Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[asymmetric_implosion]

Zapkitty…Fission vs. Fusion… This is clearly a personal issue to both of us and I don’t want to argue for the sake of arguing. My bias in this is two parts so I will state them both. First, I am a nuclear engineer. I will always support the development of fission power because I believe it can be a clean power source once certain perceptions about reprocessing are addressed and people are educated. This argument is a similar one to fusion and it has its down falls but I believe it is the faster path to carbon free power at low risk. If you are concerned about risk, ask how many major nuclear accidents have taken place since nuclear power started to produce power. I count 3. One in the US; Three mile island which was a design flaw. Two, Chernobyl. Don’t get me started with that idiocy. Three, Japan. Bad things happened after a very bad situation. I agree that the disaster is ongoing. I agree that siting needs to be better but accidents will only tighten regulations leading to stricter siting requirements. Fission needs to do better and the next generation designs are doing that. So-called Gen III reactors are being built (china, Japan) with Gen IV well into design. Some Gen IV designs have applied for design licenses in the US. The TWR is not that far along yet but a similar idea is being pushed by a US company. They are likely to apply for a license in the next 5 years if the last design exercises pan out. Breeders exist and are licensed to be built in the US but fuel reprocessing is illegal so why build one? A point of interest perhaps, fission cores in nuclear subs last 20 years or more. I don’t know the details, but that is proven technology that could help the TWR concept along should the military declassify the core designs.

My second bias is I actively research plasma focus devices as radiation sources. I am very familiar with LPP and other alternative fusion concepts. I’ve talked to Eric Lerner on a few occasions at meetings. He believes strongly in his work which is true of any serious researcher but his results haven’t gone beyond what other plasma focus devices can do or have done. In fact, the latest LPP yield results were first accomplished in the 1970’s at the 1 MA level. Now do you see my problem? This is not to say that 2012 won’t lead to a revolution at LPP or some other fusion group. My doubts about LPP arise from the nature of the problems they keep having. FoFu-1 is a ~1 MA plasma focus. Pulse power technology at the 1 MA level is straightforward one the time scale (~1 us) for LPP. In fact, two universities in the US have 1 MA drivers that have fewer problems. Sandia National Laboratory has a 1 MA module that can operate at 1 Hz at day long. The lack of pulse power experience at LPP leaves me concerned about the future of the system. Firing a 45 kV capacitor at 40 kV in a ringing circuit will lead to a very short capacitor life (<100 shots in some cases).

Anyway, I guess this is my long way of saying that I disagree with you but I can agree to disagree. Perhaps I lack the foresight to see fusion for what it is; but I ask you to look at the complete history of alternative fusion concepts (non-tokamak or laser driven) and I think you will see they started the same as tokamaks and laser fusion (NIF). It will only take a few more tweaks and we will be there was the common line or more commonly stated “fusion is only ten years away”. Now fusion is 50 years away unless the Chinese invest their GDP in it. ITER will not work because at the latest meeting, it requires 80 MW of continuous heating. NIF has problems with symmetry that may or may not be overcome. FoFu-1 has problems and the ones I know of can be fixed. I hope the problems are fixed and I am proved wrong but I will remain skeptical until I see the data. And until I see fusion gain data, I will not consider fusion as a power source, but what it has been since it’s inception; a concept with a great deal of promise. I will admit that few valuable things are easy, but smart people have worked on the fusion problem for a long time and we still sit without a physics demonstration of fusion in a gain configuration on earth (excluding a nuclear weapon). Even if the physics barriers are overcome, the engineering needs to begin. Fission does not have a physics problem. It has engineering problems and materials problems.