Can the High beta fusion reactor work?

up Are the claims made about

vote7do the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor realistic? Can such a small
wn vote favorite
fusion reactor really work?
1
nuclear-physics fusion

shareciteimprove this question asked Oct 15 '14 at 20:16

asmaier
1,9391534
What claims? Please summarize. rob Oct 15 '14 at 20:23

1 @rob - I think asmaier is talking about the proposal here. I don't know if this is accurate, but on another forum some
people were saying it seemed to be along the same lines as the magnetic mirror approach to fusion which was
apparently worked on in the 80s but mostly stopped due to lack of enough funding. Hypnosifl Oct 16 '14 at 2:23

3 Could you guys try to expand it to a full answer that actually tries to argue that the whole compact design violates
some physics argument? I have doubts about these comment-sized answers of yours. It's hard for me to believe that the
guy with a fusion-related NASA-led PhD from MIT doesn't know the basic things about the plasma confinement. I
guess that he knows what "magnetic mirror" is as well and if the problem was a lack of funding, it may have been
overcome in Lockheed Martin, right? Lubo Motl Oct 16 '14 at 7:35

1 @LuboMotl We don't have any rigorous scientific or technical data regarding the idea to make that kind of
assessment. This is why I think it's premature to answer this question. I made a statement based on what I have seen
thus far; it doesn't mean it will or won't work. The second point is that the confinement problem is not a "basic thing" -
the study of energy and particle transport is a big theoretical and practical problem that some of the best minds in the
field (including those at MIT's Plasma Science & Fusion Center) have grappled with for decades. user3814483 Oct
16 '14 at 16:58

1 Yup, that's exactly what I meant by a "basic thing" that it's an omnipresent fundamental problem that every
researcher in the field has had to deal with much of the time. ... I obviously don't claim that this project has to work, it
probably won't. But I think it would be unfortunate to dismiss the work of a trained professional (plus colleagues) in a
big corporation tasked with a similar task just because they're not finished yet or because their approach differs from
some other, hugely funded approaches, without an actual physics argument why their approach is less promising.
Lubo Motl Oct 17 '14 at 6:17
show 2 more comments
2 Answers
activeoldestvotes

up I personally doubt that the Compact Fusion Reactor as presented by Lockheed Martin last
vote week can work, but I haven't seen enough information to be certain. And to some extent, you
5do never know until you try. (As I understand it, they only have a very early prototype, I mean try
wn as in a full scale prototype.)
vote
What I think I can say with certainty, is that it won't be as small as they claim - "can fit on the
back of a truck". Trucks are about the same width as standard containers, so about 2.5m wide.
I've had to make quite a few guesses, but I've tried to justify them and choose the smallest size
possible.
In the second image here, you can see a grey blanket around the device which absorbs 14MeV
neutrons to generate tritium and protect the rest of the plant. The internal coils will also need
such a blanket to protect them (it's unclear if the orange skin is this blanket, or just the
cryostat). It's also unclear if the outer coils are superconducting or not, but I'll assume they are
otherwise the ohmic losses use too much of the power you're supposed to be generating.
Superconducting coils need to be cooled with liquid helium and insulated inside a cryostat.
Blankets for a tokamak reactor are estimated at 1m thick. I'm not sure if this is dictated by the
tritium breeding or the protection. If it's protection, you might be able to reduce their thickness
if you're operating at 100MW instead of 1GW, so let's be optimistic and assume 0.2m thick.
I'll assume the same width for the coils and the cryostat (probably optimistic again). I'll neglect
any structural elements. So going from the outside of the machine to the centre we have

They don't give any figures for the size of the plasma, but I think it just looks silly if the
plasma diameter is less than a third of the coil diameter, so I'll put 0.5m in both of those
plasma columns. (Note that this is a very small distance between where the fusion happens at
10^8Kelvin and the wall at 10^3K, and would be extremely good magnetic confinement.)

Totalling up gives 2.6m from the outside to the centre, so the machine is about two trucks
wide already. You might give them the benefit of the doubt at this stage, even though all those
values were optimistic. But then you need to add peripherals:

heating system (the neutral beam injectors shown in the Lockheed diagram are usually
about the size of a truck by themselves)

cryogenic plant for liquid helium (at least half a truck)

power supplies for the coils

vacuum pumping system

steam turbine

bioshield. Even the 1m blanket on a tokamak doesn't block all of the 14MeV neutrons.
Safety regulations will require a few metres of concrete shielding in all directions
(multiple trucks)

So even if it would work, I don't think anyone will be putting it on a plane.

shareciteimprove this answer edited Oct 21 '14 at 7:48 answered Oct 20 '14 at 16:40

craq
1014
 add a comment
up other people far smarter than I have since published more detailed reasons why the
vote concept presented by Lockheed Martin can't work. One example is from two
2do professors of plasma physicson the website of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma
wn Physics. To summarise
vote coils inside the plasma need connections for a power supply and coolant. These
connections will be in direct contact with the hot core of the plasma.
size of shielding required for neutron protection is much larger than proposed
fast particles are not well confined by the magnetic configuration which LM
proposes. To understand this you need a good grasp of plasma physics, so I won't
try to explain further. The effect has, however, been demonstrated and
understood in other plasma physics experiments.
 General Fusion will Leverage Computer
Technology
canada, energy, future, general fusion, nuclear

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Cleantech Groups provides some info on General Fusion. Advances in computing

technology could be the key to magnetized target fusion being a cheaper energy source
than coal, according to Canadian startup General Fusion.
 General Fusion is developing nuclear fusion technology that could one day
provide power more cheaply than coal and more safely than nuclear fission plants.
The company is using 30-year old magnetized target fusion (MTF) technology but
applying modern computer processing capabilities to control and speed
compressions.

General Fusion is seeking to raise an additional $4.75 million before the end of the
year to close its Series A round at $13.75 million. The company secured $9 million
from GrowthWorks Capital, Braemar Energy Ventures, Chrysalix Energy Ventures
and the Entrepreneurs Funds in August, in addition to about $2 million in seed and
friends-and-family funding.

General Fusion also secured C$13.9 million (US$12.9 million) from Sustainable
Technology Development Canada in August, but that money requires matching
funds and is to be dispersed as the company meets technological milestones.

The capital is expected to finance the first, two-year phase of General Fusion's
project, which is now underway. Richardson estimated a cost of $47 million to $50
million for the entire four-year project.

In the first phase, General Fusion plans to build full-scale prototypes to demonstrate
that all the elements work to the specifications required. That includes the
magnetized ball of plasma, and demonstrating the compression screen. However,
the company doesnt plan to build the reactor until the second phase, which is
expected to start in July 2011.

General Fusion plans to return to private financiers before beginning the final phase.

By then we will be backed by a whole lot of technological demonstrations that what

we do is feasible, Richardson said. It will be a lot easier to raise funds.

After the second phase is completed, it could take five years or more until the
technology could be incorporated in a grid-connected power plant. But General
Fusion will likely seek licensing agreements or strategic partners for that step in the
technology deployment, Richardson said.
Popular Science has step by step diagrams of how the sonic waves driven by
pistons hitting a metal sphere would drive fusion.

Shockwave already on the way in

As I noted before: M Simon over at IECfusion Tech has come around to thinking it
could work, although it will be very tough.

Later version will have 200 big pistons.

November 09, 2011

NPR interviews Michel Laberge of

General Fusion
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Michel Laberge knew he couldn't beat the existing multibillion-dollar fusion labs at their own
game. So instead, he decided to combine ideas from the two current approaches to make a
vastly cheaper machine

Canadian startup General Fusion has designed a machine to generate fusion power by
smashing together two variants of hydrogen atoms: deuterium, which has one neutron and
one proton, and tritium, which has two neutrons and one proton.

The result: helium gas (which will get released into the atmosphere) and vast amounts of
energy, which will get captured and turned into electricity. The company is still constructing
its prototype. Here's how it's supposed to work.

Getting Started
1. Two large injectors heat the deuterium and tritium gas to 1 million degrees
Celsius, turning it into plasma, an electrically charged gas.

2. Puffs of the plasma are shot into the center of a spherical tank filled with spinning,
molten lead.

3. The spinning vortex of metal creates magnetic fields that trap the plasma in the
center of the sphere.

Creating The Fusion Reaction

4. About 200 pneumatic pistons cover the outside of the sphere. The pistons strike
the tank at exactly the same time, creating a shock wave in the liquid metal. This
shock wave compresses the plasma in the center.

5. The compression raises the temperature to 150 million degrees Celsius, creating
the right conditions for fusion.

Capturing Energy, Generating Electricity

6. The energy released from the fusion gets absorbed into the swirling lead, causing
it to heat up. The hot lead is piped away to a heat exchanger, where it boils water
into steam. The steam then turns a turbine, generating electricity.

"Other fusion uses a very complex way of producing energy

superconducting magnets, laser beams, all sorts of expensive and complicated and
pricey stuff," he says. "It costs them billions and billions of dollars, so it's not so
practical in my opinion. Here, what the energy source is, is compressed air.
Compressed air is dirt cheap."

Think of his idea as a one-two punch. His big electrical gizmo starts to heat up the
atoms. Those get injected into a 10-foot-wide sphere full of swirling molten lead.

"The liquid will be circulated with a pump, so it spins around and makes a vortex in
the center. You know, like your toilet with a hole in the center," Laberge says.

And just as the heated atoms get into the center, Laberge fires 200 pistons, powered
 with compressed air, which surround the sphere. "Those are compressed air guns ...
that send a big compression wave, squash the thing, and away you go!"

Banks of capacitors are a key part of General Fusion's machine. The capacitors,
which charge up and release bursts of electricity, will be used to heat gases to 1
million degrees Celsius in preparation for a fusion reaction.

"Just in the last year I heard it reported from some technical meetings that China has
gotten interested in magnetized target fusion," Richard Siemon (used to run the
fusion program at Los Alamos National Laboratory) notes. China could easily throw
hundreds of millions of dollars at the idea. So venture capitalists could have some
serious competition. Laberge, of course, is betting he will emerge victorious.