The "holy grail" of nuclear fusion?

Every so often you see a big press release about it. Last one was from Lockheed Martin, their new approach was to use smaller tokomacs to speed the improvement process.

The funny thing is they reached the "holy grail" last year, that is break even fusion. they started a fusion reaction and got back as much energy as they put in. Get ahead fusion appears even more difficult.

I truly hope one or more of these entities solves the problem. Nuclear fusion is one of the few renewable energy sources I consider capable of replacing fossil fuels. The guy who comes up with the method will never have to worry about money again, that's for sure.
 
steingar said:
Every so often you see a big press release about it. Last one was from Lockheed Martin, their new approach was to use smaller tokomacs to speed the improvement process.

The funny thing is they reached the "holy grail" last year, that is break even fusion. they started a fusion reaction and got back as much energy as they put in. Get ahead fusion appears even more difficult.

I truly hope one or more of these entities solves the problem. Nuclear fusion is one of the few renewable energy sources I consider capable of replacing fossil fuels. The guy who comes up with the method will never have to worry about money again, that's for sure.
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Oh no! That is when his money worries will just start to begin in earnest.
 
steingar said:
Every so often you see a big press release about it. Last one was from Lockheed Martin, their new approach was to use smaller tokomacs to speed the improvement process.

The funny thing is they reached the "holy grail" last year, that is break even fusion. they started a fusion reaction and got back as much energy as they put in. Get ahead fusion appears even more difficult.

I truly hope one or more of these entities solves the problem. Nuclear fusion is one of the few renewable energy sources I consider capable of replacing fossil fuels. The guy who comes up with the method will never have to worry about money again, that's for sure.
Click to expand...

<semantic hat on> Obviously they didn't get as much energy back as they put in, and "get ahead fusion" is impossible </semantic hat off>

Sorry, just had to...
 
Seems like a good idea, but hardly revolutionary.

Getting enough compression out of a pulsed magnetic field will be challenging, and I think they'll run into the same problem tokamaks have -- the reactants are charged and make their own magnetic fields, leading to instability. They try to offset that with inertia -- hence the heavy ions -- but that doesn't seem nearly enough.

The reporting is terrible. Fusion is not chemical, it's not clean in its DT form, and if they really were trying to fuse lead, it would be utterly impossible.

Fusion is the power of the future and always will be.
 
steingar said:
Never say never. Someone may work out a method someday. We'll all be better off if they do.
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I didn't say never. I said always.

It's been 40 years away for … more than 40 years.

Take any revolutionary claim with a wheelbarrow of salt. We've been down that road dozens of times.

It's not cheap, it's not easy, and it's not clean. It may someday, along with ubiquitous flying cars, vacations on the moon, and monkeys flying out of my butt, be possible. It will never be limitless any more than fission power was.

You gotta question the hype.
 
steingar said:
Nuclear fusion is one of the few renewable energy sources I consider capable of replacing fossil fuels.
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Technically, fusion is most certainly NOT a "renewable" energy source. Once you convert the Hydrogen to Helium, you can't turn it back and repeat the process.
 
steingar said:
I'll agree with the first two, but not clean? What part of fusion is inherently dirty?
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D-T makes neutrons. That's seriously dirty, and will make large amounts of radioactive waste.

It will also be the first "practical" fusion method because it has the lowest activation energy, by a fair margin.
 
JOhnH said:
These types of articles pop up quite frequently. Some day, one of them will be worth reading. Does any one with more knowledge and understanding of the technology than me have any comments on this one?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102729780?__...eadline|story&par=yahoo&doc=102729780&ref=yfp
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Yes, I am knowledgeable about this. You are correct that there's nothing worth reading in that article.

Basically, a Canadian scientist in Vancouver made some announcements for the purpose of publicizing himself and his company, which does research. He wants some funding, so he made some noise, and news outlets got suckered into reporting it. That's all that happened. He doesn't have anything special.
 
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