Lockheed says makes breakthrough on fusion energy project

"Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a
technological breakthrough in developing a power source
based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small
enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready
for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small
team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's
secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now
going public to find potential partners in industry and
government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a
100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet,
which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is
about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire
told reporters."

See:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0I41EM20141015

In article ,
says...

"Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a
technological breakthrough in developing a power source
based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small
enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready
for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small
team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's
secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now
going public to find potential partners in industry and
government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a
100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet,
which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is
about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire
told reporters."

See:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0I41EM20141015

From the article:

In a statement, the company, the Pentagon's largest supplier,
said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less
than a year, and build a prototype in five years.

I'll believe it when they have a working prototype reactor producing
positive energy output from the system (i.e. more energy out than the
energy required to run the reactor). Practical fusion energy has been
"just 5 to 10 years away" for how many decades now? :-P

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

wrote:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0I41EM20141015

"and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors"

For my Grumpy Old Man "You kids get off my lawn!" moment for the day
I'll gribe about "N times smaller" and wonder when that started rather
than "1/Nth the size?"

rick jones
--
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that. - Anonymous
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

/quote
Lockheed shares fell 0.6 percent to $175.02 amid a broad market selloff.
/end-quote

Or how about N times the cost for 1/Nth the smell? I smell skunk alright...

When it comes to fusion "announcements" such as this I'm about as grumpy an old man as you can get. Having USENET chops that date back to the Pons & Fleischmann debacle....

So what they've announced, apparently, is some kind of 'technique' for a fusion reactor that makes it much smaller than any proposed to date. Left out of the article:

1) Is proposed reactor capable of going beyond breakeven?

Well unclear. We have these quotes from the article:

/quote
In a statement, the company, the Pentagon's largest supplier, said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year, and build a prototype in five years.
/end-quote

Well heck, a college kid just a few years back built a Farnsworth fusor in his physics lab. Sucker works fine. As have Farnworth fusors that have been built since the 60's. Do they generate power? No. [2]

Just exactly what are the performance specs for the 5 year prototype? More info less hype please....

2) How do you deal with the copious amounts of neutrons produced in D-D fusion? And how is the shielding prevented from become lethally radioactive eventually?

3) Seen this befo
/quote
Ultra-dense deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, is found in the earth's oceans, and tritium is made from natural lithium deposits.

It said future reactors could use a different fuel and eliminate radioactive waste completely.
/end-quote.

Ah yes, the aneutronic "advanced" fusion fuels such as 3He-3He, p-11B and p-6Li. I refer Mr. McGuire to an MIT PhD Thesis by Dr. Todd Rider[1], published in 1995, who killed off his own pet project! I quote the following:

/quote
For the record, the author would like to apologize for apparently killing some of the most attractive types of fusion reactors which have been proposed. He advises future graduate students working on their theses to avoid accidentally demolishing the area of research in which they plan to work after graduation.
/end-quote

and furthermo

/quote
Analytical Fokker-Planck calculations are used to determine accurately the minimum recirculating power that must be extracted from undesirable regions of the plasma's phase space and re-injected into the proper regions of the phase space in order to counteract the effects of collisional scattering events and keep the plasma out of equilibrium. In virtually all cases, this minimum recirculating power is substantially larger than the fusion power, so barring the discovery of methods for recirculating the power at exceedingly high efficiencies, reactors employing plasmas not in thermodynamic equilibrium will not be able to produce net power. Consequently, the advanced aneutronic fuels cannot generate net power in any foreseeable reactor operating in either in or out of equilibrium. Moreover, D-3He can only produce net power when burned in thermodynamic equilibrium, which means that in any possible D-3He reactor, the neutrons and tritium produced by D-D side reactions cannot be reduced below a certain level, which is calculated.
/end-quote

So maybe McGuire & Co. have beat the odds by upping the efficiency ante via PowerPoint? Or maybe they have Dr. Rider on staff?

[1] http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/11412
[2] http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2008...usor-carls-jr/

.... And why is it these guys *always* need partners to see it through? Just build the damn thing! You'll have no problem selling them if they work!

Dave

On 16/10/2014 2:27 AM, wrote:
"Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a
technological breakthrough in developing a power source
based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small
enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready
for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small
team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's
secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now
going public to find potential partners in industry and
government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a
100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet,
which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is
about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire
told reporters."

See:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0I41EM20141015


"Lockheed shares fell 0.6 percent to $175.02 amid a broad market selloff."

Suggesting the market believes that Lockheed is throwing money down the
drain?

I have to wonder at the ten times smaller claim. Given that there are no
functioning fusion power generators, ten times smaller than what? Ten
times smaller than other reactors that don't produce a net power output?

It's not clear what they're claiming they could build in a year, but if
it's a proof of concept reactor, I'll just wait for that before opening
my wallet.

Sylvia.

wrote in message
...

"Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a
technological breakthrough in developing a power source
based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small
enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready
for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small
team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's
secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now
going public to find potential partners in industry and
government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a
100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet,
which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is
about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire
told reporters."

See:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0I41EM20141015


A bit more detailed article on this.

I'm still in the camp of "I'll believe it when I see it" but could be
interesting.


--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On 16/10/2014 2:43 PM, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:


wrote in message
...

"Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a
technological breakthrough in developing a power source
based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small
enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready
for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small
team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's
secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now
going public to find potential partners in industry and
government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a
100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet,
which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is
about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire
told reporters."

See:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0I41EM20141015



A bit more detailed article on this.

Did you intend to post a link, but forgot?

Sylvia.

In article ,
says...

... And why is it these guys *always* need partners to see it through? Just build the damn thing! You'll have no problem selling them if they work!

It's Lockheed Martin. They can't do much of anything without asking the
US Government for a handout. Because today's stockholders can't seem to
go longer than a year without expecting a return on their investment.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

In article ,
ess says...


"Lockheed shares fell 0.6 percent to $175.02 amid a broad market selloff."

Suggesting the market believes that Lockheed is throwing money down the
drain?

Considering that it only fell 0.6 percent "amid a broad market selloff",
how do you arrive at that conclusion? Besides, this is just one
research project amid many other government funded projects.

I have to wonder at the ten times smaller claim. Given that there are
no
functioning fusion power generators, ten times smaller than what? Ten
times smaller than other reactors that don't produce a net power output?

This is not much different than the Skylon/SABRE claims, which seems to
be a pet project of yours. It's always easy to claim your paper project
will be better than someone else's paper project.

It's not clear what they're claiming they could build in a year, but
if
it's a proof of concept reactor, I'll just wait for that before opening
my wallet.


Other articles suggest they will be building test articles at the rate
of once a year, culminating in a prototype in five years with the hopes
of an operational reactor in ten years.

In other words, this is not much different than the claims we've been
hearing from the rest of the fusion research community for decades,
which always seem to amount to: "Just give us money for the next 5 to
10 years and we'll have a working reactor that will solve all of the
world's energy problems!"

These perpetual claims have emanated from the hypersonic air breathing
launch vehicle researchers for decades as well. We're still waiting...

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer