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Author Topic: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?  (Read 43739 times)

morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #100 on: August 15, 2023, 09:08:51 PM »
(update)
Helion's website has seen a refresh with fancy new graphics.

https://www.helionenergy.com

There is also a section on the "technology" page with papers. One of them is fresh of the press!!!

https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 23-00367-7

Fundamental Scaling of Adiabatic Compression of Field Reversed Configuration Thermonuclear Fusion Plasmas

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10894-023-00367-7

RoxTheGeologist

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #101 on: August 16, 2023, 06:03:27 PM »
Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works” is promising fusion power in four years:

“Lockheed's fusion power plant uses radio energy to heat deuterium gas inside tightly controlled magnetic fields, creating a very high temperature plasma that's much more stable and well confined than you'd find in something like a tokamak.”

“Charles Chase describes what his team has been working on: a trailer-sized fusion power plant that turns cheap and plentiful hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) into helium plus enough energy to power a small city.”

“Chase didn't give a whole lot more technical detail, but he seemed confident in predicting a 100mW prototype by 2017, with commercial 100mW systems available by 2022, implying that all global energy demands will be able to be met by fusion power by about 2045. No more oil, no more coal, no more nuclear, and not even any solar or wind or hydro will be necessary (unless you're into that sort of thing): fusion has the potential to produce as much affordable clean power as we'll ever need, for the entire world."

Brief article and a 15 minute video here:
http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockheeds-skunk-works-promises-fusion-power-four-years

being new to this thread - I thought "That's great" but then I looked at the date of the post. If only.

NeilT

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #102 on: August 16, 2023, 06:51:01 PM »
Always "just another 10 years".

We are getting closer though.  Maybe another half century to go.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #103 on: August 17, 2023, 07:54:17 PM »
Fusion Foolery  (NIF conversion facts)

(...)
In the end, the NIF fusion accomplishment might be called a stunt.  Stunts explore what we can do (often after an insane amount of preparation, practice, and failure), rather than what’s practical.  Stunts hide the pains and present an appearance of ease and grace, but it’s a show.
(snip)
A very few articles mentioned the energetic price of generating the laser pulse. In particular, I found one in The Atlantic by Charles Seife:

    The “more energy out than laser energy in” equation masks several fundamental problems. NIF’s doped glass lasers have an efficiency of about 0.5 percent, meaning that they would have sucked in roughly 400 megajoules of energy from the grid in order to produce the 2.1 megajoules of light energy…

The second was a Big Think article by Tom Hartsfield.

    The laser energy delivered to the target was 2.05 MJ, and the fusion output was likely about 3.15 MJ. According to multiple sources on NIF’s website, the input energy to the laser system is somewhere between 384 and 400 MJ.

And that’s just the laser energetics. The whole facility consumes scads more for countless other purposes. According to the LLNL NIF FAQs (are you letting me get away with a triple acronym?),

    NIF’s 192 powerful laser beams, housed in a 10-story building the size of 3 football fields, can deliver more than 2 million joules of ultraviolet laser energy in billionth-of-a-second pulses onto a target about the size of a pencil eraser.

The emphasis is mine, to highlight the point that this is a massive laser and facility. It’s like ten Walmart superstores stacked on top of each other. The lighting alone is likely taking tens of kilowatts, which could hypothetically be run for less than a minute on the energy gain from the fusion pop.  It would be fun to count all the megajoules that went into press coverage of the event!
Power Plant Energetics

Let’s connect the 3 MJ output to that of actual power plants, forgetting for a moment the tremendous energy loss represented in getting 3 MJ out from a 400 MJ input. A typical electrical power plant (nuclear, coal, etc.) delivers about 1 GW of electrical power. But it’s a heat engine operating at 30–40% thermodynamic efficiency. So it takes roughly 3 GW of thermal energy to export 1 GW as electricity. 3 GW is 3 GJ per second, or 3,000 MJ per second.

The same efficiency factor would apply to a putative fusion plant. The concept behind fusion power is that it’s just another thermal source—an excruciatingly elaborate way to boil water to make steam to drive a turbine to run a generator. So our 3 MJ would need to be replicated 1,000 times per second to amount to 3 GW.

Laser repetition rates can be all over the map. 1,000 Hz is not in itself unusually fast by any stretch. What is the repetition rate of the NIF laser? Handily, LLNL provides these statistics. The average since 2015 is 377 shots per year, with a high of 417 and a low of 327. That’s about a shot per day—or two on a good day. It’s only 100 million times shy of 1 kHz. Oh dear.
Economics

An interview of physicist Bob Rosner in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists helpfully puts the NIF in context (it’s not about societal energy). In it, he reinforces some of what we’ve covered, and adds some financial detail.

    This facility can do one shot a day; this is at slightly more than two megajoules (of output). For an energy source, it would have to do the same thing at least 10 times a second. If you ask, “Do the lasers exist that can do this?” Not in your dream. The pellet cost a bit over $100,000 to manufacture.

The 10 shots per second, I gather, is if the fusion yield could be improved by a couple orders of magnitude—approaching actual break-even. At $100,000 per (literal) pop, and even just ten shots per second, we’re talking a cool million dollars per second!

Let’s wave a magic wand for a minute and say that the 400 MJ input produced a 700 MJ output for a net of 300 MJ: 100 times the recent breakthrough. This accords with the ten shots per second mentioned above. What is the price of the delivered electricity? After thermodynamic inefficiency is accounted, we get 100 MJ out for $100,000 cost, or $1,000 per megajoule. We are accustomed to using the kilowatt-hour (kWh) as a measure of delivered energy, which is 3.6 MJ. The cost becomes, then, $3,600 per kWh. Typical electricity costs are in the neighborhood of $0.15–0.20 per kWh, so we’re dealing with a cost that is 20,000 times higher than nominal. And don’t forget, we used a magic wand to even get there. It’s closer to 2 million times more expensive currently, and as a net energy loser to boot.

This massive reduction, incidentally, translates to a cost of $5 per pellet. I don’t care what mass-production slave labor you might dream of employing. A cryogenic hydrogen-ice target made to demanding precision specifications, containing deuterium and transmuted lithium (to make tritium) is not going to cost $5. You lost me at cryogenic. Also, they would have made many pellets by now and I’m sure don’t relish spending $100,000 each. If they’re clever enough to accomplish fusion, they would be clever enough to have already reduced costs dramatically if it were straightforward.
(more)
The problem is that such imaginings are not tethered to physical reality. They are driven by ideology, or I would say mythology. The physical reality is that we are living in an ecologically, evolutionarily untested paradigm that is very recent (on relevant timescales) and powered by patently unsustainable practices and resource use. The cost is rapid ecological degradation and global disruption to the biosphere. It seems quite clear that the track we are on does not lead to the stars, but to ignominious self-termination of this whacky mode called modernity. It simply does not add up, once the mythology is stripped away. The venture capitalist of nature is about to slam the door on our faces."

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/08/fusion-foolery/


(ooh, author has a pdf book for UCSD avail)

Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet

https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions
« Last Edit: August 17, 2023, 08:07:12 PM by morganism »

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #104 on: August 17, 2023, 10:40:08 PM »
So fusion is about as absurd as carbon capture. Neither is going to happen so we might as well move on.

John_the_Younger

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #105 on: August 17, 2023, 10:59:23 PM »
Yesterday we finished the installation of my friend's solar system (phase 3 was paused for a vacation) which draws on the fusion power of the sun.  He thinks he is now net-ahead for most days of the year; after phase 2 he was net-ahead for most months of the year (and the year, itself). 

It may not be relevant to the purpose of this thread, but this is "the Nuclear Fusion we [should be] looking for"!

kassy

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #106 on: August 17, 2023, 11:42:33 PM »
All happening for free all day and even all of the night even if it does not help the solar.
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

NeilT

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #107 on: August 18, 2023, 02:01:52 PM »
This is the issue.  Night.  Winters nights.

To base our whole society on solar we need to have storage and interconnects all over the world.

It just may be that earth bound fusion is quicker and easier to solve....
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

John_the_Younger

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #108 on: August 18, 2023, 05:02:04 PM »
Quote
This is the issue.  Night.  Winters nights.
Whatever happened to sleeping in the dark with lots of blankets and quilts?  (Our house, growing up, had central heating, but my bedroom was freezing cold all winter  - frost not only grew on the window but on the wall below it.)  Ah, I know: now I sleep with the A/C on most of the year - I moved from the mountains to Florida.  :-\

NeilT

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #109 on: August 18, 2023, 05:16:09 PM »
Quote
This is the issue.  Night.  Winters nights.
Whatever happened to sleeping in the dark with lots of blankets and quilts?  (Our house, growing up, had central heating, but my bedroom was freezing cold all winter  - frost not only grew on the window but on the wall below it.)  Ah, I know: now I sleep with the A/C on most of the year - I moved from the mountains to Florida.  :-\

I was born when my parents lived in a caravan.  No heat at night when asleep.  We moved back from Cyprus to the UK and lived in Military quarters.  Coal fire in the living room and single glazed metal windows in the bedrooms with no heat at all.

I was a teenager before I got heat in my bedroom.

That all being said, progress is progress and people don't want to go backwards.  Trying to push people backwards is unproductive and produces highly adverse reactions.  Trump was one such reaction.

So, earth bound fusion?  Maybe.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

kassy

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #110 on: August 18, 2023, 05:46:45 PM »
We can also build much better houses so if we had started improving things steadily decades ago we might already need much less energy for both warming and cooling.

Anyway we can´t wait decades.
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

NeilT

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #111 on: August 18, 2023, 06:02:11 PM »
Anyway we can´t wait decades.

No we can't.  However that doesn't meant that Fusion may not be in the mix as we try to balance demand and supply on the renewable landscape.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #112 on: August 18, 2023, 08:21:18 PM »
I think the point is the grid should be 100% renewable long before fusion is available.

NeilT

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #113 on: August 18, 2023, 09:19:06 PM »
I think the point is the grid should be 100% renewable long before fusion is available.

Should and will are not mutually inclusive.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #114 on: September 01, 2023, 12:22:46 AM »
Helion Energy has a new brag vid up on utube


morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #115 on: September 22, 2023, 10:58:06 PM »
Andrew Côté  @Andercot Aug 18

The oceans contain enough fusion fuel to power our current civilization for 65 billion years.

If we assume compounding growth of 2%, how long will it last?

Fusion: 1060 years
Solar:    460 years

Let's dig into the physics of our energy economy.
(warning: math ahead).

Nuclear fusion is how the sun produces energy, taking light elements like hydrogen and fusing them into heavier elements like helium. This releases the energy we receive as sunshine.

Every water molecule has two hydrogen atoms. About one in every 6420 hydrogen atoms has an extra neutron attached, this isotope of hydrogen is called deuterium.

Burning one gram of deuterium via fusion releases the same energy as burning 83,300 gallons of gasoline. The energy-per-mass of nuclear fuels is astounding, and is millions of times greater than carbon fuels.

Gasoline:     45x10^6        J/kg
Deuterium:  8.5x10^14    J/kg

Total fusion energy stored in the worlds oceans:

Let's go through the numbers together to see how much fusion fuel we have on the planet, using joules for energy and kilograms for mass.

Mass of all the earth's oceans: 1.4x10^21 kg
Mass of water in the oceans:    1.3x10^21 kg
(we remove the 35g/L of salt)

Each water molecule has two hydrogen atoms, but hydrogen is a lot lighter than oxygen. So, water by-mass is only 11% hydrogen (H).

Mass of H in the oceans:         1.43x10^20 kg
Mass of deuterium in that H: 4.46x10^16 kg

Fusion-energy stored in oceans: 3.8x10^31 Joules

That's about 500 times the kinetic energy of the moon, or seven million billion Minute Man ICBM's, if each one carried a 1.2 megaton W57 bomb. 

How long will it last us?

In 2022 the world used 160,000 tera-watt hours of energy.

Worldwide energy consumption:  5.76x10^20 J

If our energy consumption remains the same, our ocean-water fusion fuel will last us 65 billion years.

However, over time our energy use grows at 1-2% per year. If we assume a growth rate of 2% per year, we can add up the years of energy consumption to see when it will equal our fusion energy reserves.

Assuming a constant growth rate of 2%, our ocean-water fusion-fuel will last us ~ 1060 years. At that time the annual energy consumption of our civilization will be about 11 seconds worth of the Sun's total energy output.

So, fusion energy buys us 1000 years of compounding energy usage. How long could solar take us, assuming the same growth rate?
 
Annual solar energy reaching Earth: 5.5x10^24 J

Current use *(1 + growth rate)^periods  = future use
5.76x10^20*(1.02)^n = 5.5x10^24
n=462

Solar energy gets us 460 years of compounding energy growth until our annual consumption equals the total solar power reaching the planets surface. This means 100% of the Earth's surface is covered with 100% efficient solar panels.

If we only covered the land-area of Earth with panels that were 50% efficient, Solar gets us 360 years.

If we could only extract half the deuterium in the ocean, because of process efficiency and etc, Fusion still gets us 1026 years of compounding growth.

Notably we would also still have land to live on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today, solar energy is cheap, abundant, and extremely competitive. It will take immense amounts of land and material resources to reach our civilizational-scale needs for energy if we keep growing our economy and energy needs.

Fusion is seen as difficult, expensive, and slow to mature. Why bother? If you want humanity to last more than 360 years and still have land to live on, you need fusion.

And the far future? The outer solar system is abundant in hydrogen and deuterium, and deficient in solar energy which becomes weaker with the square of the distance from the sun.

Fusion energy can power our civilization into a space-faring future among the outer planets, and take us to the stars.


https://nitter.poast.org/Andercot

morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #116 on: September 28, 2023, 12:40:44 AM »
Nucor and Helion to Develop Historic 500 MW Fusion Power Plant

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Sept. 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Nucor Corporation (NYSE: NUE) announced a collaboration with fusion power company, Helion to develop a 500 MW fusion power plant. This transformational project will offer baseload zero-carbon electricity from fusion directly to a Nucor steelmaking facility. Nucor and Helion are working together to set a firm timeline and are committed to beginning operations as soon as possible with a target of 2030. Nucor is making a direct investment of $35 million in Helion to accelerate fusion deployment in the United States. This is the first fusion energy agreement of this scale in the world and will pave the way for decarbonizing the entire industrial sector.

https://nucor.com/news-release/20126

John Batteen

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #117 on: September 28, 2023, 09:15:26 PM »
That's pretty interesting.  Nucor is a legit player in the steel industry.  If we can figure out fusion, we can solve pretty much all of humanity's physical problems.  We'll still be humans, unfortunately.

morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #118 on: September 28, 2023, 10:09:54 PM »
I think Helion has figured out fusion correctly, without excess neutrinos, and has a 95% thermal to electrical conversion efficency system put together. 7th gen testing soon.
They are building their own super caps right now, and superconducting capacitors are much cheaper and easier to make than motor wiring and magnets. Will be easy to incorporate them as they become available.

Basic system , 2 shipping container size. Support sys 1-2 containers. Voltage conversion or interconnects, 1 container.
 
No steam generation, no cooling systems, no waste but tritium and helium, and they have a system to filter those out and attempt to re-sell them. The giant quartz tubes will slowly degrade and become slightly radioactive, think 5 yrs range.

This is why i think we should be working on a new distribution infrastructure, and less on solar and wind.

If we build out a new grid, prepping for superconducting tech, we could easily integrate all the electric we generate, and store it in a "ring" without needing huge battery tech.

I personally would like to see a huge set of ovals reaching across the US, taking solar to E coast in the evenings, and from morning in the E to, the W US. You could also have "spurs" to mountain tops and local towers to harvest lightning right into the system. This also protects against EMP, and can conceivably incorporate (induction) solar events without harming system.

If we used boring machines to build the base of these ovals, we could also have a tunnel to transport water from flooding Missouri to Neb and OK, and maybe tunnel thru Rockies for UT and the Colorodo river. Much less enviro licensing and damage and legal impact and cost of rights.

These sets of tunnels could also be evacuated and used for high speed trains, not sure if local switching yards would work. But if has mag lev rails , then only need an airlock to bring to the surface for local transport hubs and loops.

This "looping grid" would also allow us to move the population in away from the coasts as sea level rise comes. Building (underground?) cities and farms, or at least storm shelters. Will still be cheaper than mitigation, and less legally or politically fraught.

Build a Tunnel loop from a connection point, and you can put a city anywhere you want that is not hydrologically or geologically stressed. Fracked areas are prob off the table. Rockies would be tough, but if you put a couple boring machines dedicated to cutting new tunnels thru, you can convert the old, out of alignment ones into water distribution tunnels.

NeilT

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #119 on: September 29, 2023, 03:28:11 PM »
All exactly what we need but unlikely to come to fruition unless someone sees a huge benefit from it.

On the boring issue, tunnelling through granite is a whole issue in itself.  Also the Swiss found area's under the Alps which were softer rocks under high pressure that ran like water when broken into.

It is entirely possible as the Swiss have shown, but it is not an undertaking to make lightly.  I'm pretty sure Proofrock usually cuts through softer materials.

The the thing is that it is all pretty much feasible today, except perhaps a non linear motor propulsion system for maglev in a vacuum.  But it takes time for society and money to catch up.  Just as the EV1 was not really possible without Li batteries and modern computer power, which changed in the 2000's as all that became a reality, this technology will take time to filter out.
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morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #120 on: September 29, 2023, 08:53:01 PM »
Yes, the boring tech can be improved greatly too. When i was studying asteroid mining, we ran into problem that about 10% of the CC meteortites are micro-diamonds. On asteroids i ended up looking at plasma cannon to just spall off surface materials. But on earth, they have been working on pulsed microwaves to shatter solid rock. This saves cutting surfaces for breaking up and feeding crushed back thru the maw.

It seems like finding super high pressure "molten" areas would be fantastic for hollowing out for water storage and geothermal heat transfer schemes.
Under mountain cavities might also be the best place for freight switching yards, since it would have the least amount of impact on surface actions like water wells.

I was also thinking that you could use the airlocks as safety features if there were two doors in a row, you could flood the second with atmo pressure that would "airbrake" a train if needed. Or you could use that airbrake pressure to pump water up a gradient. Jack Pumping.
 Flooding a tunnel with water, and using a moveable door, then using an airbrake manuever behind it, you might also be able push all the atmo out to get a vacuum in a tunnel section?

Flooding a tunnel with sugar water or methanol as a carbon feedstock, then sending in a laser sled to pulse on all surfaces could create a graphene surface to seal microcracks, and may bulge to show you where water/springs are flowing so you could pipe/divert it off too. Graphene is the most flexible material we have ever discovered. It is also almost identical to the microdiamonds found in those asteroids, and those "self-heal" by scooting carbon atoms across their surfaces to fill defects. (studied under intersteller dusts, if you can believe that!)

NeilT

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #121 on: September 29, 2023, 11:00:20 PM »
Absolutely fascinating thoughts.  But I don't want to drag the thread too far off Nuclear fusion.

What I will say is that when humans are driving the drilling rig and it hits a pocket of molten rock, it ruins your whole day.....
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

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morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #122 on: October 02, 2023, 09:27:39 PM »
The Fusion Energy Landscape
An overview of humanity's Promethean quest to harness the power of stars

https://andercot.substack.com/p/the-fusion-energy-landscape

(...)
Here is a brief overview of the primary approaches to fusion, with a more comprehensive discussion after introducing the types of fusion fuel.
(snip)
Takeaways and Future Outlook

Despite the sudden rise to prominence in the modern news cycle, the commercial quest to develop fusion energy is a unique area of venture capital investments - private companies are almost always partnered with a government-funded national lab, like those found in the Department of Energy, and frequently hire physicists and engineers who had previously spent decades in public sector research, a pattern more similar to biotech and pharma than clean-tech energy. Yet the requirements for a fusion company to reach its goals dwarf those of biotech by several orders of magnitude, which itself is considerably more capital intensive than software: many fusion companies targeting grid-scale power estimate it will take upwards of $1 billion in funding to build their proposed reactor, with some designs consuming hundreds of millions of dollars in high-temperature superconductor magnets alone.

Fusion is also an area uniquely un-accelerated by the advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence, to paraphrase Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, where AI tools often produce far worse outcomes than human physicists. Rather the challenges of fusion are classical engineering problems, involving steel girders, megawatt power amplifiers, cryogenic cooling systems, meter-thick radiation shields and thousands of hours of building warehouse-sized devices to harness the most basic forces of physics - the classic stuff of heavy industry. Although, much like the advent of cheap intelligence, fusion energy would be a massive disinflationary force for good in the world by making almost-free the most basic factor of production for our modern material world, energy, and radically changes the cost-benefit analysis of almost every economic activity; for example we might irrigate the deserts with electrolyzed seawater, a concept currently prohibitively expensive because of the cost of grid power.

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #123 on: October 03, 2023, 05:58:27 AM »
The Fusion Energy Landscape
An overview of humanity's Promethean quest to harness the power of stars

https://andercot.substack.com/p/the-fusion-energy-landscape

Sabine Hossenfelder has a similar overview of commercial fusion efforts with a little more details on some individual companies:

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #124 on: October 03, 2023, 08:26:10 AM »

....fusion energy would be a massive disinflationary force for good in the world by making almost-free the most basic factor of production for our modern material world, energy, and radically changes the cost-benefit analysis of almost every economic activity
....

I would argue with that. Just because the input is very cheap does not mean that the energy made by fusion power would be "almost free" just like it is not true for nuclear power, because the cost of building and maintaining the powerplant must be amortized during its lifetime so depending on the actual cost of the fusion design it could be cheaper or more expensive than current forms of energy IF it happens at all

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #125 on: October 03, 2023, 12:59:08 PM »
At one time they said fision power would be to cheap to meter.

morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #126 on: November 08, 2023, 07:12:27 PM »
Helion newsletter update:

Coils, capacitors, and customers

We are working to get Polaris built as quickly as possible, with an aim of having the full machine together early next year. Over the past three months, the work our team has been doing to prepare for Polaris over the last year has really started coming together. We’re seeing full machine sections come together and production-quality coils assembled while needed components are arriving daily. A recap of some of our most important recent progress: 

Formation sections
Both Polaris formation sections have been assembled and pulse tested. Once outfitted with their quartz tube vacuum vessel, they will be ready for installation on Polaris. 

Compression coils
We have successfully machined, assembled, and pulse tested our first Polaris compression coil. This was a massive feat for our team, requiring hours of machining, precision alignment, and careful testing. We’re now in full production mode for our remaining Polaris compression coils (with peak field greater than 15T!). 

Capacitor kitchen 
Output in our capacitor kitchen has remained strong over the last few months. Our capacitor team is now manufacturing capacitors for Polaris’ divertor section, while continuing to build up long-term manufacturing capabilities for machines beyond Polaris. You can see finished capacitor windings in the image above.

Nucor agreement
We announced last month a new collaboration with Nucor, which is the first partnership of its kind. Together, we are working to deploy a 500 MW fusion power plant at a Nucor steelmaking facility. As part of this agreement, Nucor invested $35 million in Helion, and we are working together to finalize details of our collaboration with the appropriate governments and regulators.   

Journal of Fusion Energy
Dr. Milroy and I published a paper in July on the scaling of compression of FRC fusion plasmas in the Journal of Fusion Energy (JOFE). Through this paper, we outline why deuterium-helium-3 FRC fusion plasmas are ideal for commercial fusion electricity generation. If you’re interested in checking out more of our technical resources, you can find them on our website’s updated Technology page. 

Altogether, our team continues to push our ability to do something the world has never done before. We are fully focused on getting electricity to the grid as soon as we can, and the work we’re now doing on Polaris is crucial for that mission. If you’re interested in joining our mission, please apply now. 


David
Co-Founder & CEO

https://mailchi.mp/helionenergy/coils-capacitors-customers


Fundamental Scaling of Adiabatic Compression of Field Reversed Configuration Thermonuclear Fusion Plasmas

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10894-023-00367-7

Abstract

Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) plasmas are plasma devices that have demonstrated that through magnetic compression they can be heated to thermonuclear fusion conditions in the parameter space of an energy-producing generator Kirtley et al. (IEEE Symposium on Fusion Engineering, 2021). Of particular interest, FRCs are high-beta, in that the plasma particle kinetic energy is in balance with an externally applied magnetic field at all stages of operation. The following work will show that a cylindrical approximation for the energy and particle distribution within an FRC can, within 11%, match the fusion performance results of both full Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations as well as all robust, modern theoretical spatial and energy distribution models. Further, by using the simplified cylindrical model, detailed fusion reaction, radiation, and energy transport equations are now numerically-tractable and can be modelled over a wide parameter space. In the second section of this work, a detailed numerical model will be presented with the key theoretical performance of the compression of high-beta fusion plasmas in both deuterium–tritium (D–T) and deuterium–helium-3 (D–He-3) fuels. As will be shown, a high-beta D–He-3 plasma outperforms a low-beta D–T fuel and can theoretically yield a net-positive fusion generator.
Introduction

Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) plasmas are self-organized, closed-field plasma configurations created in an open-ended, cylindrical magnetic topology. They have been explored in a range of experimental programs dating to the 1980s and recently have shown to have the ability to be compressed and heated to well over 1 keV electron and 8 keV ion temperatures [2, 3]. Detailed FRC reactor designs have been completed for steady operating systems in a variety of fuels, including D–He-3 [4, 5]. And while theoretically Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)-unstable to tilt, FRCs have demonstrated kinetic stabilization of the tilt mode to many Alfvén times [6, 7]. Further, particle transport in FRCs, as expected, vastly exceed traditional theta pinch topologies and have been represented as a modified Lower Hybrid Drift (LHD) diffusion [8,9,10]. Helion Energy is pursuing the production and commercialization of FRC fusion generators that supersonically merge two high-flux FRCs and then compress them to thermonuclear conditions. Of particular interest, as FRCs are high-beta, they may be suitable for operation in both advanced, low-neutron fusion fuels as well as enable direct, inductive electricity extraction. In the following paper, the fundamental scaling of a pulsed D–He-3 generator using an FRC plasma configuration will be described. In the first section, stability and radial distributions of species temperature and density will be explored. Theoretical, experimental, and computational models will be compared and the total fusion power accuracy of several simplified models will be detailed. Using these simplifications, the following section details a fundamental scaling approach which compares relevant fusion power loss and gain phenomena. Finally, a detailed comparison of fusion fuels and generator operating regime is given prior to notes on commercializing the outlined technology.
(more)

John_the_Younger

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #127 on: November 28, 2023, 06:42:04 PM »
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/kerry-us-fusion-energy
John Kerry teases new U.S. fusion energy ambitions - "The full announcement at the COP28 summit [on Dec. 5] is expected to coincide with a renewed U.S. effort to deploy nuclear energy — a campaign whose targets may be hard to achieve without fusion projects."  This news (prediction of news?) comes out of Kerry's recent visit to Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Massachusetts.

morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #128 on: December 14, 2023, 07:47:59 AM »
First FRC in our Polaris Formation test! ☑

https://nitter.poast.org/Helion_Energy/status/1729548260455395409#m


David Kirtley @dekirtley Nov 28
What an awesome photo of our deuterium plasma injector testing! This is the first at this scale of FRC to be made by fully semiconductor switching – think billions of pulses (decades) instead of tens of thousands (months). We are also testing out new controls, diagnostics, and higher efficiency operation.

https://nitter.poast.org/dekirtley/status/1729566656899539103#m


Companies say they're closing in on nuclear fusion as an energy source. Will it work?

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/04/1215539157/companies-say-theyre-closing-in-on-nuclear-fusion-as-an-energy-source-will-it-wo

(...)
Helion was founded in 2013 with a single goal — to put fusion power on the grid. As we walk through the company's manufacturing facility, Kirtley explains how it works. Helion's design is basically a long tube of magnetic coils. At each end of the tube, the process starts with the injection of a small quantity of hydrogen and helium gas. That gas is heated until the atoms lose their electrons, creating a doughnut of hot, glowing fuel known as a plasma. The plasma doughnuts at each end are then sent to the center of the device, where they collide and are crushed by additional magnetic fields.

The machine rapidly squeezes the fuel to over 100 million degrees and pressures above 250 atmospheres, allowing the helium and hydrogen to fuse. "When fusion happens, it pushes back on the magnetic field," Kirtley explains. "We directly recover electricity from the magnetic field."

It's a bold and potentially highly efficient way to generate electricity from fusion, but it's also enormously challenging. The hot plasma gases struggle to escape their magnetic confinement, and getting the hydrogen and helium to stick requires an enormous amount of heat and compression — more so than other kinds of fusion fuels.

Researchers had struggled to make similar designs work during the early days of fusion research, but Kirtley thinks the concept deserves a second look. High-speed electronics, fiber optics and advanced, solid-state switches all make it possible to heat and compress the fusion fuel much more quickly than in the past — lessening the time it has to escape from its magnetic confines. "The faster we go, the more we can compress it, the more we can heat it, the more fusion we can get out of it," he says.

The company has already built six generations of devices, showing steady improvement. Kirtley says he believes the next machine, known as Polaris, will be able to produce more electricity than it requires — a crucial milestone known as "break even." Polaris, which is under construction in the next warehouse over, is expected to begin operation in 2024. Kirtley believes that they will prove they can extract electrical power from the device by the end of next year, though it's not clear whether the power out will exceed the power in.
(more)


NeilT

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #129 on: December 15, 2023, 06:23:57 PM »
Perpetual 10 years to "next year". Big progress.
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morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #130 on: February 17, 2024, 12:29:34 AM »
Helion Energy has a new article out on what they feel could be accomplished with abundant fusion.

https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/what-does-a-world-look-like-with-unlimited-clean-electricity/

(...)
The reason it feels like my answer comes up short is because fusion has the power to change the world in a dramatically positive way. It will unlock advances in electric transportation, water desalination, decentralized power, and AI. But it will also create new opportunities for technology and society that we can’t yet predict. There will be new things discovered, new technologies developed, new ways to communicate, and new ways to travel (on earth and beyond), with the help of fusion. On top of that development, fusion, alongside renewables, helps humanity in our fight against climate change, by weaning us off fossil fuels that we have so vehemently depended on for far too long.

and a cool post of the quartz fusion containment vessels used for the next test build.

https://nitter.poast.org/Helion_Energy/status/1755745387959468320#m



kassy

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #131 on: February 17, 2024, 06:38:55 PM »
Did they mention the ETA?
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

gerontocrat

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #132 on: February 17, 2024, 08:19:16 PM »
A gypsy's warning - Icarus.
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
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morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #133 on: February 18, 2024, 08:58:05 AM »
Components being manufactured on-site, magnets, capacitors, and containment. Phys plant and mount r built. Sensors and monitors building now, avail images at the xitter feed. Truckloads of cable coming in.

They are on schedule to produce net positive electricity this year. If they can pull it off, they get another round of funding. Contract signed with Microsoft for server farm supply, and a metal foundry, so they don't have to hook it up to the grid when they have  a working system. They have a 5th Gen test unit firing now, just not outputting yet as running at 1Hz?

lots of discussion on costs and efficiencies here:
https://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6499&hilit=helion&sid=85aac88bdf91493a3a19ecadb70fef3c&start=615

morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #134 on: March 11, 2024, 10:34:09 AM »
UK-based First Light Fusion breaks Sandia National Laboratories pressure record with its novel nuclear fusion technique.



A privately funded UK-based fusion technology startup has announced that it has broken a pressure record for its innovative nuclear fusion technology. First Light Fusion set a new record of 1.85-terapascals using a powerful pulsed machine.

This smashes the previous record of 1.5 terapascals, which has remained unbroken for a long time. The record was broken at the US-based  Sandia National Laboratories “Z Machine.”
(snip)
First Light Fusion differs from other companies exploring nuclear fusion in pursuing something called inertial confinement fusion (or simply inertial fusion). This uses a projectile fired at high speed to create extremely high temperatures and pressures to trigger a fusion reaction.

First Light Fusion said, “This differs from approaches pursued by other mainstream fusion companies in that it doesn’t involve using complex, energy-intensive, expensive lasers or magnets.”

They added, “Without the need for hugely complex and expensive lasers to facilitate the fusion reaction, this is a simpler, cheaper, more energy-efficient approach to achieving fusion with lower physics risk.”

Recharge News reports that First Light Fusion claims its amplifier technology increases the pressure the projectile impact produces, which is necessary for fusion. To test this, First Light used Sandia’s “Z Machine,” based in the US state of New Mexico, the world’s most potent pulsed power facility.
First Light Fusion is hopeful for the future

The “Z Machine” is a pulsed power facility currently the most powerful in the world. Its peak power is 80 trillion watts, more than the entire electricity grid.

The machine uses electromagnetic force to launch projectiles to higher velocities than any other facility worldwide. This impacts material samples and tests their properties at extreme pressures.

“With a peak power of 80 trillion watts, more than the world’s entire electricity grid, it electromagnetically launches projectiles to higher velocities than any other facility in the world,” explained First Light Fusion. These devices apply pressure on material samples, allowing for examining their properties under extreme conditions

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/first-light-fusion-makes-a-breakthrough


no real updates from Helion, just a pretty pic of a scaled section to prep for final build, and a link to an older paper from 1 2023 bout close resemblance to solar loop plasma phys.

Observation of rapid flux coalescence in merging field-reversed configurations

https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pop/article/31/1/010703/2932658


morganism

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #135 on: March 25, 2024, 09:32:38 AM »
Helion Energy discussed in this NPR audio report, about halfway thru. I had to select RSS to listen)


Nuclear fusion could change the world. It would produce energy at lower costs than we generate it now without greenhouse gas emissions or long-term nuclear waste.

"Fusion is the ultimate energy source," says Phil Larochelle, a partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a private venture capital firm that's investing in fusion companies. "If we can get it to work it's basically infinite, free, accessible to all, and if we get it right, carbon-free," he says.

If we can get it to work.

It's an ambitious goal. Nuclear fusion is the same process that powers stars like the sun. Scientists have been promising fusion energy as a new, clean source of power for decades without commercial success. In the 1950s and '60s, governments poured money into research, hoping for clean, essentially limitless energy here on Earth.

Decades later, there is no commercial success to speak of.

But lately, billions of dollars from venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs have flowed into the field. Companies like Helion, which raised $500 million in its last major fundraising round in 2021, are racing to build commercial fusion power plants and produce net energy in the next few years.

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/15/1198909506/commercial-nuclear-fusion-clean-energy-helion-investment

jai mitchell

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #136 on: March 25, 2024, 05:04:28 PM »
Did they mention the ETA?

The fusion we are looking for is now only about 30 years out.
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John Batteen

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Re: Is this the Nuclear Fusion we are looking for?
« Reply #137 on: March 26, 2024, 02:40:47 AM »
It might still be 20-30 years out, but at least now it's actually only 20-30 years out, I think, I hope.  They've achieved ignition a few times now, and a couple times even gotten out more energy than they put in momentarily.  Nuclear fusion would solve a lot of problems, if we could get it figured out.