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Does Lockheed Martin Really Have a Breakthrough Fusion Machine?

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  • Does Lockheed Martin Really Have a Breakthrough Fusion Machine?

    Does Lockheed Martin Really Have a Breakthrough Fusion Machine?

    Lockheed Martin says it will have a small fusion reactor prototype in five years but offers no data.

    MIT Technology Review

    David Talbot
    10/20/2014

    Excerpt:

    Lockheed Martin’s announcement last week that it had secretly developed a promising design for a compact nuclear fusion reactor has met with excitement but also skepticism over the basic feasibility of its approach.

    Nuclear fusion could produce far more energy, far more cleanly, than the fission reactions at the heart of today’s nuclear power plants. But there are huge obstacles and no hard evidence that Lockheed has overcome them. The so-far-insurmountable challenge is to confine hydrogen plasma at conditions under which the hydrogen nuclei fuse together at levels that release a useful amount of energy. In decades of research, nobody has yet produced more energy from fusion reaction experiments than was required to conduct the experiments in the first place.

    Most research efforts use a method that tries to contain hot plasma within magnetic fields in a doughnut-shaped device called a tokamak. Three research-scale tokamaks operate in the United States: one at MIT, another at a lab in Princeton, and a third at a Department of Energy lab in San Diego. The world’s largest tokamak is under construction in France at an international facility known as ITER, at a projected cost of $50 billion.

    Tom McGuire, project lead of the Lockheed effort, said in an interview that the company has come up with a compact design, called a high beta fusion reactor, based on principles of so-called “magnetic mirror confinement.” This approach tries to contain plasma by reflecting particles from high-density magnetic fields to low-density ones.

    Lockheed said the test reactor is only two meters long by one meter wide, far smaller than existing research reactors. “In a smaller reactor you can iterate generations quicker, incorporate new knowledge, develop faster, and make riskier design choices. That is a much more powerful development paradigm and much less capital intensive,” McGuire said. If successful, the program could produce a reactor that might fit in a tractor-trailer and produce 100 megawatts of power, he said. “There are no guarantees that we can get there, but that possibility is there.”

    The small team developing the reactor at the company’s skunkworks in Palmdale, California, has done 200 firings with plasma, McGuire said, but has not shown any data on the results. However, he said of the plasma, “it looks like it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.” He added that with research partners Lockheed could develop a competed prototype within five years and a commercial application within a decade. The company is even talking about how fusion reactors could one day power ships and planes.

    But many scientists are unconvinced. Ian Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT and one of the principal investigators at the MIT fusion research reactor, says the type of confinement described by Lockheed had long been studied without much success.

    Hutchinson says he was only able to comment on what Lockheed has released—some pictures, diagrams, and commentary, which can be found here. “Based on that, as far as I can tell, they aren’t paying attention to the basic physics of magnetic-confinement fusion energy. And so I’m highly skeptical that they have anything interesting to offer,” he says. “It seems purely speculative, as if someone has drawn a cartoon and said they are going to fly to Mars with it.”

    ................................................

    View the complete article, including photo, at:

    http://www.technologyreview.com/news...usion-machine/
    B. Steadman

  • #2
    Compact Fusion

    Lockheed Martin

    It’s no secret that our Skunk Works® team often finds itself on the cutting edge of technology. As they work to develop a source of infinite energy, our engineers are looking to the biggest natural fusion reactor for inspiration – the sun. By containing the power of the sun in a small magnetic bottle, we are on the fast track to developing nuclear fusion reactors to serve the world’s ever-growing energy needs.

    FUSION VS. FISSION

    More than 50 years ago, nuclear power through fission was the excitement of its day. People tried using it to power almost everything, even planes. In the end, operational hurdles prevented fission from widespread use.

    While fission continues to power our nuclear reactors today, fusion offers a cleaner, safer source of energy.

    Fission occurs when one atom is split into two smaller fragments, creating an explosion of sorts and resulting in the release of heat energy.

    Fusion is the process by which a gas is heated up and separated into its ions and electrons. When the ions get hot enough, they can overcome their mutual repulsion and collide, fusing together. When this happens, they release a lot of energy – about one million times more powerful than a chemical reaction and 3-4 times more powerful than a fission reaction.

    Energy created through fusion is 3-4 times more powerful than the energy released by fission.

    HOW COMPACT FUSION WORKS

    Nuclear fusion is the process by which the sun works. Our concept will mimic that process within a compact magnetic container and release energy in a controlled fashion to produce power we can use.
    A reactor small enough to fit on a truck could provide enough power for a small city of up to 100,000 people

    Building on more than 60 years of fusion research, the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works approach to compact fusion is a high beta concept. This concept uses a high fraction of the magnetic field pressure, or all of its potential, so we can make our devices 10 times smaller than previous concepts. That means we can replace a device that must be housed in a large building with one that can fit on the back of a truck.

    The compact size is the reason that we believe we will be able to create fusion technology quickly. The smaller the size of the device, the easier it is to build up momentum and develop it faster. Instead of taking five years to design and build a concept, it takes only a few months. If we undergo a few of these testing and refinement cycles, we will be able to develop a prototype within the same five year timespan.

    To mimic the energy created by the sun and control it here on earth, we’re creating a concept that can be contained using a magnetic bottle. The bottle is able to handle extremely hot temperatures, reaching hundreds of millions of degrees. By containing this reaction, we can release it in a controlled fashion to create energy we can use.


    View the complete post, including photos and video, at:

    http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/pro...ct-fusion.html
    B. Steadman

    Comment


    • #3
      What Lockheed's nuclear fusion news means to those of us who barely passed physics class

      Washington Business Journal

      Jill R. Aitoro
      10/16/2014

      Excerpt:

      The sun is the best example of the power of nuclear fusion — generating enough heat to cause two atomic ions to collide and generate energy a million times more powerful than chemical reactions. Lockheed Martin has come up with a process to develop a compact fusion reactor within the next decade.

      For people like me who barely passed physics class, Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Tom McGuire described the potential of the company's new approach to nuclear fusion like this: An airplane that doesn't rely on fuel — that can stay aloft, with unlimited range, unlimited endurance.

      That I get.

      And there is good reason why Lockheed Martin's announcement Wednesday evening is getting so much attention. As McGuire, who leads the company's compact fusion effort, put it in a video (see below) that does a far better job describing the accomplishment than the press release: “The true atomic age can start."

      In a nutshell, Lockheed's Skunk Works team developed a process — patenting pending — that it believes will result in a compact fusion reactor within the next decade. That process involves literally bottling fusion energy, which results from colliding ions and is a million times more powerful than chemical energy, then releasing it in a controlled fashion. That, in turn, enables Lockheed to make a reactor that is 10 times smaller than what can be created now — the size of a large truck, rather than a building, McGuire said.

      It also means Lockheed will need only about three months to design it, less than nine months to build and test it, and about five years to produce a prototype.

      But practically speaking, how would this be used? McGuire said the world already relies on gas turbines for 40 gigawatts of power a year. Lockheed would partner with the companies producing those, then replace the gas line going into the turbines with a heat exchanger coming off its fusion reactor.
      ............................................


      View the complete article, including photos, at:

      http://www.bizjournals.com/washingto...-to-those.html
      B. Steadman

      Comment

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