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Carbon-free fusion power could be ‘on the grid in 15 years’

Helion hit 100 million degrees c. 9kev.
if they haven't hit breakeven, they are closer to it than anyone else ever has been, right on the cusp. As Helion seldom releases information, this is significant.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Helion-announces-fusion-milestones



edited to add: this was using He3. If they'd used Tritium they would already have probably been at Q>1, but I suppose since it's not their goal, it is possible they did not bother with an interesting but otherwise unnecessary milestone. They will be releasing more information later in the year.
 
That's sort of weird phrasing to state that the facility is being built "outside of London" - Culham is about 2 miles from Abingdon, 11 miles from Oxford, and 59 miles from London. I guess technically, Culham is outside London but then it's also outside London, Ontario. Perhaps they thought people wouldn't know where either Abingdon or Oxford are.
 
They put out a video

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Hmmm... I see a very complex system, under enormous pressure. Lots of moving parts and things that can go wrong... We'll see...
 
StarCruiser said:
Hmmm... I see a very complex system, under enormous pressure. Lots of moving parts and things that can go wrong... We'll see...
Click to expand...

Think of it as a prototype. The final model could be using far less or no moving parts at all.

To be fair, all this hunt for 'cheap abundant non-polluting energy' in the form of fusion no less is a bit exhausting. Just use AI already for R&D (and design) and be done with it.

Geothermal, wind, solar, tidal and wave could have been used for decades (geothermal for 100 years) now to create a sustainable and abundant power and heat generation from renewables alone.

I can see uses for fusion sure, but for crying out loud, we're in a dire state when it comes to climate change... so eschewing existing renewable technologies which were more than up to the task is just stupid... but that's what you get from idiot policy makers.
 
About 80% of the energy released in low-threshold fusion reactions such as deuterium-tritium (D-T) is in the form of fast neutrons. These neutrons need to be thermalised and captured as they can cause irradiation by neutron activation and collision cascades that produce point defects and dislocations in the reactor vessel's structure. I wonder what fusion fuels General Fusion are proposing to use in their demonstrator. D-Helium-3 fusion, which doesn't produce many neutrons by stray D-D interactions, has a threshold of 100 keV or about 10 times that required for D-T fusion. I'm guessing they'll be going with using D-T together with lithium in a breeder blanket to capture the neutrons' kinetic energy as well as make more tritium.
 
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General Fusion's design has always seemed problematic to me, but what to I know. There have to be pretty significant losses, requiring a fairly high q ratio for the economics to make sense. (steam turbine etc). All I know about the fuel for GF is that they use D-T gas.

Meanwhile, groundbreaking happened for Helion's new facility.
https://www.helionenergy.com/articl...ration-fusion-facility-in-everett-washington/

It won't be feeding energy back into the grid but will be used for commercial He3 production

more about it here: interesting snippet is that Helion's requirement is Q>=3 for commercial success.

https://www.seattletimes.com/busine..._tw_m&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1627440847-1
 
Magnets have come a long way
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-superconducting-magnet-magnetic-field-strength.html

On Sept. 5, for the first time, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet was ramped up to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth. That successful demonstration helps resolve the greatest uncertainty in the quest to build the world's first fusion power plant that can produce more power than it consumes, according to the project's leaders at MIT and startup company Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS).

Very good news. This is 12 times more powerful than MRIs yet needs 30 watts not 200 million…put that in it anyway?

Lasers are being helped along as well
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-unprecedented-plasma-lensing-high-intensity-lasers.html
https://wonderfulengineering.com/th...cinema-to-your-home-without-needed-any-space/

It confirms that this key technology for laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) can be scaled up as the BELLA Center pushes toward higher energies, benefiting potential applications that range from biomedical research and treatment to free-electron-laser light sources for research facilities.

Perhaps the two fusion approaches can be combined.
https://wonderfulengineering.com/ph...a-swirling-helium-tornado-for-the-first-time/

More on magnetics:
A new study, published today, shows the emergence of magnetism in a 2D organic material due to strong electron-electron interactions; these interactions are the direct consequence of the material's unique, star-like atomic-scale structure.
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-magnetism-2d-material-star-like-molecules.html
https://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/11318416/Hard_Single-Molecule_Magnets.html
 
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Something I had noticed recently with regards to magnetism and dark energy:
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-dark-energy-scientists-possibility.html

A new study, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and reported in the journal Physical Review D, suggests that some unexplained results from the XENON1T experiment in Italy may have been caused by dark energy, and not the dark matter the experiment was designed to detect. They constructed a physical model to help explain the results, which may have originated from dark energy particles produced in a region of the Sun with strong magnetic fields...The researchers used their model to show what would happen in the detector if the dark energy was produced in a particular region of the Sun, called the tachocline, where the magnetic fields are particularly strong.

"It was really surprising that this excess could in principle have been caused by dark energy rather than dark matter," said Vagnozzi.

Others think similarly:
We know that as normal particles move around, they create magnetism. And, magnets attract or repel other magnets—so what if that's what's going on in the universe? That this constant expansion of dark matter is occurring thanks to some sort of magnetic force?" asks Steen Hansen.

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-composition-percent-universe.html

Now, could we get a similar bump in fusion power? Maybe make a frustum out of supermagnet I describe in post 153 above?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...ones-distant-nuclear-fusion-dream-closer.html
  • It used just 30 watts compared to the 200 million watts from other materials
So, If I pumped 200 million watts into that... ?

https://interestingengineering.com/new-magnet-is-powerful-enough-to-lift-an-aircraft-carrier
 
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those might be useful on a stellarator. some of the newer ideas . I know I am something of a fan of Helion's approach, but they use, afaik, a 10T magnet for their system, so sometihng in use now with higher power MRIs
 
I wonder if this magnet boost might translate to other projects. With Bezos’ wealth he could easily build a sled launch system. We may have missed an opportunity after Andrew all but destroyed Homestead. The eyewall tore across the tip of Florida almost in an F-2/F-3 fashion not unlike the fictional Xindi test weapon. Some of that track could have been ‘pressed into service as a very long runway for such a shuttle II project.

The military abandoned railguns right before this breakthrough…
 
Why not launch your ship into space via a giant magnetic lev rail? Get it up to some speed and launch it off the end of the ramp in the right direction and then the rockets kick in a bit after? I mean it sounds like a really neat idea on paper, not sure how it would work with a real ship though.
 
Well…the time to have built that would have been after Andrew pre-leveled the area. It might be harder to do that now.
 
Gingerbread Demon said:
Why not launch your ship into space via a giant magnetic lev rail? Get it up to some speed and launch it off the end of the ramp in the right direction and then the rockets kick in a bit after? I mean it sounds like a really neat idea on paper, not sure how it would work with a real ship though.
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on the moon where there is no wind resistance and lunar orbital velocity is around 7900 feet per second (Yeah I'm using imperial.. sue me) very doable. There are railguns now that could almost do it, and maybe in vacuum they could.
 
XCV330 said:
on the moon where there is no wind resistance and lunar orbital velocity is around 7900 feet per second (Yeah I'm using imperial.. sue me) very doable. There are railguns now that could almost do it, and maybe in vacuum they could.
Click to expand...
I think 7,900 fps is the escape velocity not the orbital velocity, which is about 5,600 fps. One metre is about 3.28 feet and the Moon's escape velocity is 2,380 m/s or about 7,900 fps. Close orbital velocity is about 1/√2 or 0.707 of escape velocity from the same distance from the centre of mass. 0.707 times 7,900 fps is roughly 5,600 fps (1,680 m/s). I believe current railguns can accelerate projectiles to more than 10,000 fps (3,000 m/s) - at least according to Wikipedia anyway. So it's potentially doable although any humans accelerated too quickly that way would look like strawberry jam at the end.
 
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