idea and they are both backed by individuals and organizations with deep pockets. The distinct difference (as I understand it - subject to correction) is that both teams are using metal under pressure instead of gas as is the method used by ITER in Europe.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/jeff … 00988.html

Caroline Delbert
Mon, January 25, 2021 3:26 PM
major investors, say we’re approaching the “Kitty Hawk moment” for their technology as early as 2025.
Magnetized target fusion (MTF) dates back to the 1970s, when the U.S. Naval Research Lab first proposed it. But MTF’s proponents say the technology is now bearing down to reach the commercial power market.
What is this tech, and will it be viable before the competing fusion model of tokamaks, like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)?
Like a tokamak, an MTF reactor involves hot plasma contained by a powerful magnetic field. But where a tokamak is heated by extraordinary outside power, the MTF reactor made by Canada’s Jeff Bezos-backed General Fusion is pressurized to superheat the plasma—like a party filled with dancing people where the room continues to shrink around them. This pressure is applied by pistons that coordinate to make a pressure wave.

I'm definitely interested in any comments members might have about the potential of these initiatives to achieve breakeven energy flows at all, let alone before the competing teams.

(th)

Calliban · 2021-01-26 08:56:57

The two problems with attempting to compress the plasma with any solid material are: (1) There are massive heat fluxes from the plasma into the material, in this case, liquid metal; (2) If the plasma is contaminated with a non-reactive species, it dramatically reduces the rate of fusion. Even small amounts of contamination can have a significant impact.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-01-26 08:57:35)

tahanson43206 · 2021-01-26 09:44:43

For Calliban re #71

Thanks for picking up on this news item, and for your comments about the difficulty of what they are attempting. Since the efforts are receiving funding from folks (and organizations) I'm assuming they may ? have ideas about how to avoid or mitigate those risks? It would seem the risks are worth addressing, in hopes of beating the gas enthusiasts to the finish line.

While additional comments by Caliban are welcome and perhaps even likely, I'd like to remind chance readers of this topic who are not already members of the forum, AND who have knowledge in this specialized discipline, you're welcome to drop a line to NewMarsMember * gmail.com

A smaller fusion reactor would be useful on Mars as well as on the Large Ship, in addition to many applications on Earth.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2021-02-19 13:56:07

Here's an update on the Australian B-11 fusion initiative ...

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/fus … 00727.html

"We are excited to welcome Lukasz Gadowski to the Board," said Prof Hora. "His passion for physics, experience building many immensely successful multinational companies and perspective on the broad impact of our technology, all make Lukasz a most valuable addition to our team."
"Professor Heinrich Hora is the pioneer of hydrogen-boron fusion technology – the most elegant approach that I have come across so far. Now we have to put theory into practice. A difficult task, but it's worth the effort alone," Gadowski said. "It is an honour to be part of the revolution of energy production alongside Heinrich Hora."

It's good to see this initiative given financial support ...

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tahanson43206 · 2021-04-05 12:31:26

This is a report on some theoretical research that seems to have a highly dubious proposition...

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/firs … 00889.html

The researchers are careful to emphasize their paper is still very abstract. They want it to serve as a guide for the near future of pressurized plasma research, a sort of road map to whatever the next steps are. And while a traditional tokamak reactor that produces net power is still at least 9 to 14 years away, a pressurized tokamak is almost definitely even further out.
That means there’s still time to develop concrete plans for a hypothetical pressurized plant, and this research could help scientists get funding and public interest to do th

Since plasma has to operate in a vacuum, the idea of "pressurizing" any more than magnetic fields are trying to do already seems like a dubious proposition at best. However, since (presumably reputable) scientists are advancing the results of their work, I hope it receives the kind of intense scrutiny I would expect for the claims.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2021-04-05 18:50:06

This Is the First Fusion Power Plant to Generate Net Electricity

Scientists have a new compact fusion plant that uses pressurized plasma.
Pressurizing plasma raises the energy density while reducing overall size.
The fusion plant is still far in the future, but this research could influence scientists.
Could the future of nuclear fusion be a much smaller, self-sustaining tokamak reactor? Researchers at the General Atomics DIII-D National Fusion Facility, the largest nuclear fusion research facility in the U.S., think so. The secret is the pressurized plasma.
The scientists from DIII-D have designed a full“compact nuclear fusion plant” concept and detailed the plans in a new paper in Nuclear Fusion. In simulations, their 8-meter-wide pressurized plasma fusion concept is powerful enough to generate 200 megawatts (MW) of net electricity after the energy cost of the fusion itself.
This would be the very first fusion power plant to generate net electricity. The current best ratio is an output of 67 percent of the total energy required to power the reactor.

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#51 2012-01-21 18:08:30

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#52 2012-01-21 19:22:58

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#53 2012-09-15 23:19:36

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#54 2012-09-17 12:10:24

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#55 2012-12-22 02:18:19

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#56 2012-12-22 10:50:57

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#57 2012-12-22 12:53:07

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#58 2012-12-25 01:42:47

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#59 2012-12-25 12:34:04

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#60 2012-12-27 12:12:44

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#61 2012-12-27 12:29:47

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#62 2012-12-27 21:28:57

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#63 2013-01-03 15:59:53

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#64 2013-01-03 16:10:36

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#65 2020-12-06 13:50:29

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#66 2020-12-07 14:52:08

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#67 2020-12-10 20:25:39

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#68 2020-12-28 17:32:06

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#69 2020-12-28 17:37:16

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#70 2021-01-26 07:23:24

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#71 2021-01-26 08:56:57

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#72 2021-01-26 09:44:43

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#73 2021-02-19 13:56:07

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#74 2021-04-05 12:31:26

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#75 2021-04-05 18:50:06

Re: The fusion age has begun.

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