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Lockheed Martin Developing Compact Fusion

Id rather see someone working on nano reactors. We need these for houses, cars, and other equipment. Its possible with todays technology but seems industries just don't seem interested in giving away power for free and want away to charge for continued use.
 
I had a customer tell me I should work there one day =) Not sure if he was joking prob just some retired old coot.
 
I see articles like this all the time.

Berkley develops Si based battery that holds 10x's the charge.

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2011/09/23/better-li-ion-batteries/

MIT develops micro channel tunneling techniques using carbon nanotubes to make batteries charge faster, hold more charge, and charge more efficiently (For those of you who protest, MIT came out with it's research about 5 years before the Chinese made such a claim...)

http://nanomagazine.co.uk/index.php...tenfold-increase-in-lithium-ion-battery-power

Holographic recording to store hundreds of terabytes in a 1" cube
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage



Now, "We have fusion in a reactor about the size of a pickup truck"

These companies are looking for seed money to perfect an imperfect product. And the likelihood of an actual payout is still small, or years away. Please listen carefully to the disclaimers in the promotion..."Build initial vessel in a year. Prototype after experimenting in 5" In other words, they aren't done the research and it may not pan out.
 
They stopped building F-16s or F-17s or something so they need something else to fall back on.
No need for the jets but recently you would think so.
 
There is a truth in America: Big change can happen when we start throwing defense dollars at a project.

Skunkworks doesn't exactly have a reputation for failure either.

If this was ANYONE else I'd be first in line to be skeptical.
 
Where's my Mr. Home Fusion, Lockheed? I have time machines that need to be powered on some paper balls and chicken bones.
 
tweaked said:
There is a truth in America: Big change can happen when we start throwing defense dollars at a project.

Skunkworks doesn't exactly have a reputation for failure either.

If this was ANYONE else I'd be first in line to be skeptical.
Click to expand...

How did that Interstate system get built again? :D

Hint: National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956
 
It would be absolutely fantastic if they really do get it to work. Consider me skeptical, though, as fusion has been continually touted since the 1950s as the energy technology that is about 10 years away from becoming reality.
 
The fusion research continues. The NIF facility is still behind the 8 ball for producing useable research.

I have doubts the human race could use it beneficially. Lockheed martin has weapon uses in mind and I don't think that will sit very well with many of us.
 
Hey, I hope they can get it done. It's well established how to make the reaction happen without a fission reaction first. They just have to overcome the issues of controlling the heat and getting more power out than what's put in to keep the reaction going.

I'm sure it'll happen eventually, just a matter of time and will(money).
 
ViperGrendal said:
Hey, I hope they can get it done. It's well established how to make the reaction happen without a fission reaction first. They just have to overcome the issues of controlling the heat and getting more power out than what's put in to keep the reaction going.

I'm sure it'll happen eventually, just a matter of time and will(money).
Click to expand...

That's the problem. Many people don't realize they have to spend days charging massive capacitor banks to fire all these lasers at once to heat a pellet or to super heat plasma in a magnetic bottle.

The problem with each approach is this:

1) The pellet is so small and hard to make the reaction takes more energy then it can generate. (Although they are getting close to breaking even)

2) The tokamak reactors that use magnetic bottles are having a hard time containing the plasma stream. The plasma stream becomes unstable and touches the reactor walls causing an immediate reactor shutdown. They have been trying to offset this effect by making the reactors bigger and bigger allowing for a larger containment vessel safe area for the plasma stream to react. But so far results have NOT been promising.
 
Comixbooks said:
They stopped building F-16s or F-17s or something so they need something else to fall back on.
No need for the jets but recently you would think so.
Click to expand...
No, they have not stopped producing F-16's. The F/A-18 Super Hornet/E/A-18 Growler is Boeing (St. Louis)/Northrop (El Segundo) which that is reaching EOL. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the F-35 which is currently on going and they have over several hundred planned for production every year for a while starting in 2018. Currently they are doing LRIP-8 (Low Rate Initial Production) which is 35 F-35's for 2014. Lockheed Martin also will be competing for the Next Generation Bomber project in joint collaboration with Boeing as they do currently collaborate with Boeing on ULA.
 
viscountalpha said:
The fusion research continues. The NIF facility is still behind the 8 ball for producing useable research.

I have doubts the human race could use it beneficially. Lockheed martin has weapon uses in mind and I don't think that will sit very well with many of us.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately it's the only way to advance technology in a militarized government. Beyond Lawrence-Livermore there's not much of anything going on, and the major purpose of Lawrence-Livermore is to extend their own paychecks as long as humanly possible, and protect the fossil fuel industry by claiming anything and everything related to fusion energy is always at least ten years away. If the will actually existed to produce commercial fusion power we could have been off this fossil fuel treadmill 20 or 30 years ago.

The simple truth is, these Fusion reactions are being accomplished with lasers, that now operate up to 20M degrees F each. Point 192 of these lasers at a pellet of cryogenic hydrogen isotopes and viola', the resulting X-ray reliably (if the pellet is round enough) start a nuclear fusion process. It's that simple. The only remaining issue for commercial and military use is containment. Luckily fusion plasma is highly conductive so magnetic containment is an option.

But imo as long as the Pentagon remains the only way of advancing fusion technology in our country, we won't be going anywhere anytime soon. See first paragraph.
 
The Lockheed process uses gas heated by microwaves, not pellets and lasers. Not saying this will pan out either, but at least they are taking a different approach. Being the Skunkworks and all I wouldn't bet against them.
 
Darcschnider said:
Id rather see someone working on nano reactors. We need these for houses, cars, and other equipment. Its possible with todays technology but seems industries just don't seem interested in giving away power for free and want away to charge for continued use.
Click to expand...
You could already do that with thorium but safety etc. If you really want that should tought this, if they can make minature fusion reactors u might actually see them used if you can get past lobiests
 
Raffin said:
The Lockheed process uses gas heated by microwaves, not pellets and lasers. Not saying this will pan out either, but at least they are taking a different approach. Being the Skunkworks and all I wouldn't bet against them.
Click to expand...

There are lots of way to heat gas. Ohmic induction, Magnetic tightening, EMF Heating. A lot of these experiments were tried in Tokamaks. Magnetic containment is still an issue. And magnetic containment doesn't work on side product neutrons. Excess neutron creation makes many substances unstable and Beta decay radioactive.
 
viscountalpha said:
The fusion research continues. The NIF facility is still behind the 8 ball for producing useable research.

I have doubts the human race could use it beneficially. Lockheed martin has weapon uses in mind and I don't think that will sit very well with many of us.
Click to expand...

NIF has already produced their endgame result, which was showing that it's possible to have net energy production with a fusion reaction after containment.
 
viscountalpha said:
The fusion research continues. The NIF facility is still behind the 8 ball for producing useable research.

I have doubts the human race could use it beneficially. Lockheed martin has weapon uses in mind and I don't think that will sit very well with many of us.
Click to expand...

Oh, and thermonuclear weapons already exist...so I don't see the point with your second statement. Otherwise, they are looking at using them on military platforms such as naval vessels. There were nuclear powered naval vessels before the first commercial fission reactors came online. People seem to forget that many of our greatest technological advances come from military technological advances and/or government development.
 
Any new ideas in fusion research is good for mankind. We need fusion power.

Though I'm disappointed they went with magnetic confinement. Inertial confinement seems so much more likely to work.
 
Skunkworks exists more in name than anything else. The Skunkworks today isn't the same type of organization that created the SR-71 or F-117.
 
wabbitseason said:
Any new ideas in fusion research is good for mankind. We need fusion power.

Though I'm disappointed they went with magnetic confinement. Inertial confinement seems so much more likely to work.
Click to expand...

And this is based on your immense engineering and physics knowledge I assume?
 
"free energy for the world"

Not in any of our lifetimes. No way. Perhaps never in any age.
 
I will admit I haven't been keeping up to date on the fusion energy scene. Maybe someone can fill me in, but I thought one of the hurdles to making fusion viable was that it needed more energy to initiate the reaction than the reaction itself produced. I had heard at one point that a research team somewhere had created a reactor that managed to produce more energy than was required but the output energy was almost not worth the effort meaning it would have to have been an order of magnitude greater for the technology to be truly useful.

So was my understanding in error, or has something changed lately that is spurring this new effort into the development of fusion reactors, especially smaller ones?
 
What I don't get about fusion is that we think it's the greatest source of energy cause of the sun. Yet stars use gravity as a way to create fusion, which is infinite and free. Here on earth to get fusion going we need to use a lot of energy and we're not breaking even.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
That's the problem. Many people don't realize they have to spend days charging massive capacitor banks to fire all these lasers at once to heat a pellet or to super heat plasma in a magnetic bottle.

The problem with each approach is this:

1) The pellet is so small and hard to make the reaction takes more energy then it can generate. (Although they are getting close to breaking even)

2) The tokamak reactors that use magnetic bottles are having a hard time containing the plasma stream. The plasma stream becomes unstable and touches the reactor walls causing an immediate reactor shutdown. They have been trying to offset this effect by making the reactors bigger and bigger allowing for a larger containment vessel safe area for the plasma stream to react. But so far results have NOT been promising.
Click to expand...

http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details

how they get around the Tokomak issues:

The CFR will avoid these issues by tackling plasma confinement in a radically different way. Instead of constraining the plasma within tubular rings, a series of superconducting coils will generate a new magnetic-field geometry in which the plasma is held within the broader confines of the entire reaction chamber. Superconducting magnets within the coils will generate a magnetic field around the outer border of the chamber. “So for us, instead of a bike tire expanding into air, we have something more like a tube that expands into an ever-stronger wall,” McGuire says. The system is therefore regulated by a self-tuning feedback mechanism, whereby the farther out the plasma goes, the stronger the magnetic field pushes back to contain it. The CFR is expected to have a beta limit ratio of one. “We should be able to go to 100% or beyond,” he adds.

This crucial difference means that for the same size, the CFR generates more power than a tokamak by a factor of 10. This in turn means, for the same power output, the CFR can be 10 times smaller. The change in scale is a game-changer in terms of producibility and cost, explains McGuire. “It’s one of the reasons we think it is feasible for development and future economics,” he says. “Ten times smaller is the key. But on the physics side, it still has to work, and one of the reasons we think our physics will work is that we’ve been able to make an inherently stable configuration.” One of the main reasons for this stability is the positioning of the superconductor coils and shape of the magnetic field lines. “In our case, it is always in balance. So if you have less pressure, the plasma will be smaller and will always sit in this magnetic well,” he notes.


Pooboy said:
Is there a reason for the youtube video not having volume controls?
Click to expand...

Your at HardOCP, goto the link.
 
to serve the world’s energy needs............ What a crock of shit. If anything it will be used to supply USA's military needs.
 
funkydmunky said:
to serve the world’s energy needs............ What a crock of shit. If anything it will be used to supply USA's military needs.
Click to expand...

So you are saying that Lockheed Martin is a not a humanitarian project?! But they have done so much of the right kind of death and destruction for us.. surely they will give this technology to the world like Elon Musk gave us the Tesla patents. Surely, it is in the DNA of these people. They don't really like profiting from large scale killing if you ask them in their homes in front of their kids.


Regarding the "news". They claim, and they need five more reactor generations to get anywhere. And we know how these things in fusion usually go.

Here is good article on the subject.
http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details
 
nakedhand said:
http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link. From the article:

"The CFR will avoid these issues by tackling plasma confinement in a radically different way. Instead of constraining the plasma within tubular rings, a series of superconducting coils will generate a new magnetic-field geometry in which the plasma is held within the broader confines of the entire reaction chamber. Superconducting magnets within the coils will generate a magnetic field around the outer border of the chamber. “So for us, instead of a bike tire expanding into air, we have something more like a tube that expands into an ever-stronger wall,” McGuire says."

Yup. Next problem?
 
Man that link on the main page looks like it was made by the same person who makes the colorful pamphlets to get people to want to work there.

That said, I'm going to stay skeptical about fusion that can create power, too many odds and ends to worry about. Ignoring what fuel they're using for the moment. How are they going to get energy out of it? They'll contain it to keep the hot plasma from cooling, well how do you get the hot plasma to heat then? Are they going to simply go by the gamma ray photons that are created in the process? How effective are gamma ray photons at being a "heat source" they're fairly energetic to the point that they'd more likely split water apart than they would heat it, to turn it to steam to spin a turbine.
 
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