Wendelstein 7x Fusion Reactor Confirmed to Work

For decades scientists have pursued nuclear fusion that would generate energy in the same manner as the sun and other stars, but on Earth, essentially providing Earth with limitless clean energy, forever. 

Nature Communications, researchers confirmed that Germany's Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device is on track and working as planned. Known as a stellerator, generated its first batch of hydrogen plasma when it was first fired up earlier this year. The new tests basically give scientists the green light to proceed to the next stage of the process.

It works like this: Unlike a traditional fission reactor, which splits atoms of heavy elements to generate energy, a fusion reactor works by fusing the nuclei of lighter atoms into heavier atoms. The process releases massive amounts of energy and produces no radioactive waste. The "fuel" used in a fusion reactor is simple hydrogen, which can be extracted from water.

For more info click  HERE

Nuclear Fusion Breakes Even For the First Time!

Nuclear Fusion is without too much argument the driving force behind the Universe.   For those of you that  think they don't really have a handle on the fusion process, let me explain at the root of fusion, is a fairly simple possess.

Nuclear fusion is a nuclear reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei collide at a very high speed and join to form a new type of atomic nucleus. During this process,some of the mass of the fusing nuclei is converted to  energy  (most often photons)


Unfortunately, experiments in the lab, though capable of creating fusion, have not come to the magical energy break even point. 

Now, Researchers at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, have indeed attained the holy grail of particle physics.  Indeed, the BBC is reporting:

• The BBC is reporting, though, that during an experiment conducted in the facility during September the "amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel".

Here is a link to the Gizmodo article   and a wicked good Wikipedia article

Fusion Power in Four?

By most estimates, fusion power is at least Forty years away.  But if the folks over at Lockheed Martin skunk works have their way, a working unit the size of a semi-trailer will be producing power in as little as four years.  

Lockheed Martin's Charles Chase, in an interview with Google's Solve For X, looks for their system to take plentiful Hydrogen and fuse it into Helium and in the process provide enough energy to power a small city.  Once Lockheed Martin moves to assembly line production in 2017  their unit can produce unlimited fresh water or even engines capable of powering a spacecraft to Mars in one month instead of six months it now takes.

Instead of huge lasers or toroidal plasma containment most common in systems like the Tokamac, Lockheed's fusion system will use radio energy to heat a type of hydrogen gas inside a magnetic field that is tightly controlled. This system will create a very high temperature plasma that is much more stable than competing systems. 

Chase is being very closed mouth about any more specific technical information but he is confident that his team will have a prototype 100 mega-watt plant by 2017 and commercial 100 mega-watt plant available by 2022.  

Below, Chase speaks about this new approach to fusion power at a "solve for (x)" talk. 

Solve For X url   Dvice article

diamond bullets -Secret to fusion power?

Dvice blog lists an article stating that Chinese scientists say they've figured out a way to make fusion power work by using minuscule diamond bullets fired into crystallized methane.

Of course the biggest technical hump is that those diamonds will need to be fired at a speed of 2,232,000 mph to start the reaction.

The idea is to fire the diamond bullet into methane crystals. The extremely high speed would create a tremendous shock-wave, the high pressures developed would raise the temperature in the containment vessel high enough to start a nuclear fusion reaction.

So far, computer simulations agree with the scientists that this method would have a net energy gain, but work still needs to be done to develop a system to keep the reaction going once started.

Read more here

New Super Laser unveiled

Tim Sayell sends in this very interesting article from Yahoo News which reports that The National Ignition Facility has disclosed information describing a new "super laser". The new laser is capable of reaching temperatures and pressures equal to that said to exist in the cores of stars. This mean that for the first time in history, this was the first demonstration of fusion ignition in a laboratory setting.

What is really impressive is the physical makeup of the laser array. a house-sized sphere can focus 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that are capable of a fusion reaction triggered by the super laser hitting hydrogen atoms. There is ever indication that this reaction will produce more energy than was required to prompt "ignition," which had been the "holy grail" of fusion researchers for more than 50 years.

Read the complete article here

HiPER Laser Fusion Project Starts

We have all heard the siren's call of Fusion Power. "Unlimited, Clean electrical energy". The problem with fusion is not that it can not be reached, because anyone with a little knowledge of history knows that fusion reaction has been achieved with spectacular effect. But controllable, clean fusion has a major drawback. It takes more energy to start and maintain than you can get out of the reaction. But that may be about to change. enter the $1.7-billion HiPER facility—High Power laser Energy Research. This facility's aim is to construct a fusion reactor that will utilize high powered lasers firing on a small sphere of deuterium and tritium with enough force to fuse the deuterium and tritium atoms together, producing harmless helium and vast amounts of energy. The method isn't new. However up to this point the major item lacking was a powerful enough laser that had a high enough firing rate to maintain the reaction. The National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California has a similar project due to start in 2009 but the lasers in use there use far more power than they can reap from the reaction. A separate approach at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in Cadarache, France, is aiming to use powerful magnetic fields to spark the reaction but this is again not thought to be terribly efficient. Researchers at the HiPER facility look to the NIF's efforts to be a jumping off point for their work. The NIF plant will be a proof of concept. But the major difference between the NIF's plant and HiPER is the NIF uses a single laser to do all the work. HiPER will use use 2 lasers in a two step process where they hope to break the efficiency boundry.


<- Telegraph.co.uk via Gizmodo ->

Navy Heats Up Cold Fusion Hopes

Cold fusion, the ability to generate nuclear power at room temperatures, has proven to be a highly elusive feat. In fact, it is considered by many experts to be a mere pipe dream. Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder from serious nuclear physicists since 1989, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were unable to substantiate their sensational claims that deuterium nuclei could be forced to fuse and release excess energy at room temperature. Spawar researchers apparently kept the faith, however, and continued to refine the procedure by experimenting with new fusionable materials. However, a recently published academic paper from the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego reports that Spawar scientists Stanislaw Szpak and Pamela Mosier-Boss have achieved a low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) that can be replicated and verified by the scientific community. Szpak and Boss now claim to have succeeded at last by coating a thin wire with palladium and deuterium, then subjected it to magnetic and electric fields. The Spawar method shows promise, particularly in terms of being easily reproduced and verified by other institutions. Such verification is essential to widespread acceptance of the apparent breakthrough.

Submitted by Shaun A. Saunders

Teen creates nuclear fusion reactor in parents' basement

Thiago Olson, a 17-year-old from outside Detroit, went and built himself a nuclear fusion reactor in his parents' basement. It took him over 1,000 hours. The setup involves a vacuum chamber that gets filled with deuterium gas which then gets zapped with 40,000 volts of electricity. What results is a small amount of nuclear fusion.