New Nuclear Technologies: Fusion and Fission

Brian Westenhaus takes a look at Tri-Alpha Energy's approach to Boron fusion:fission. That article complements an earlier piece by Brian Wang on Tri-Alpha.

Tri-Alpha’s position is, “We want to know the energy and location of every outgoing alpha particle.” This is important because in a pB11 reaction the harvest is high energy Helium that can be used to directly generate electricity.

The news from Tri-Alpha is the discovery of two high-energy α-particles (alphas) – that will have a huge impact on pB11 fueled reactor designs because the alphas are much easier to extract and convert more efficiently into electricity.

This is quite significant news and powerful information that may apply to the other two leading pB11 fueled efforts, the Lerner Focus Fusion effort and the Bussard Wiffle Ball work. _Brian Westenhaus

Tri-Alpha's approach is a hybrid form of fusion:fission, where high energy protons are forced into Boron 11, converting it to Carbon 12 in a highly energetic state. The Carbon 12 decays -- or fissions -- emitting up to 3 high energy alpha particles.

79 page PDF document explaining this approach more thoroughly

Brian Wang has more recently discussed a report by Kachan & Co. on new nuclear technologies. Here is the executive summary of the report (PDF).

Kachan & Co. Nuclear Report Exec Summary PDF

Below is a talk by Mark Halper on future innovations in fusion and fission (via Brian Wang):

We have barely learned to extract energy from basic matter. Ideological green faux environmentalists want us to reject advanced energy technologies, and to return to primitivist quasi-feudal societies of a subsistence nature. Such an approach, if enacted, would result in the deaths of billions of humans across the planet.

It can be assumed that most intelligent humans -- if properly informed -- would choose an advanced technology approach to a future of abundant energy.

Fusion Fission Hybrid Patent to Burn Nuclear Waste

In the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdown, widespread superstition and primal fear regarding nuclear energy has gripped the hearts and minds of politicians, pundits, and faux environmentalists across the planet. But while tens of thousands were killed by the massive earthquakes and tsunamis in Northern Japan, no one was killed or seriously hurt by radiation from the Fukushima reactors. Of course, no one ever said that human beings were rational.

Nuclear power is actually the safest form of power generation in existence, including all forms of renewables and hydrocarbons. Scientists and engineers, meanwhile, are working hard to make nuclear energy even safer than it already is.

UT Patent

The innovation, which will not be tested for at least a couple more years, could lead to the efficient incineration of [nuclear] waste and a safer way to generate nuclear-powered electricity.

The problem of radioactive waste, along with safety anxieties among the public, has long vexed the nuclear industry. The United States has wavered on whether to set up a long-term repository for long-lasting waste in remote spots such as Yucca Mountain, Nev.

The UT scientists received a patent in August for technology that allows the pairing of nuclear fusion and fission to incinerate nuclear waste. Fusion produces energy by fusing atomic nuclei, and fission produces energy by splitting atomic nuclei.

...Called a Super X Divertor, the innovation is the sort of heat exhaust system only a nuclear physicist could dream up: It reconfigures electromagnetic fields within a fusion reactor, allowing the reactor to handle much hotter temperatures in more compact spaces.

That innovation can allow fusion reactors to be built much smaller and allow them to be coupled with a traditional fission reactor for on-site incineration of radioactive waste.

...The byproducts of the incineration of radioactive waste should be far less radioactive, with a half-life of only several decades, compared with the half life of at least 10,000 years of reactor waste that has not been incinerated, said UT senior research scientist Mike Kotschenreuther.

Mahajan said less toxic waste would be a boon in the U.S. and elsewhere.

...The innovation has broader consequences beyond the destruction of waste, Kotschenreuther said. In the long-term, reactors, made safer, smaller and cheaper to build by dint of the divertor, could help displace fossil fuel plants that contribute to global warming. _UT Fusion Fission Patent

China is turning to large scale battery backup power for nuclear power plants. If the Fukushima plant had been using such forms of backup power as these batteries, it is unlikely that the word "Fukushima" would evoke such primal fear and pathological anxiety as it appears to elicit among the political, journalistic, faux environmental, and academic classes.

And despite all the superstitious fears and fallacies that abound, post-Fukushima, several countries are moving ahead to install nuclear power or to expand pre-existing nuclear power plants. Poland, for example, is preparing for the construction of its first nuclear power plant.

The UK is looking to China for help in expanding its own nuclear power infrastructure. Both China and Russia are planning massive expansions of their nuclear power. Several nations near the Persian Gulf and middle east are also looking to either build their first nuclear power plants, or to expand a pre-existing nuclear industry.

Nuclear power -- including advanced, scalable fission, as well as scalable fusion -- is the only viable long-term, large scale power source that humans will be able to tap safely and cleanly for some time. Eventually, more exotic forms of power generation will become available to next level humans.

Since advanced nuclear fusion and fission are not yet well developed, humans must use the energy sources which are available -- conventional and unconventional oil & gas, coal, geothermal, conventional fission, kerogens, bitumens, gas hydrates, geothermal, hydroelectric, etc. -- until the technology for scalable, safe, affordable, abundant, clean, advanced nuclear power is ready.

After Doomsday: Powering Your Survival Bunker

This satirical article was previously posted on Al Fin Potpourri blog:

After the Apocalypse
After the doomsday bell tolls, you will want to have a safe hideaway, packed with your favourite foods, beverages, people, and prescription drugs. But no matter how safely your bunker is designed, you cannot survive long without a source of heating and electrical power.

Issues of energy density dictate the need for a nuclear power and heat source -- either fission or fusion. The choice seems to come down to either a small modular nuclear fission reactor -- such as the NuScale or Wilcox and Babcock models, vs one of the new scalable fusion reactor models. The Lawrenceville Plasma Physics focus fusion device pictured below, appears to be the leader of the pack in terms of timeline for proof of concept, prototype, commercial demo, and mass production.

All images below taken from Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc (PDF) (via) NBF

Five megawatts baseload power should be enough to supply the power and heat needs of most medium-sized doomsday communities. When living in an underground environment, it is easy to underestimate needs for space lighting and grow-lighting, as well as power for supplying pumps, compressors, blowers, fans, filtration devices, and various electronic devices.

The diagram above attempts to illustrate energy flows and losses in the focus fusion system. Operation of the reactor will be highly automated, but a certain amount of oversight will be necessary, to assure smooth function and to limit any need for routine maintenance shutdown.

Baseload power generation means that the reactor produces 5 MW at all times. Any heat and power produced above the needs of the doomsday community will converted as needed, and routed to storage or to a sink. Since the reactor utilises hydrogen and boron as fuel, a significant amount of excess power will be used to maintain hydrogen stores. The hydrogen can be used as fuel in either the focus fusion reactor, or in backup fuel cell CHP generators.

The timeline for production of the LPP focus fusion reactors is particularly optimistic, with estimates for mass production as early as 2016.

Keep in mind that US federal and state regulators are unlikely to approve these devices for sale in the US anytime within the next decade. This means that any US citizen wishing to use these reactors as backup power supplies for their home, seastead, polar outpost, or doomsday bunker, will either need to locate outside the US, or will need to find extra-legal ways of installing their nuclear fusion (or SMR fission) reactors within the borders of the US.

In the event of doomsday, it is expected that nuclear enforcement by US federal or state officials will be suspended for a number of years. In such a case, issues of survival are likely to be paramount, over issues of bureaucratic red tape.

Sandia Labs Fusion Simulation Points to Promising New Approach to Magnetic Inertial Confinement Fusion

Sandia Labs has published results of simulations for a novel approach to fusion which appears promising for high gain fusion energy production, at this early stage.

High-gain nuclear fusion could be achieved in a preheated cylindrical container immersed in strong magnetic fields, according to a series of computer simulations performed at Sandia National Laboratories.

The simulations show the release of output energy that was, remarkably, many times greater than the energy fed into the container's liner. The method appears to be 50 times more efficient than using X-rays—a previous favorite at Sandia—to drive implosions of targeted materials to create fusion conditions.

"People didn't think there was a high-gain option for magnetized inertial fusion (MIF) but these numerical simulations show there is," said Sandia researcher Steve Slutz, the paper's lead author. "Now we have to see if nature will let us do it. In principle, we don't know why we can't."

...In the simulations, the output demonstrated was 100 times that of a 60 MA input current. The output rose steeply as the current increased: 1,000 times input was achieved from an incoming pulse of 70 MA.

Since Sandia's Z machine can bring a maximum of only 26 MA to bear upon a target, the researchers would be happy with a proof-of-principle result called scientific break-even, in which the amount of energy leaving the target equals the amount of energy put into the deuterium-tritium fuel.

This has never been achieved in the laboratory and would be a valuable addition to fusion science, said Slutz.

...The MIF technique heats the fusion fuel (deuterium-tritium) by compression as in normal inertial fusion, but uses a magnetic field to suppress heat loss during implosion. The magnetic field acts like a kind of shower curtain to prevent charged particles like electrons and alpha particles from leaving the party early and draining energy from the reaction.

The simulated process relies upon a single, relatively low-powered laser to preheat a deuterium-tritium gas mixture that sits within a small liner.

At the top and bottom of the liner are two slightly larger coils that, when electrically powered, create a joined vertical magnetic field that penetrates into the liner, reducing energy loss from charged particles attempting to escape through the liner's walls.

An extremely strong magnetic field is created on the surface of the liner by a separate, very powerful electrical current, generated by a pulsed power accelerator such as Z. The force of this huge magnetic field pushes the liner inward to a fraction of its original diameter. It also compresses the magnetic field emanating from the coils. The combination is powerful enough to force atoms of gaseous fuel into intimate contact with each other, fusing them.

Heat released from that reaction raised the gaseous fuel’s temperature high enough to ignite a layer of frozen and therefore denser deuterium-tritium fuel coating the inside of the liner. The heat transfer is similar to the way kindling heats a log: when the log ignites, the real heat—here high-yield fusion from ignited frozen fuel—commences. _R&D

This approach to fusion is not likely to provide useful commercial power for many decades yet, if ever. But it opens a window onto the new world of high energy physics, which begins with computer simulations, and progresses step by experimental step toward proof or falsification of the underlying ideas.

This is quite different from the politicised world of climate science, where poorly vetted computer simulations are used to steer public policy on a national and international scale. In the world of climate science, contrary opinions are suppressed, and any research which does not toe the orthodox line is either not funded or not published.

Fortunately, most areas of science have not descended so far into politicised corruption as climate science. We should hope that it never does.

National Instruments' Stefano Concezzi Talks About Fusion

Energy from Fusion Video from NIWeek 2011 Featuring Stefano Concezzi
Physicist Stefano Concezzi, of National Instruments' "Big Physics," is a big promoter of energy from fusion. In a short news release from November 2011, Concezzi explains how National Instruments aids innovators. The newsrelease also makes mention of Andrea Rossi's company, the Leonardo Corporation, and its intent to use National Instruments' controllers in its E-Cat LENR reactor product.

“For more than 35 years, National Instruments has provided innovators with the tools they need to address the world’s biggest engineering challenges,” said Stefano Concezzi, director of the science and big physics segment at National Instruments. “We are excited about the many ways we are helping customers streamline the development of advanced physics and energy projects.”

Innovators throughout the world are using the NI graphical system design approach to efficiently address the world’s grand engineering challenges in medical technology, urban infrastructure, alternative energy and other critical applications. In physics specifically, NI has contributed product solutions to some of the most advanced projects including the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and tokamak fusion device control systems. Additionally, the Leonardo Corporation has intentions to incorporate NI tools in its control system. _NI Newsrelease

Concezzi also expressed some supportive sentiment regarding Andrea Rossi, to Stirling Allan of Pure Energy Systems:

Stefano Concezzi, who serves as NI's Director of Science and Big Physics Segment, told me that NI does not comment on contracts made with customers, unless the customer requests a press release; but he could confirm that Andrea Rossi is a customer.

"I would love for him to be right.

"We support every kind of research for the betterment of human kind. Whoever is interested in doing that, we would be happy to support."

So at this time, I would gather that their contract should not be construed as a validation or confirmation of the E-Cat science, but a signal of NI's willingness to help Rossi develop the technology into an even more robust embodiment, to help increase its operational stability, reliability, safety; while lowering its price point. _PESN

Frank Acland of E-Catworld.com, feels that the involvement of National Instruments with Rossi's E-Cat project should be seen as a verification of the E-Cat's validity:

Another strong piece of evidence for the E-Cat being what Rossi claims is the involvement of National Instruments. Rossi has said that the contribution that NI has made to the development of his invention has been tremendous. He said that future E-Cat models will operate using control mechanisms created by NI.

...National Instruments is a leading creator of hardware and software products used in all kinds of engineering projects around the world. The fact that they are collaborating with Leonardo Corporation in the development and production of the E-Cat seems to be a significant piece of evidence in favor of the E-Cat’s validity. _E-CatWorld.com

E-Catworld.com also has information from Rossi regarding Leonardo Corp.'s plans to build a robotic factory for mass-producing the E-Cat LENR reactor.

For those who are hoping that the E-Cat reactor proves to be everything Rossi claims for it and more, this information may provide a bit of hope in the midst of a dearth of hard information regarding actual E-Cat and LENR progress.

But there is nothing here on which one can hang his hat. Perhaps that is the way that Mr. Rossi wishes to play out his hand -- keeping everyone guessing until the end.

We at Al Fin Energy will attempt to keep you up to date on any real news in LENR science and engineering which can be discovered. In the meantime, we will try to help readers to separate real news from rumours and red herrings.

Working Toward a Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

Lab scientists have taken a crucial step toward describing thermonuclear reactions from first principles.

Over the past decade, progress has been made in understanding the static properties of light nuclei based on realistic interactions among protons and neutrons. But ab initio calculations of nuclear scattering and reactions have been mostly confined to systems of four nucleons or less. _LLNL

LawrenceLivermoreNationalLabs

Starting from a quantum mechanical system of five point-like nucleons and their mutual interactions, Petr Navrátil of the Nuclear Theory & Modeling Group (presently at TRIUMF in Canada) and Sofia Quaglioni of the Computational Nuclear Physics Group in the Physics Division, for the first time calculated within an ab initio framework, the cross sections for the deuterium-tritium and deuterium-3He fusion reactions.

The researchers found an enhancement in the measured cross sections of both investigated reactions at very low energy, due to the screening effects of electrons bound to the tritium and, particularly 3He, targets (usually neutral atoms or molecules). This work paves the way for improved evaluation of less known important cross sections for fusion energy generation and nuclear plasma diagnostics.

Navrátril and Quaglioni used a new approach for bound and scattering states of light nuclei developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), thanks in part to a Laboratory Directed Research and Development grant. The calculations required for this effort were carried out under the LLNL Computing Grand Challenge program.

The research will appear in Physical Review Letters. _rdmag

These enhanced measurements are not breakthroughs, as such. They are merely incremental improvements in an ongoing project to achieve something that is incredibly difficult -- controlled thermonuclear fusion.

Finding ways of achieving fusion at lower energies should make it easier to design reactors and accessory equipment such as lasers, particle beams, super-conducting magnet designs, and so on. Anything that will reduce the cost of entry into thermonuclear fusion would be a plus.

Secret New Fusion Company Claims Working 1 MW Reactor

A secretive new fusion startup based in Australia is claiming to have developed a working 1 MW fusion reactor the size of a rice cooker, and is now working on a 10 MW reactor. The company claims to generate a 1 MW output from a 40 W input, and claims to be working with both the Australian and the US military.

... one interviewee, in a face-to-face conversation in an exotic location abroad, told us of a small company he’s involved with that he claims has built a working 1MW fusion reactor the size of a rice cooker (though it’s dubious that approximation includes the requisite shielding, cooling, turbines, etc.) The company is now apparently in the process of building a 10MW version that it plans to trial in 2012.

... Our source, concerned he was telling us too much, initially wouldn’t even reveal its name.

The fission wonder down under?
As mentioned, this company and its story seem to have all the elements of a Hollywood thriller:

Harnessing the power of nature! The analogy most often applied to fusion is harnessing the reaction of the sun. But this company’s fusion reaction, fueled by deuterium and tritium, isn’t nearly as high temperature, our source claims, and is more “rooted in nature.” Specifically, the reaction is said not to require the high temperature, high pressure or accelerated particles of others’ approaches. “The key is not how many neutron hits you generate, but how you sustain them, how well you can control them.” For a 40-watt power input, the reactor is said to be able to generate a megawatt.

Exotic locales! The company is based in Australia. Why? “Everyone’s expecting big nuclear innovations to come out of China, or France,” said our source. But it’s replicated its intellectual property and technology “around the world in case they get infiltrated.”

Self-funded by mad scientist! The technology’s inventor has apparently tinkered with his design for 40 years, and self-funded the company’s early stages, reinvesting income from earlier lucrative inventions. Now, strategic investors are said to include family money, such as a Shanghai real estate baron and decedents of American industrialist John Pitcairn, Jr.
Culture of secrecy! The company’s secrecy about its actual progress makes Apple look sophomoric. In development since the 90s, it has sworn employees and investors not to let on how successful its research has been. It’s said to have retained the former head of Israel’s counter terrorism unit as its chief of security.

No to takeover offers! The company is said to have already fielded a buyout attempt by General Electric (NYSE:GE). The founder apparently didn’t want the invention owned by just one corporation, characterizing it an invention for mankind, apparently.

Requisite military involvement! The company is said to be secretly working with the Australian Air Force and Navy, and the U.S. Department of Defense, and aims to trial a 10MW version of its reactor in 2012 with an Australian utility.

Political and industrial upheaval! If fusion can be made to work at scale, it could indeed affect the world in profound ways. All the ingredients for drama!

More about this secretive company, and other companies working to radically improve nuclear power as we know it today, is available in Kachan’s new Emerging Nuclear Innovations report, just released. This 64-page report rounds up 6 months of looking carefully at the nuclear power industry for companies best placed to usurp big, conventional fission of the type that powers the 432 non-military nuclear reactors that exist worldwide today. _Cleantech

Well that is a lot to take in at once. A natural, immediate skepticism begins to set in early in the description of this Australian wonder-fusion device. And yet, the stakes are so high, that one cannot help but wish to learn more.

Dallas Kachan is the author of the Cleantech story excerpted above. Mark Halper is the author of the Kachan report referred to above, which is offered for $1,295 to single users.

Al Fin energy analysts suggest waiting until more information is forthcoming from conventional channels or press release -- unless you have a burning desire to learn more immediately, and have no better use for the $1,295. The report itself covers a wide range of other issues, and is only likely to mention the Aussie fusion project in brief. At this point, there is no reason to expect any more from the Aussie rice cooker fusion than from Andrea Rossi's LENR device.

But simply hearing about efforts such as this helps to keep us on our toes. Because eventually, one of these breakthroughs will turn out to be real, and revolutionary. And if we have not trained ourselves how to react to such an event, we are likely to be quite lost.

Another interesting nuclear news tidbit

Profits from Canadian Oil Sands Paying for Next-Gen Fusion Research

It is only fitting that old wealth pay for the transformative technologies which will make society better, and create new wealth at the same time. That is what seems to be happening in the advanced biofuels sector -- where old wealth chemical and oil companies are paying for the amazing new technologies of renewable fuels. And it also seems to be happening in the next-generation fusion sector, where wealth being made in Canadian oilsands is supporting avant-garde energy research by General Fusion Inc., of Burnaby, B.C.

General Fusion Inc. of Burnaby, B.C., may look like a sophisticated nuclear research company. It’s also the manifestation of a mid-life crisis. A decade ago, physicist Michel Laberge and engineer-executive Doug Richardson were working together at another B.C. firm making software for print designers. When Laberge turned 40 he came to a realization, says Richardson: “[Michel] didn’t want to help cut down forests anymore.”

Today Laberge is the president and chief technology officer—with Richardson as CEO—of a small company that hopes to become the first to get more energy out of a man-made experimental nuclear fusion reaction than it puts in. General Fusion has raised more than $33 million to date from a mix of government eco-research programs and private investors, including Amazon.com CEO-founder Jeff Bezos.

Among the partners, one stands out as especially counterintuitive: this summer the company received funding from Calgary-based oil sands company Cenovus. In backing fusion research, Cenovus is supporting what could become an alternative to its own business, if fusion generation can ever shed its long-standing pie-in-the-sky status. “For us, the investment isn’t a large amount,” says Dave Hassan, who oversees the Cenovus eco- fund. “For a small research company with cash requirements it’s big.” Fusion is a long shot, Hassan concedes, “but it’s a game changer if it works—carbon-free energy, essentially, forever.” __Macleans

The smarter people among the "old money" are risking at least some of that wealth on the long-shot gambles that threaten to change everything. Of course, these days, the "old money" doesn't have to be very old. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel, for example, are generally considered to be "old money" these days. And each of them is pushing world-changing technologies which could change everything.

But even older money -- such as Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, Monsanto, etc -- are investing inways to push the envelope of technology in order to invent and innovate ways out of current and near-term quagmires. That is the way markets and capital are supposed to work, as long as greedy governments and layabout special interests do not destroy the normal mechanisms of capital markets.

If any institution is threatening to destroy the future, it would be big statism in conjunction with its many enablers. If any protest movement actually wanted to make a difference, in terms of making the world better, that would be the place to start.

Nuclear Fusion On a Scale People Can Appreciate

Small scale nuclear fusion startups are approaching the problem of fusion energy from several different directions. This glorious lack of consensus allows human ingenuity to test many promising technologies at a relatively low cost. New Scientist offers a small look at 3 small fusion startups (free registration is required to read the article at NS):

The Redmond device, dubbed the Fusion Engine, is the brainchild of a company called Helion Energy, and relies on a very different method of establishing and confining plasmas known as a field-reversed configuration. Discovered at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC in 1960, this process involves accelerating two small, compact balls of plasma into one another at a speed of hundreds of kilometres a second. The conditions created by the collision should, in theory, be sufficient to force the nuclei together, heat them and ignite fusion.

...In a peer-reviewed paper published in April this year, Helion researchers show how they used the technique to smash two plasmas together and achieve a temperature of 25 million degrees. That's still well below what is needed to ignite fusion, but the team also published calculations showing that ignition - and even break-even - should be possible in a device just three times the size of their prototype (Nuclear Fusion, vol 51, p 053008).

...Also pursuing the dream is the Canadian firm General Fusion based in Burnaby, British Columbia, using a method called magnetised plasma fusion. This set-up also emerged from the US Naval Research Laboratory, this time in the late 1970s. It involves igniting fusion in a plasma violently compressed within a cavity created in a spinning sphere of liquid metal.

...Tri Alpha Energy, a secretive California-based company, is believed to have raised $90 million for its variant of the field-reversed technique; among its investors is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. In a rare public communication a year ago, Tri Alpha researchers showed how they had collided two plasma balls at a temperature over 5 million degrees and held them together for up to 2 milliseconds (Physical Review Letters, vol 105, p 045003). Tri Alpha says it will produce a working commercial reactor some time between 2015 and 2020 - possibly before ITER fires up for the first time.... _Much more information and background at NS

Brian Wang also takes a look at the NS article

Special Encore: A Gallery of Small Fusion Startups

Bussard IEC Fusion
Bussard inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (EMC2 Fusion) involves an electrostatic plasma confinement to achieve fusion. The history and development of the concept is explained in a video reached via the link above. The Bussard IEC has been financed almost entirely by the US Navy. EMC2 is based near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Dense Plasma Focus Fusion
Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is based in New Jersey. The dense plasma focus approach uses a special pulsing "spark plug" to ionise a gas, and to form a plasmoid "pinch," with the emission of high energy photons, ions, and fusion neutrons.

HyperV
Hyper V Technologies utilises a spherical array of mini railguns to accelerate plasma beams into a central target of deuterium or deuterium-tritium, to achieve fusion (hopefully).

TriAlpha
TriAlpha is an Irvine, California venture, which has been fairly successful in the venture capital game. TriAlpha is a bit secretive with non-investors, but you can read their patent for yourselves. The concept seems to involve the highly sophisticated evolution from an earlier colliding beam fusion approach.

General Fusion
General Fusion is a small startup headquartered near Vancouver, BC. The compression of plasma to achieve fusion is accomplished by a coordinated spherical plasma compression, using pneumatics and advanced switching.

Helion
Helion Energy is located in Redmond, Washington. It is based on a principle of "colliding plasmas," and like all the rest of the small fusion approaches, it is a long shot.

Japan Turns to Fusion Power Corporation's Heavy Ion Fusion

Images via FusionPowerCorporation
After the Fukushima nuclear crisis -- triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami -- Japan has been strongly divided on nuclear power. Many Japanese will only consider a nuclear future for Japan if the technology is proven to be free of threats of radioactive contamination and runaway chain reaction meltdowns. Nuclear fusion offers the promise of nuclear power without melt-downs or widespread contamination -- even after the worst natural disasters. And so International Professional Networks (IPN) of Japan has turned to Fusion Power Corporation (FPC) to investigate the use of FPC's heavy ion fusion (HIF) for Japan.

With the loss of nuclear facilities at Fukushima, Japan is in need of an alternative set of energy production facilities. As a result of that loss, Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan recently announced that: “… the country will abandon plans to build more nuclear reactors” and has encouraged Japan to explore other forms of energy production. “Fusion power production using the techniques incorporated in the Fusion Power Corporation HIF design should be one of the systems under consideration,” said Mr. Saruta.

Dr. Charles Helsley, President of Fusion Power Corporation, is very confident that FPC's fusion power system is a good fit for Japan's needed power development. It is carbon free and generates no radioactive problems while producing hydrogen for synthetic fuels and ample electricity using known technologies. Dr. Helsley said, “FPC's HIF process can provide many benefits to the world. It is an inherently safe system and cannot 'run away' nor ‘melt down'. It can stabilize the cost of energy to industry while meeting the need for liquid fuels and electricity in a clean, green and safe way.” And he further said, “I am very pleased with FPC's association with IPN and look forward to assisting in Japan's development of safe fusion power as a replacement for the problem laden fission power generation systems.” Mr. Saruta added, “It will be one of the best alternatives for the solution of Japan's current energy problem and should be part of Japan's long term plan.”

FPC is a California Corporation established to create a new 'clean green … and safe' power system using Heavy Ion Fusion energy to supply the energy needs of the US and the world _Benzinga

FPC utilises a deuterium - tritium cycle, with the tritium being generated by neutron - lithium reaction.

More information on Fusion Power Corporation's HIF technology

The isotopes of hydrogen have specific names, unlike the isotopes of other elements, namely deuterium and tritium. Deuterium(2H) is naturally present in all water and thus seawater is our primary source of fuel. Tritium(3H), the other component of fuel in a fusion power source, is of very low abundance in nature. This is in consequence of tritium being an unstable isotope with a relatively short half-life, 12.3 years. Tritium to start-up the first of our fusion systems will come from stores extracted from fission power plants, where it serves no useful purpose and is unwanted. Containment of tritium is virtually the sole radiological safety issue for fusion power. The difficulty of achieving zero release of tritium in fission power plants comes from having water both in contact with the core and to drive steam turbines. Fusion does not have this challenge, and zero release is a practical goal.

Although an external source of tritium is needed to start our operations, we will produce it for long-term operations via a feature of the D-T reaction. Like all D-T fusion systems, we will use the neutron from the fusion reaction to produce tritium from neutron-lithium reactions. Lithium is consumed in the D-T fuel cycle. As discussed in the last section (below), the lithium needed to start-up the first fusion system will come from conventional, land-based sources. However, the oceans contain large quantities of lithium, and FPC’s overall system includes extraction of lithium from seawater to produce the energy the world needs. Thus resources for our two long term fuel needs for deuterium and lithium are found in the oceans. We will extract our fuel in processes that are sensitive environmentally, and these resources are enough to last millions of years.

The FPC system has a unique potential to breed substantially more tritium than it burns. This is an important asset to the start-up of the additional HIF power sites needed around the world for two reasons. First, because it uses the more plentiful lithium isotope (7Li) as well as 6Li (7.5% of the total), it reduces the net amount of lithium that will ultimately be consumed over time in the fusion fuel cycle. Second, the excess tritium will supply the startup needs of successive fusion plants, avoiding a potential bottleneck due to limited tritium from non-fusion sources. Most of the excess tritium will be sold for this purpose, but some may be securely stored and allowed to decay to 3He, a valuable substance with extraordinary physical properties as well as being a fusion fuel. _FPC Technology

Heavy Ion Fusion Tutorial from VNL

...in fast ignition a separate, very sharp pulse (high peak-power and less than 1/10 the duration of the compression process) is used to ignite only the desired mass of fuel after it has been compressed. The “fast ignited” fuel sets off the rest of the fuel much like a blasting cap sets off a stick of dynamite. The great importance of this feature of FPC’s driver (also a feature of the Russian design) is that the required fuel compression has been within the state of the art for some years already....

The space in which the fusion reactions take place is called a reaction chamber. Three factors influence its design. First, the chamber needs to hold a good vacuum to enable the heavy ions from the accelerator system to reach the fuel pellet and to provide a secure containment vessel for the capture of the tritium that is generated after the reaction takes place. Second, the chamber must be able to withstand the pressure generated by the fusion reaction. And third, the reaction chamber must contain a liquid that can be heated to a high temperature as part of the energy extraction process.

...There is a fourth factor that must also be considered in the design of the reaction chamber. As stated earlier, the neutrons produced by the fusion reaction carry 80% of the reaction’s energy. The energy must be captured as thermal energy, for downstream conversion to electricity and other energy products, and the neutrons must be prevented from degrading the structural properties of the chamber materials. FPC’s chamber concept accomplishes all the required missions, and much more. The numerous advantages of the chamber’s configuration include a unique combination of long chamber life and the high temperatures in working fluid that are needed for efficient energy conversion. Ultimately, the set of advantages results in very large economic benefits. _FPCTechnology

More About General Fusion

LINUS via General Fusion
The General Fusion (near Vancouver, BC, Canada) approach to nuclear fusion is called "magnetized target fusion," which is a hybrid of magnetic and inertial confinement fusion approaches. The original approach to magnetized target fusion comes from "LINUS" (pictured above), a creation of the US Naval Weapons Research Lab from back in the 1970s. Unfortunately, the technology of the 1970s could not support the basic approach, being unable to maintain the central plasma toroid for long enough periods of time. But research continued at Los Alamos National Lab:

Over the decades, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US has continued to work on magnetized target fusion concepts. Their approach involves injecting a plasma toroid into an aluminum tube and then discharging a large bank of capacitors into the tube. The current in the tube induces a magnetic field that implodes the tube at high speed, compressing the plasma to thermonuclear conditions in the process.

The difficulties with this approach include the amount and cost of the electrical power supplies and energy needed to implode the tube, and the fact that the tube and electrical cable connections are destroyed during each pulse. Furthermore, neutrons from the fusion reaction damage the surrounding chamber and equipment.

These difficulties notwithstanding, Los Alamos National Laboratory has a wealth of knowledge and understanding regarding magnetized target fusion, and has made significant progress with respect to plasma densities and the numerical simulation of compressed plasmas. _GeneralFusion

General Fusion is building upon research information developed at the different national labs, and attempting to create a relatively small-scale, low-cost fusion reactor using deuterium-tritium gas, magnetic confinement, and acoustic compression.

To recreate a similar reaction [ed.: as inside the sun] inside the hot fusion generator, a precision controlled piston hammers colossal shock waves into a magnetized sphere in which atoms can be forced together hard enough to fuse and create plasma. The isotopes deuterium and the tritium are used to fuel the fusion reaction, and because they are so readily available they serve as a reliable fuel source. According to the General Fusion Inc. website, other benefits are that there are no chemical combustion by-products, a minimal amount of radioactive waste (that has a maximum half-life of twelve years), no greenhouse gas emissions, no risk of meltdown or explosion, and with deuterium and lithium (used to develop tritium) being plentiful in the natural world, hot fusion energy could be a reliable source of power for the entire world for millions, if not billions of years. _GreenAnswers

General Fusion will get its deuterium from seawater, but where will it get its tritium?

Tritium can be produced as a by-product of the fusion reaction by allowing the free neutron to react with lithium (installed in a blanket around the fusion core), which then breaks into tritium and helium. The tritium can be rapidly extracted from the blanket and sent back into the fusion reaction, thereby establishing a self-generating tritium fuel supply that uses deuterium and lithium as input fuels, both of which are consumed in the process.

Lithium is an abundant, inexpensive metal that occurs naturally in the earth’s crust. At a rate equivalent to today’s total global energy consumption there is enough lithium for 23,000 years of fusion energy. Lithium can also be extracted from seawater, which could fuel fusion for an additional 207 million years. _GeneralFusion

The developed world cannot afford to give up on nuclear power, despite what faux environmentalist dieoff.orgiasts (Greens) may say. If humans are to develop to the point of being competent stewards and protectors of their planet, they must move into a higher level of technological and scientific development. That will only be possible through the development of abundant, clean, sustainable energy sources, which one way or another will mean nuclear power.

Of course, in a trivial sense, both solar and geothermal power come from nuclear reactions initially, so all of our long-term power sources will come from nuclear reactions and advanced particle and/or antiparticle physical reactions, unless we choose to commit energy suicide via energy starvation. If that is our choice, then the entire planet and its biosphere is doomed billions of years before its time, by inevitable collisions from space. Neo-primitive humans (via the Green agenda) will not be able to prevent the catastrophe.

Thus the rush to develop advanced, scalable fission reactors, and scalable fusion reactors, before the Idiocracy makes such developments impossible -- and dooms to world the death by Greens.

Gallery of Small Fusion Startups

Bussard IEC Fusion
Bussard inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (EMC2 Fusion) involves an electrostatic plasma confinement to achieve fusion. The history and development of the concept is explained in a video reached via the link above. The Bussard IEC has been financed almost entirely by the US Navy. EMC2 is based near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Dense Plasma Focus Fusion
Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is based in New Jersey. The dense plasma focus approach uses a special pulsing "spark plug" to ionise a gas, and to form a plasmoid "pinch," with the emission of high energy photons, ions, and fusion neutrons.

HyperV
Hyper V Technologies utilises a spherical array of mini railguns to accelerate plasma beams into a central target of deuterium or deuterium-tritium, to achieve fusion (hopefully).

TriAlpha
TriAlpha is an Irvine, California venture, which has been fairly successful in the venture capital game. TriAlpha is a bit secretive with non-investors, but you can read their patent for yourselves. The concept seems to involve the highly sophisticated evolution from an earlier colliding beam fusion approach.

General Fusion
General Fusion is a small startup headquartered near Vancouver, BC. The compression of plasma to achieve fusion is accomplished by a coordinated spherical plasma compression, using pneumatics and advanced switching.

Helion
Helion Energy is located in Redmond, Washington. It is based on a principle of "colliding plasmas," and like all the rest of the small fusion approaches, it is a long shot.

Fusion reactors can be prolific neutron generators, and could be utilised for the transmutation of nuclear wastes into harmless compounds. They could also generate a number of differen highly energetic particles and high energy photons, and used for a number of purposes -- including as space propulsion. Another potential product of fusion reactions is heat. But what is most desired from fusion reactors is abundant, cheap, clean electrical power.

The energy from fusion is higher than the energy from fission, so that less fuel is required to generate equivalent energies. Fusion is generally safer, with less radioactive waste remaining to be disposed of.

Many billions of dollars have been spent by governments in a vain attempt to master the power of the stars on a more human scale. If one of the small startups manages to achieve with $millions what huge government budgets of $billions could not achieve, a revolution would have been ignited which would likely not stop with just cheap, clean, abundant energy.

Previously published at Al Fin Potpourri

Small Fusion Projects Run as Dark Horse Candidates

Small fusion startups like General Fusion, Focus Fusion, Helion, etc, may be some of the few hopes to reverse the dominant mood of energy scarcity and starvationism of our times. General Fusion is a small company near Vancouver, BC, that hopes to achieve fusion using "glorified jackhammers", with the assistance of Los Alamos National Labs.

"ITER and NIF are expensive and they take lots of energy," says Wurden. "We think there is a cheaper solution between the two."

...General Fusion aims to achieve net gain fusion experimentally in 2012. By 2018, it plans to complete a power plant prototype that would generate 100 megawatts, enough to power about 100,000 homes.


"We would like to be in a commercial stage of being able to take orders and build power plants by the end of the decade," said Michael Delage, General Fusion VP of business development. _CNN

General Fusion's founder, Michel Laberge, invented the oddball fusion concept 10 years ago, when he quit his day job to try to change the world.

A decade ago, it was Laberge's self-described mid-life crisis that brought him to a career crossroads. Despite success designing technology for printing direct mail materials, he remained unsatisfied. "I was cutting the forest and burying you under junk mail," he remembers. "I said, 'What am I doing here?'"
Laberge took a chance and left Creo to chase his longtime fascination with fusion.


"I had fusion on the brain," he recalls. "I sat at home on my couch for about six months, to the great despair of my wife, calculating all sorts of fusion schemes." Eventually, Laberge had his "aha" moment: a precision controlled piston that hammers giant shock waves into a magnetized sphere -- slamming atoms together hard enough to fuse and create energy.


The idea triggered investments in Laberge's young company, first from family and friends, then from venture capitalists including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. So far, funding has totaled $32.5 million. _CNN

$32.5 million is not much compared to the many billions already spent on ITER, NIF, and other big fusion schemes. But more and more, it seems that the big schemes are meant more for milking large amounts of funds from the world's governments for as long as possible, rather than the actual creation of a beneficial technology.

That is unfortunate. Since the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Europe has backed away, and China has backed away, from planned nuclear expansion, and both seem to have embarked on a futile quest for more wind and solar power.

Around the world, government energy planners are at a loss when seeking replacement energies for fossil fuels -- should those fuels' supplies begin to run short. And no wonder, since it is the alarmism and obstructionism of other agencies of government, non-governmental agencies, and inter-governmental agencies, which is preventing the large scale development of abundant sources of energy.

As more and more forms of abundant and reliable energy are blocked by institutions of government, inter-government, and non-government (big lobbies and interest groups), science is forced to the extremes of research and development in a quest to find forms of energy which the extremists in power cannot possibly shut down. Good luck with that.

But small-scale fusion and small modular fission reactors are two approaches to abundant energy which could conceivably be built in emerging nations outside the reach of the government - faux environmental coalition of corruption. Once these approaches are proven and put into mass production, the energy starvationists of the world will be literally on the run.

A description of the General Fusion approach (see image above):

The outside of the spherical tank will be studded with approximately 200 pneumatic pistons. These pistons will impact the tank, inducing a spherical acoustic compression wave in the liquid metal that will travel to the centre of the sphere. As the acoustic wave travels through the lead and focuses towards the centre, it will become stronger and evolve into an intense shock wave. When the shock wave arrives in the centre, it will rapidly collapse the vortex cavity and the plasma confined within it, creating thermonuclear conditions in the process.

The pneumatic pistons will be controlled by a system that times their impacts precisely to create a symmetrical compression shockwave in the cavity. The control system will adjust the timing of individual piston impacts to control the shape of the cavity as it collapses; compensate for physical and thermal effects and variations within the generator; and, adjust for changes over time as equipment wears and parameters vary. _General Fusion

Will Fusion be Most Useful for Burning Waste from Fission?

Using Sandia National Laboratories data, Helion calculates 50 fusion engines could incinerate the entire U.S. stockpile of nuclear waste in 20 years.

_PM

Helion Colliding Plasmas
Many billions of dollars have been spent on large scale fusion efforts such as the National Ignition Facility in Livermore or ITER in France. But if the best use of fusion in the intermediate term is to burn up non-recyclable nuclear waste from fission reactors, perhaps the smaller-scale, cheaper approaches might be better? Small efforts such as Bussard IEC fusion, Focus Fusion, General Fusion, Tri Alpha etc. are the sentimental favourites, because they are the work of relatively small groups with low budgets. Their reactors would be small enough to mass produce in factories. And maybe they could even provide the heart of a deep space fusion rocket propulsion system one day.

Regardless, the teams of scientists and engineers are out there giving it their best. Here is a quick look at Helion Energy's fusion project, based in Redmond, Washington:

Helion is among a handful of fusion startups, such as Tri Alpha Energy in Foothill Ranch, Calif., and General Fusion in Vancouver, British Columbia, all striving for the same grand goal as their outsize government counterparts: remaking the global energy landscape by proving that fusion power is feasible. A few forward-looking venture-capital firms have provided funding to get them off the ground; Tri Alpha, for instance, has attracted more than $50 million from a variety of prominent firms, including Goldman Sachs and Vulcan Capital.

Helion's technology was developed for about $5 million by MSNW, a company owned by University of Washington research associate professor John Slough. To see a full-scale component of the reactor, which Slough calls a fusion engine, I meet him at an industrial building a few minutes' drive from Helion's headquarters and walk past a conference table to a room filled with giant metal parts.

Inside the 26-foot-long prototype, two plasmas—clouds of hot ionized gas containing hydrogen isotopes—hurtle toward each other. The clouds collide inside a burn chamber, merging into a single entity. An electromagnet surrounding the chamber squeezes the plasma tighter and tighter, creating the high temperature and pressure conditions needed for fusion—a milestone MSNW first passed in 2008. "The idea," says Slough, who has the white hair and slightly disheveled appearance of a modern-day Einstein, "is to have the energy that comes out of the plasma exceed the energy that goes into it for a brief period of time."

...With its pulsed magnetic field design, the Helion team claims it has found the elusive sweet spot in the fusion landscape: a reliable, cheap reactor that doesn't require fine-tuned optics or complicated plasma confinement. In Helion's reactor, electric currents flowing inside the plasma reverse the direction of a magnetic field that's applied from the outside; the new, closed field that results effectively confines the plasma. "Compared to the tokamak and NIF, Helion's reactor is relatively compact and low-cost," says Richard Milroy, a physicist at the University of Washington who isn't affiliated with Helion. "Utilities don't need to invest billions for the first test reactor to see if things will work out." Plus, he says, the plasma-formation area is separate from the burn chamber in Helion's reactor, so its expensive components may last longer.

...While Helion's reactor is much simpler than those of ITER or NIF, it's also not yet powerful enough to be useful to a utility. Slough says his team will need to increase the size of the reactor's magnetic confinement field and boost the acceleration rate so that the plasmas will be traveling about twice as fast by the time they crash into each other. Those refinements will require at least $15 million to $20 million in development costs, money Helion does not currently have. Even if the funds materialize, there's no guarantee the reactor will work as projected when scaled up, or function consistently over long periods of time.

...fusion might be most useful—at least in the near term—as a means of destroying waste from nuclear fission. University of Texas physicist Swadesh Mahajan and his colleagues are developing a hybrid fusion–fission reactor that shunts neutrons produced during fusion to a fission blanket that burns nuclear waste as fuel. "Producing energy by fusion is at best a very long-term project," Mahajan says, "but through this intermediary, we can become useful to the energy sector."

NIF's projected LIFE power plant will be designed to burn waste, too, and Helion is considering adapting its reactor to do the same in order to provide revenue from utilities sooner. It's easier from a technical standpoint than using fusion to produce energy, because achieving break-even is not necessary—and it could potentially help solve a long-standing problem. Using Sandia National Laboratories data, Helion calculates 50 fusion engines could incinerate the entire U.S. stockpile of nuclear waste in 20 years. _PM

The R&D work and expense would be worth it, just to be able to safely dispose of non-recyclable nuclear waste (and any other toxic waste). But if any of the small-scale fusion projects actually succeeds in producing large scale electric power safely and sustainably from fusion, the world will have changed overnight.

Dieoff Energy Starvation vs. "Solving the Energy Problem"

An important difference in philosophy toward energy divides future oriented persons from faux environmentalist lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgiasts:

"If this machine [EMC2 Bussard IEC fusion device] works as we hope it will work, it will probably establish a firm technical foundation," he said. "People may say, 'It's a big jump and you shouldn't be doing this.' But every year that the energy problem doesn't get solved ... costs tens of billions of dollars. Sometimes waiting too long is not a good thing. If you look at the solutions, you might say, 'Can we afford to wait?'" _CosmicLog

CosmicLog
The energy starvation approach taken by Obama, lefty-Luddite faux environmentalists, and the European greens, aims to drastically reduce human agriculture and industry -- and consequently, the human population. But rational, forward-thinking groups and persons are working hard to "solve the energy problem." Such rational, future-oriented persons are the enemies of everything the modern political and environmental left is dedicated to.

Although fusion is the process behind the power of the sun and an exploding H-bomb, physicists have never been able to achieve a net energy gain in a controlled fusion reaction. But based on the experiments so far, Park thinks there's a chance that it could be done in a sufficiently large Wiffleball reactor, costing on the order of $100 million to $200 million. That sounds like a pretty good deal, especially in comparison with the $3.5 billion that's been spent so far on fusion research at the National Ignition Facility and the $20 billion expected to be spent on the international ITER fusion project.

...Don't expect weekly updates about EMC2's progress. "Currently all our funding comes from the Navy," Park said. "That's our customer. Our customer desired that we keep most of our progress confidential. ... They're somewhat concerned about making too much hype without delivering an actual product."

But if WB-8 and the follow-up studies are successful, the Navy won't stand in EMC2's way.

"Our understanding is they want us to be successful," Park said. "They want us to provide something for our sponsors. They also want us to do well commercially as well, as long as we remain US-owned and control the technology."_CosmicLog

Canada's BC-based General Fusion recently received a capital boost from Amazon's Jeff Bezos

Mainstream fusion approaches have been ongoing since World War II, but in practise have been bulky, overpriced, overstaffed, impractical, and probably never actually meant to accomplish more than milking research funds out of government coffers.

China is planning to mine Helium-3 from the surface of the moon to use as fuel in future nuclear fusion devices.

M. Simon's IEC Fusion Technology blog, and Brian Wang's NextBigFuture blog do a good job of following progress in IEC fusion and other alternative fusion technologies.

Nuclear energy (fusion, advanced fission, and other forms of nuclear energy not yet well-defined or developed) is the best approach to large scale reliable energy into the distant future. As the technology becomes more portable, humans will be able to carry their powerplants and "artificial suns" with them wherever they go.

But if you are like the greens who populate the Obama administration and governments/intergovernments of the western world, you want humans to slash energy production to the bare bone. The end result of such a reactionary lefty-Luddite policy would be a slow but accelerating return to a "dark ages" of science and technology, with an inevitable mass die-off of individuals at the margins. Not coincidentally, most current inhabitants of Earth are living at the margins.

A New Approach to "Cold Fusion" / LENR from the Ukraine

From out of the Ukraine in Eastern Europe comes Professor Boris Bolotov and his engineer Waldemar Mordkovitch with a very different approach to fusion. Its still table top in size, runs at low, for fusion standards to date, quite cool temperatures and is reported to make electricity directly skipping over the heat step for power generation. The new fusion candidate uses the transmutation of zirconium, in zirconium oxide form on to other elements to produce energy.

For the demonstration the table top sized cold fusion reactor was pulsed with a nanosecond pulse generator. The pulses of electricity went into the cell filled with a “liquid metal.” This produced a kind of electrical arc in the liquid metal. During the demonstration reports have it that one hundred watts of power input produced three hundred watts of pure electrical output plus excess heat. _NewEnergyandFuel

Bolotov's work appears to be based on earlier Russian research which documented methods to transmute various elements. The Bolotov transmutation method apparently releases some potentially dangerous radiation, which the team is working to quench. Another way in which the zirconium transmutation of Bolotov differs from the nickel transmutation of Rossi, is that the Bolotov approach produces electricity directly -- without the need to produce heat energy as an intermediary.

More at PESN (via New Energy and Fuel)

In other fusion news, Brian Wang looks at research indicating that proton-Boron aneutronic fusion may be more feasible than previously thought.

Electricity at 1 Cent per kWh from New LENR Reactor?

Rossi is asked about the initial cost of electricity produced by his systems in terms of cents per kw-h. His respone is”1 cent per kWh”. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the average residential cost of electricity is 9.74 cents per kWh (2009 figures). Rossi does not say whether his estimate is at the wholesale or retail level, but in any case, his projection shows that he is anticipating the cost of electricity production to be at a much lower rate than is currently possible. _FET

...brute force is used to cause hot fusion, while cold fusion requires a complex solid environment in which a process similar to seduction can operate. Hot fusion has been studied for more than 60 years by many and, arguably, is well understood. Cold fusion has been studied for only 18 years by a few and is hardly understood at all. Cold fusion is a clean energy source resulting in essentially no radioactivity. Hot fusion results in the generation of considerable amounts of radioactive elements. _ScienceofLowEnergyReactions PDF Storms

Several websites have devoted time to updating the status of the Rossi-Focardi low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) reactor, and "cold fusion" generally.

Brian Westenhaus provides a useful update, focusing on the reaction of American scientist Edmund Storms' reaction to the Rossi/Focardi device and the recent international cold fusion conference in Chennai, India. Some useful links are included.

The Pure Energy Systems Network site also provides a recent update on Rossi's work at the University of Bologna, providing reactions from international researchers in the field of LENR. Worth a look for the curious and the sceptical.

Even more at Cold Fusion Now, and Free Energy Times.

Humans need a clean, cheap, abundant source of energy and power. We need to keep our eyes and minds open to new possibilities. Still, it is best to follow these claims dispassionately, and cautiously.

ANS Nuclear Cafe Hosts Carnival of Nuclear Energy # 40

The Carnival of Nuclear Energy has now reached the 40 edition point. ANS Nuclear Cafe has the latest. Here are some excerpts:

Thorium fueled reactors generate interest

Nuclear Green – Rising interest in thorium fueled reactors

Full-size thorium fuel assembly for a 1000 MWe Russian VVER-1000 nuclear power plant

Now that China has announced interest in developing innovative thorium fueled reactor designs, a lot of people are paying attention.

Despite [the Chinese announcement of LFTR development plans] not making a ripple in the wider press, there’s a chance this development could be very significant. If the advocates of LFTRs are proved correct – and their arguments are certainly very compelling – then the Chinese could be taking one of the first substantial steps in a new type of nuclear race.

And the stakes are high: as [Kirk] Sorensen reports, the project “aims not only to develop the technology but to secure intellectual property rights to its implementation”. It will be very interesting to see what happens next.

Oil company business model v. nuclear energy

Atomic Insights – embargo oil business model

The Atomic Insights blog has been covering the business competition between oil, gas, and nuclear energy.  This week it takes on the oil company business model exploring reasons why it is low on innovation and yet high on profits.

ANS launches India Section

Reprocessing spent fuel

Recovering uranium and plutonium from spent fuel can power a nation’s factories and cities.  We recycle aluminum, glass, and paper so why not spent fuel. The logic appears to escape some in the U.K. and elsewhere

Canadian Energy Issues

Get ready for a righteous fight over plutonium in the UK. The coalition government has launched consultations on the question of whether to recycle it in power reactors, or entrain the stuff permanently in glass logs and dispose of it, or just keep it in long term storage.

Expect the professional environmental lobby—with the full support of the professional anti-proliferation lobby—to oppose recycling, and to back up that opposition with reasoning that is either weak or outright contradictory.

Brave New Climate – Safeguarding the nuclear fuel cycle

The purpose of this post is to compare the safeguards challenges presented by two nuclear recycle approaches, relative to the current U. S. approach of a once-through fuel cycle.  If these nuclear fuel cycles are evaluated solely on the basis of the safeguards needed, one finds the following:

PUREX recycle offers no safeguarding advantage over the once-through fuel cycle.  Beyond that, this approach presents a significant concern over handling of separated plutonium in the power plant environment.  Since chemically pure Pu is inherent in the PUREX process, safeguards inspections must be highly intrusive.

Adding recycling fast reactors with pyroprocessing (“PYRO”) to an existing fleet of LWRs absorbs all of the plutonium produced by LWRs.  There will be no inventories of plutonium other than what is in active use. PYRO is a new class of facility requiring safeguards, but batch-process inventory controls, coupled with a simple mechanical layout, will make the inspectors’ job more straightforward than for a PUREX facility.

The facility for recovering usable material from used LWR fuel may require safeguards similar in approach to those in PUREX facilities, but no separated plutonium will be involved.  If plutonium were to be diverted from a PYRO facility or from the LWR recovery facility, it would be useless (for weapons use) without further processing in an otherwise unneeded PUREX type of facility.

Realistically, a full transition to recycling fast reactors is a process that will take decades.  However, if all the LWRs were retired and replaced with recycling fast reactors, in addition to the above advantages, there would be no further need for uranium enrichment.

Get your full gourmet meal of nuclear energy news at ANS Nuclear Cafe's 40th Carnival of Nuclear Energy, including pointed criticism of Obama's NRC, and the battle over public opinion regarding nuclear power.

Despite the many potential advantages of small modular reactors, some utilities want to stick with what they know -- coal. Unfortunately, as we learned from the recent Texas experience, power plants which rely upon day to day supply of fuel from the outside, may get frozen out.

Some scientists are predicting that low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) devices will achieve commercial success within 10 years.

The UK's Tokamak Solutions' attempt to achieve success with a spherical tokamak fusion reactor, is covered here and here.

The US government is stuck on an "energy starvation" setting for now. As long as the Obama regime chooses stagnation and stasis, it will be up to the rest of the world to take their own ideas and technologies -- plus ideas and technologies originating inside the US -- and move them forward to commercial success.

Update on Rossi's LENR and Chennai Cold Fusion Conference

Brian Westenhaus provides an updated look at Rossi's Nickel-Hydrogen low energy nuclear reaction project.

Rossi hasn’t been waiting around. As it sits reports are saying that one customer – a newly formed consortium of energy distributors – should exist in Greece, and two others in the United States. These customers will sell energy catalysts in Europe and the USA. It seems the Greek media knows the Rossi catalyser is going to affect their country.

Andrea Rossi, founder and chief technology officer at Leonardo Corporation, gets a royalty on sales. Sergio Focardi is being taken care of with a commercial agreement with Rossi.

At the core of this is a metal tube of 1-2 liters containing as yet unknown catalysts, to which approximately one gram of 99.999 percent pure nickel powder is introduced. It’s then pressurized with hydrogen to between 2 and 20 bar.

The contents are heated by an electrical resistance source at a power of about 1 kW, which is then lowered to about 700 W.

The reaction starts producing 10-12 kW of power, which in Bologna was used to heat water to 101º C. During the demonstration, 13 liters of water were vaporized in approximately one hour.

The reaction forms copper – according to Rossi, higher levels of copper than nickel have been detected after the reaction. _New Energy and Fuel

Reportedly, Rossi is beginning to manufacture the reactors in Miami Florida.

In Chennai India, the 16th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science this week produced a call for inter-disciplinary studies in "cold fusion."

Inaugurating the conference, Mustansir Barma, Director, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, called for a deeper engagement by the scientific community in the new area.

Pointing out that the “disparity of scales” in the postulation of a lower energy phenomenon driving a high energy reaction was at the heart of the problem in getting a wider acceptance, he said some of the questions that scientists need to find answers for were how condensed nuclei can influence nuclear physics and whether the phenomenon can influence nuclear properties.

Later, interacting with reporters, William Collis, US scientist, pointed out that the big difference with the new discipline of condensed matter nuclear was that it required very modest levels of investment. This has led to several small-scale individual and group research efforts across the world.

M. Srinivasan, chairman, ICCF organising committee, said interest was reviving in this discipline and the potential it seemed to hold even though the phenomena was not yet fully explained in terms of textbook physics.

US scientists David Nagel and Michael Melich said inter-disciplinary research was the only way forward to establish cold fusion as hard science. _TheHindu

Nuclear scientist M. Srinivasan stated from Chennai that scientists are now closer to solving the energy crisis, thanks to Rossi's and Focardi's work.

Speaking at a tutorial school on the theme, ‘Introduction to the Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions’, he said the recent development involved a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor that could produce a few kilowatts of thermal energy . Its significance was that it watered down the conventional theory of relying on high temperatures for nuclear reactions. Low energy nuclear reactions (LENR) or cold fusion refers to nuclear fusion of atoms at conditions close to room temperature, in contrast to that of well-understood fusion reactions such as high-energy experiments.

India started research in this field in 1989, after scientists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons discovered the phenomenon of cold fusion in March 1989. However, research suffered a blow in mid-1990s due to lack of consensus among mainstream scientists and the US denunciation of it.

But now, the research has once again gained momentum. In fact Dr S Kailas, director of physics group on LENR at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, announced that the group wanted youth to start working from where the older generation has left. The tutorial - organised by Indian Physics Association, Federation of Science Clubs of Tamil Nadu and The Science Club of Chennai - saw the participation of a large number of students.

On the positives, Srinivasan said low energy reactors do not have to go critical and the coolant could be even water. No reports of significant levels of radioactivity are associated with them either. When compared to a normal reactor, it does not use uranium, plutonium or tritium.

Research professor at the LENR laboratory of George Washington University David Nagel told Express that LENR could help produce clean water. Though products associated with LENR would come out in a year, it would take another five years before the reactors go commercial as it involved validation and independent testing. _IE

One would naturally expect researchers into low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs) to be guardedly optimistic following reports of the Rossi/Focardi work. The prediction that LENR will go commercial within 5 years is decidedly optimistic, and should be viewed sceptically.

On the other hand, if an inexpensive way of tapping into non-radiative, small-sized nuclear reactions has been found, the discovery could well provide some of the tools needed for more viable pioneering on Earth, the seas, and in space.