University of Washington develops fusian reactor looking right out of Iron Man

(hint) BPR, you will love this.

Looking at the picture, it really does somewhat resemble Tony Stark’s arc reactor, just with some Y-shaped thing in the middle.

According to the scientists themselves, they say that this is the most promising fusion reactor idea yet in part because you don’t even need superconducting coils as seen with ITER in Europe.

So it looks like with two fusion concepts now, the United States is taking the lead in fusion technology, we’ll see if we can give the Europeans a discount after they get tired trying to make their windmills work :wink:

Look and be amazed.

I hate to slam high expectations but these concepts won’t become a reality for a long time. If you want to see real advances, solar power has it covered!

looks promising, also, I think these things will work better in space right?
It would seem that it would be easier to balance everything out,

I would love to see them extracting energy using thermionics or ??? 40% efficiency from heat is not near the theoretical limit of work from heat,

move it to Antarctica and get a better cold side temp :slight_smile: or just heat your homes.

It’s been reported before that one of the concepts (laser-based fusion at the National Ignition Facility), actually did manage to produce power, and more of it than needed for the lasers. The trick though is to get such a concept to produce power 24/7, which solar power can’t do because you have a little inconvenience called clouds.

The problem with clouds is just not little - it can be a real hassle when you have a smack of a solar panel and you was trying get some solar energy for use as per your own reasons, and then a cloud comes just when you need it. There is another problem too, that is of night time - when solar energy jest cannae be harvested for your use as per your own reasons.

Seems quite promising and could spark a new space race. As it is now, from my understanding, the best currently known fuel for a safe and sustainable fusion reaction is known as Helium-3. While quite rare on Earth Helium-3 is found in abundance on the moon. Should fusion power generation become a reality the moon is likely to become a hotly, no pun intended, contested strategic resource.

Even with fusion power I believe that solar, wind and conventional oil and coal power generation would remain viable sources of energy around the globe due to a strategic necessity of not putting all of one’s eggs in one basket. If the United States, for instance, were to take majority control over lunar mining operations other nations would likely want to ensure they could operate, at least at minimum capacity, without this resource.

P.S. Apparently helium-3 originates from the sun, but is generally repelled by the earth’s magnetic field; however, the moon lacks a magnetic field so helium-3 just collects on the moon’s surface.

Nations vying for control over the moon could, in my opinion, include the United States (obviously), Russia, China and possibly India (who recently nailed a visit to mars on their first try!) Most other nations don’t really have space programs capable of competing in this arena.

Edit: Of course a nation doesn’t necessarily need to compete in the space arena to be a winner in this mess. Take Afghanistan for instance. Say the world moves over to newer energy generation methods such as solar and fusion power. We still need methods of delivering that energy to whatever application needs it, enter the battery. Electric cars, for starters, make use of large lithium-ion batteries and not long ago the world’s largest currently known cache of lithium was discovered in, you guessed it, Afghanistan.

I would say this puts Afghanistan in prime position to become the next Saudi Arabia.

“Cold fusion” is the closest we’ve ever come to that sort of nuclear reaction on Earth, and we haven’t figured out how to do it consistently. (Furthermore, the whole damned file has been “classified.”)

However … there is a practical way to use thermonuclear energy on Earth: it’s called a solar panel.

And on a somewhat related note, in so far as the space race is concerned, I happened to notice that the Mars Curiosity rover snapped a shot of what some believe looks like some type of turret weapon. I would venture to say that if this doesn’t turn out to be some odd natural occurance it’s probably not extra-terrestrial in origin, but instead some earth bound nation has been secretly shipping equipment to the red planet, possibly in a bid to defend some territorial claims.

Sure it’s covered in red martian dust, but with all the dust storms on that plant it wouldn’t take long for something like that to get covered in martian soil.

Obviously given my level of knowledge in that area it certainly could be anything as far as I know, but given human history as an extremely territorial species, the close proximity of mars to earth and the perceived necessity to hoard anything that is or could turn out to be strategic it seems most likely that any unnatural structure found on mars is likely human in origin.

Edit: Of course I use the terms “unnatural” and “human in origin” loosely. If you subscribe to the current scientific understanding of the universe then the sun, a natural occurance, created the earth. Consequently the earth, a natural occurance, created human beings ergo human’s are also natural occurances and therefore anything they do is a natural occurance.

A discussion of solar power would be off topic but clouds aren’t too great of a challenge. Organic solar cells can be made more efficient at capturing energy on cloudy days since silicon based capacitors require almost entirely direct sunlight. Organic solar cells do have lower voltages though. But obviously that is being improved.

Anyway I assume you are referring to this NIF experiment http://www.nature.com/news/laser-fusion-experiment-extracts-net-energy-from-fuel-1.14710 which is pretty cool, but the big hurdle is still sustaining fusion since energy is lost too quickly. That I think will take several decades to figure out.

Sure, let’s just stop there and not bother to research more advanced technologies at all, if everyone had this kind of thinking, a number of technologies from the past 20 years like LED bulbs and tablets wouldn’t exist because we already have incandescent bulbs for lights, CRT displays for pictures, and laptops for portability.

The point being that new technology has a tendency to start out as seemingly far fetched ideas that supposedly have disadvantages compared to current solutions, but they ultimately wind up as superior.

Next big future is the websight i saw that on.It looks promising.

Take many many reflectors, concentrate sunlight into beams of incredible power converge many beams onto a target area, place a containment field around a fusion sample, extract more energy than the solar heat alone in a heat exchanger or produce hydrogen through thermolysis.

That just might be the ticket BPR - just imagine the amazing possibilities of the energy generated from that form of solar power. It might even make oil obsolete.

@Blue Print Random: That concept seems rather similar to a facility operating in Africa under which a series of mirrors focus sunlight at a tower containing sand. This heats the sand, this heat is then used to turn water into steam which powers a turbine generator. One problem they’ve recently run into with this design is that birds flying over the facility are cooked alive. This is a major problem that, unless it is solved, would prevent the widespread use of this configuration because birds are quite essential to the smooth operation of the ecosystem.

One of the benefits of using helium-3 in a fusion reaction, compared to first generation deuterium-tritium fusion reactors, is that the resulting energy is converted directly into electricity without the need for a steam powered turbine. This increases efficiency plus lowers construction and operating costs.

I agree with Ace Dragon, personally I feel that fusion could become an excellent power source. I’m all for the continued development of solar and wind power as-well, I think there are various promising new technologies on the horizon, each with unique best case scenario uses.

Solar power is great in well lit areas of course, but when it comes to exploring deep space a power source reliant upon the sun will be utterly useless. One of the major setbacks when it comes to space exploration is the amount of fuel required for such long distance travel, this fuel weighs down the space craft exponentially increasing the amount of fuel required for the trip, which is to say you’re using fuel just to propel the fuel through space.

It has been estimated that roughly 25 tonnes of helium-3 could power the entire United States for a whole year. Fusion as a space faring power source would, in my opinion, considerably extend our reach.

P.S. Space exploration will, at some point in my opinion, become necessity. The human race is growing and the earth only has a finite supply of the resources we need to power our technologically assisted existence. The day will come when space travel is no longer viewed as a research opportunity, but necessary for our continued existence and prosperity.

Here’s one I caught that you guys might enjoy: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/lockheed-martins-new-fusion-reactor-design-can-change-h-1646578094

Apparently Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has been working on a fusion reactor that’s 10 times smaller than ITER, about the size of a jet engine, and at the same power output. They’re expecting it to go into full scale production in about ten years. Saying it could reduce a trip to mars from years to months, not too mention power cargo ships and cities.

I just read about that on yahoo.The military will be using that to power their rail guns and their lasers on their aircraft.
Sounds like star wars to me.I wonder how powerful a magnet will they be able to make with it.

Here’s a link to another article over at Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2014/10/15/lockheed-martin-claims-fusion-breakthrough-that-could-change-world-forever/

No word on exactly how powerful the magnetic field is, only that they’ve devised a “magnetic bottle” that is used to manage all the heat. I’m not terribly surprised to see that it’s running on deuterium and tritium rather than deuterium and helium-3, there’s no moon mining operation yet :slight_smile:

I’d have to imagine, though, if this thing can reduce travel time to mars from years to months then travel time to the moon could be reduced too, hours maybe? If so then setting up an industrial scale mining operation on the moon would be far more feasible and then they could switch this reactor over to helium-3 fuel which requires less heat to maintain the reaction and gives off significantly less neutrino radiation.