How much longer till Fusion power?

[T J]

Really I want to know. How much longer will we realistically have to wait for what for many will be the end of all our problems? I know we have several competent people here someone must have an educated guess. 30 years? 100? 3000? When invented what will be some of the larger and more significant impacts it will have?

 

[syc]

I defiantly think that at our current level of progression, we'll have Fusion power within the next 50 years. We can already produce the Fusion process... its just the fact that it requires more energy to make it work then it produces. We'll need to develop room temperature S/C's (superconductors), before we have a viable means of Tokamak Fusion. Even then it'll take a bit for people to acknowledge its usefulness. It's possible that there are other means of Fusion Power, like Laser Fusion. Whether or not those types pan out is still to be seen.

As far as impact... I dont know, People thought Atomic Power was the answer to all their problems. It was Atomic everything! But look how that turned out. I'm not saying Fusion is anything like Fission, I'm just saying we really need to start looking at our past to learn how society will react

 

[Dayton3]

A century.

And I've said it before.

The fusion age will be brief.

Because within a few decades of fusions debut I honestly believe we'll have the technology to produce antimatter economically.

 

[Ariadne]

On Earth... not in my lifetime.

Solar power, of course, comes from fusion, and is the only kind of fusion power we'll get any time soon.

 

[JustAFriend]

Never, as long as the programs are run by researchers whose grants are handed out perpetually with no expected results and they can drag things out till their retirements.

...same sort of thing that's keeping us at 1970 levels with NASA....

Just as with the nuclear sub technology, give the orders to the military to get it done in 10 years under a dictate of National Emergency and let 'em hire subcontractors the same way they did in the Manhattan Project.

They won't screw around. Then send 'em over to NASA and we will have outposts throughout the solar system in 30 years....

 

[Bill Morris]

Although Dr. Robert Bussard passed away on October 6, 2007, his proposed WB-7 and WB-8 Polywell fusion devices are to be constructed and tested during 2008 by a staff of physicists he had assembled. These devices stand a very good chance of proving that a Polywell system can be used in practical fusion power generation. I don't know if funding by the U.S. Navy will be affected by Dr. Bussard's death, though.

The Bussard collectors on Federation starships are named after this same Dr. Robert Bussard.

 

[Ronald Held]

I have been waiting for controlled fusion power since the 1970's. i am still waiting.

 

[Canadave]

2050, according to SimCity 2000.

 

[zenophite]

syc said:
I defiantly think that at our current level of progression, we'll have Fusion power within the next 50 years. We can already produce the Fusion process... its just the fact that it requires more energy to make it work then it produces. We'll need to develop room temperature S/C's (superconductors), before we have a viable means of Tokamak Fusion. Even then it'll take a bit for people to acknowledge its usefulness. It's possible that there are other means of Fusion Power, like Laser Fusion. Whether or not those types pan out is still to be seen.

As far as impact... I dont know, People thought Atomic Power was the answer to all their problems. It was Atomic everything! But look how that turned out. I'm not saying Fusion is anything like Fission, I'm just saying we really need to start looking at our past to learn how society will react

unfortunately "in about 50 years" has been the common phrase in fusion since the 50's...

I may be mistaken but i thought i read that they can now get up to about the breakeven point.

fusion power may be in the cards earlier than we think. Remember there is alot of Helium-3 on the moon which is a desirable fusion fuel so the urgency that many nations seem to be having lately about getting to the moon (including the USA) might have a little more than just scientific achievement as motivators.

sadly though a fusion rocket could be made to work with current technology but nobody seems interested in that.

 

[FemurBone]

Never.

Fusing 2 atoms together requires an incredible amount of heat. As you move up the periodic table, the amount of heat needed to fuse atoms increases. To put it into perspective, as hot as the sun is, the only atoms the Sun can fuse are hydrogen atoms which require the least amount of heat to fuse.

 

[ancient]

FemurBone is right, I think. Heat is the #1 limiting factor, if I recall correctly. We don't have anything that can withstand/generate the heat/pressure needed to make the reaction go.

The turning point were fusion and fisson meet is at lead. Our sun is not massive enough to ever produce lead though.

 

[SamuraiBlue]

FemurBone said:
Never.

Fusing 2 atoms together requires an incredible amount of heat. As you move up the periodic table, the amount of heat needed to fuse atoms increases. To put it into perspective, as hot as the sun is, the only atoms the Sun can fuse are hydrogen atoms which require the least amount of heat to fuse.

Actually heat is not that much of a problem in terms of generating it since the amount of fuel within the chamber is thin. It is containment of heat that is the main problem since heat is transferred through contact with the walls of the container where magnetic field is weak.
Once the temperature goes down fusion reaction stops and energy is needed to re-heat the hydrogen fuel to re-activate the fusion process.

 

[Meredith]

At this point it is probably easier to extract energy from ZPE devices

 

[flux_29]

isent there ment to be helium 3 on the moon or something?

 

[Dayton3]

flux_29 said:
isent there ment to be helium 3 on the moon or something?

Yes there is. Supposedly it would be worth about ten billion dollars per ton.

The only problem is that Helium 3 is only present in quantities of one part per million on the lunar surface.

In other words, to get that one ten billion dollar ton load of Helium 3 you would have to process ONE MILLION tons of lunar soil.

No mineral on the Earths surface has ever been processed for that low of quantities.

If we really want quantities of Helium 3, mining the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune makes more sense.

 

[kipron]

Helium 3? Bah, aneutronic fusion is such a bore.

D-T mix ftw! :thumbsup:

 

[ancient]

If you want to look up the stuff they've built so far, here are some search terms:

-Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor
-Nova Fusion Reactor

Right now, as said before, fusion reactors are too hot. It also takes more energy to use the reactor that the reactor produces.

Right now the goal is to reach a reliable break even point. So yeah, don't expect to see "Mr. Fusion" powering our cars by 2015. Even the worlds most powerful laser beams can barely get anything to happen using H3. The reaction only lasts about 0.0000000001 seconds in the Nova chamber, for example. It's very hard to "melt" matter into energy.

 

[STARTREK11]

T J said:
Really I want to know. How much longer will we realistically have to wait for what for many will be the end of all our problems? I know we have several competent people here someone must have an educated guess. 30 years? 100? 3000? When invented what will be some of the larger and more significant impacts it will have?

Never.


As it's the wrong shape....


A circular kinking ,twisting,million degree filament...with too many degrees of freedom...


try a sphere.

 

[Seraphim]

T J said:
Really I want to know. How much longer will we realistically have to wait for what for many will be the end of all our problems? I know we have several competent people here someone must have an educated guess. 30 years? 100? 3000? When invented what will be some of the larger and more significant impacts it will have?

3 years max

 

[webtaz99]

How about Focus Fusion ?