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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Welcome to the Neno's Place!

Neno's Place Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality


Neno

I can be reached by phone or text 8am-7pm cst 972-768-9772 or, once joining the board I can be reached by a (PM) Private Message.

Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

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    Locheed Cracks Fusion

    Rocky
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    Posts : 269617
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    • Post n°1

    Locheed Cracks Fusion Empty Locheed Cracks Fusion

    Post by Rocky Sun Oct 19, 2014 7:47 am

    Locheed Cracks Fusion


     
    So Lockheed decided they would bring this Skunk Works effort out into the sunlight. The fact that a large company with the reputation of Lockheed would decide to unveil this concept means that we have to take the notion seriously. Doubtless, they had to pass review from the legal, risk management, and marketing teams at a minimum, with a final sign-off from the CEO.
    To step back for a minute and get into the layman science conversation, let’s first distinguish fission (today’s prevailing nuclear technology) with the fusion of tomorrow.  Fission involves releasing heat energy from the splitting of atoms. In nuclear reactors, this heat is then used to boil water, creating high pressure steam which then turns a turbine.
    Fusion, by contrast, involves heating up a gas and separating that gas into its ions and electrons. Brought to sufficient temperature, the ions collide at high velocity and fuse (hence fusion). The result is a reaction three to four times more intense than a fission reaction.
    Locheed Cracks Fusion Whatisfusion_22
    fusionforenergy.europa.eu
    Until now, the challenge has been how to contain this process, and that has been the focus of much of the fusion-focused research over the past 60 years.  The approach to date has been to use a Tokamak – a very large and expensive device utilizing a magnetic field to contain the fusion plasma.
    Lockheed’s innovation has been to utilize what it calls a ‘high beta’ concept, which “uses a high fraction of the magnetic field pressure.” This will result in the development of a ‘magnetic bottle’ which can contain temperatures reaching into the hundreds of millions of degrees. This will allow Lockheed to reduce the size of the devices by a factor of ten. The result?  The company believes it can fit a fusion reactor into the back of a truck.
    That small size, in turn, should allow the company to advance more quickly through the development cycle, taking a few months to design and build a concept that formerly would have required as long as five years. The company can theoretically test more alternatives using fewer resources. Quicker iterations allow accelerated progress from concept to prototype: Lockheed indicates it could develop a competed prototype within five years, and hopes to have a commercial application within a decade
    The heat created would then be used in turbines, which would no longer need combustion turbines, using heat exchangers instead. The idea is to modify existing 100 MW turbines and utilize this capability in all kinds of ways. Among them:
    Powering a small city within 15 years, utilizing modified 100 MW class gas turbine plants.
    Providing ships at sea with unlimited range capability (this is the original justification for Admiral Hyman Rickover’s Cold War nuclear navy – only now it could be more widely promulgate into the civilian merchant fleet);
    Developing a similar capability for aircraft (the dream of General Curtis LeMay, that led to the development of the first molten salt reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratories in 1954). Lockheed’s website suggests that a plane the size of a C5 transport could fly for about a year ‘on just a few bottles of gasoline.’

    Pretty exciting stuff.  However, there’s more than a note of caution required here.  While this might not be the ‘cold fusion’ Pons and Fleischmann 1989 announcement that ultimately went nowhere, it’s not a slam dunk either.  There’s ‘many a slip twixt cup and lip’ associated with bringing any new theoretical development from concept to prototype and ultimately to commercial markets.
    For one, there is the issue of cost and the big question: can one really generate electricity cheaply with this new approach? Tom Jarboe, professor of aeronautics and astrophysics, adjunct physics professor, and researcher at University of Washington’s in fusion experiment voiced skepticism in an email to  Business Insider that‘the nuclear engineering clearly fails to be cost-effective.’
    One expert interviewed by this contributor (who wished to remain anonymous at this point) noted that “you are generating neutrons, which means you are generating some pretty serious radiation, and that means a lot of radiation shielding.” That in turn involves a lot of associated weight, so you probably wouldn’t be able to use this in airplanes and it might not fit in a truck; it would bulk up the size considerably.
    More critically, this expert notes that the rest is “a black box,” with no specifics yet about what Lockheed is really up to. This individual expects Lockheed will have to follow up with more detailed information in the coming weeks, as the announcement will obviously generate a lot of interest. “There is no notable information here. I am waiting to see what they actually have.” As are we all.
    Is this a truly revolutionary development that will change the world? We should know a lot more in the very near future…

    http://www.lockheedm...act-fusion.html
     
    http://www.forbes.co...e-dust
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