[Tulse]

Ivy Matt wrote: If it [em]does[/em] work

The mere fact that we don’t even [em]know[/em] if it works at this point, while Rossi et al. are to the point of selling rights and talking factories, seems extremely suspect to me. This is not the historical development path of [em]any[/em] successful technology that I know of.

[Tulse]

Ivy Matt wrote: Numerous mechanisms have been proposed to explain the functioning of Rossi’s device

I think the real problem is we don’t really know that the device actually [em]functions[/em]. Until there is solid independent confirmation from multiple sources that the device is producing more energy out than goes in, reproducibly, over long time frames, it seems premature to me to worry about theoretical details.

[Tulse]

That’s a big list, but I wonder how many of those are real contenders doing real research with real devices, and how many are “privately funded” by an individual who’s just thrown up a website.

[Tulse]

the researchers found that the greater a technology’s complexity, the more slowly it changes and improves over time

Good news for FF compared to tokomaks, ICF, and even approaches like General Fusion’s.

[Tulse]

Ivy Matt wrote: It sounds to me like they’re hoping to get a working deuterium-deuterium reactor going first.

That makes a lot of sense, as it would be a huge milestone for anyone to get reliable over-unity fusion, regardless of the fuel. I realize that their device isn’t configured to capture the energy of a D-D reaction, but even theoretical breakeven would still be enormously impressive, and be a huge validation of their approach. To be honest, I’m not at all clear why LPP isn’t also going this route first — is it because of the practical handling issues involving the neutron radiation produced?

[Tulse]

Ivy Matt wrote: I think FF-1 is the most promising fusion experiment that’s in operation right now.

I completely agree (perhaps not too surprising from folks who post here). And what I find most frustrating about FF funding is that it is the approach that requires the least funds to do conclusive research on its viability. As I understand it, it would take relatively little money (compared to the other major players) to fully fund the research that would tell us if there are any major showstoppers, or alternatively to get to indisputable breakeven.

More generally, I’m surprised that Popular Mechanics is not covering aneutronic approaches period, as this is clearly the most interesting, and potentially most game-changing, approach to fusion. It’s also the approach that is most advanced of the various “indie” companies — EMC2 has a big ongoing research project with a functioning device and funding from the government, Tri Alpha has a big investor, and FF is shaking out their device. By comparison, as far as I know General Fusion and Helion have yet to bend metal to any significant degree, and even if fully successful their final product will just be a radioactive heat source.

[Tulse]

There is just so much that has to go right, and on a mechanical level, in order for their approach to work. It has tons of moving parts that have to work repeatedly and with very precise timing, whacking a couple of tons of spinning molten lead. It’s nuts — it’s by far the most mechanically complex approach to fusion out there, and when you’ve got so much precision mechanics involved, you’ve got a whole boatload of variables. FF and Polywell are elegant — the devices are fairly simple, with almost no moving parts, and the domain of relevant variables is much more straightforward to characterize and manipulate.

I wish the General Fusion folks all the best, and I’d be quite delighted if we get fusion from such a steampunk-y device. But I’m not holding my breath, and I really wish Bezos would have spent his money on more likely candidates who can test their approach much more cheaply.

[Tulse]

Ivy Matt wrote: They’re promising 10-kilowatt residential units (heaters, not electrical generators) that will be leased, not sold.

Pons and Fleischmann also promised domestic water heaters powered by cold fusion, as has just about every other person/group who thinks they have a new take on “low energy nuclear reactions”. My deep skepticism, trailing into distainful indifference, will only be mollified once devices are actually being sold to the public.

[Tulse]

General Fusion’s approach seems absurd to me — not physically impossible, just absurd in a Rube Goldberg, “I can’t believe how silly that thing sounds” way. And I can’t imagine that they will have breakeven by 2013, largely because I don’t think they can even physically build the ridiculously complicated reactor by then, with its 200 pneumatic pistons firing simultaneously to send shockwaves through a sphere of spinning liquid metal to compress a plasma toroid, all in a device several stories tall, and requiring absurdly precise timing. There is no way that anyone could build such a large, mechanically complex device requiring precise tolerances and have it researched and characterized and debugged and working in two years. Absurd.

And, out of all this, they’re still just heating up water to produce steam to run a turbine to run a generator, like we have for about a century.

This is fusion done by orks.

I really do wish that LPP could find its own angel investor from among the rich digital entrepreneurs. Tri Alpha has Microsoft’s Allen, and now GF has Bezos — perhaps LPP could interest Elon Musk in a potential power source for the next stage of SpaceX vehicles and Tesla cars.

[Tulse]

Boy, of all the possible “alt.fusion” contenders, I would have thought General Fusion would be at the bottom of the list. The approach requires a huge capital outlay to build the device, it is mechanically very complex, it still ends up with radiation issues, and as far as I know it is very far from creating a working prototype. In other words, it is everything that FF, Polywell, and Tri Alpha (among other approaches) are not.

If I had $20 million, instead of putting it all into one highly speculative basket, I’d give $5 million each to those three different approaches, with a promise of additional $5 milllion to the first group to show breakeven. So much of this basic research is done on a shoestring, and given that all these approaches require far less capital than tokomaks or ICF in order to produce useful information, I’d think spreading around a bit of seed money to lots of approaches would be a more efficient way to produce the desired goal.

[Tulse]

Matt M wrote: The Navy is researching pulling CO2 from sea water, combining it with excess power from their nuclear
reactors and producing jet fuel at sea.

It would be expensive. But, it would replace expensive and vulnerable fuel ships.

If the process uses actual excess power, would it be that expensive? I would think the main cost would be power.

[Tulse]

I’m curious as to what, if any, regulations there are about waste heat in residential areas. Many houses in northern climes of course have chimneys, but I doubt any fireplace is putting out 5MWt. What effect would a large 60 C air stream have on a local clime? I don’t have a good sense of the relative scale of the heat being dumped — is this comparable to the exhaust of an industrial air conditioner, or something much more substantial?

[Tulse]

Y’know, in some of those socialist countries they disguise substations of similar value and power as houses for aesthetic purposes.

That’s certainly true where I live, in Soviet Canuckistan — Torontograd has many such substations.

I’m very dubious, however, that a residential plant would be permitted with such a large cooling tower — the height alone would prohibit it from many such locations. However, if the idea is to place small modules all around cities, I wonder if one can’t use the existing water/sewer system as a heat sink. Even if one isn’t going to use the plant for district heating, one might be able to simply run the cooling pipes into the local water infrastructure. Or, alternatively, build such plants at sewage treatment plants, and use the excess heat in the water treatment process.

[Tulse]

They’re allegedly building production-ready, commercial devices. I’m deeply sceptical, but the best way to show critics wrong is to have these actually run for a few weeks producing power.

(As I recollect, of course, Fleischmann and Pons also promised cold-fusion-based household water heaters very soon after their own announcement…)

As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

And I think there’s a lesson here for FF as well. If one can indeed generate practical over-unity power cheaply, the opinion of some professional doubters won’t really matter. Utilities and companies that need remote power are pretty pragmatic — if the device works, they’ll use it.

[Tulse]

AaronB wrote: Well, the overall energy released will be the same

…which I suppose upon reflection should have been obvious, but which wasn’t made clear in the original article. Oh, well, so much for violating the laws of conservation!

[Author]

Posts