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Lockheed Fusion Reactor ?

lockheed fusion

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30 replies to this topic

#1 mikeinnaples

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Posted 15 October 2014 - 06:35 PM


 

http://sploid.gizmod...ge-h-1646578094

 

Interesting....

 

 


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#2 Lazarus Long

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Posted 17 October 2014 - 01:04 PM

I consider this an important breakthrough on a number of levels. First of all the legitimacy of the company making the claim. Second, the speed they claim to be able to advance the technology. Third, the character of the type of approach they are taking confirms an idea that I have long suspected, micro manufacture of fusion reactors is not only feasible, it is preferable.

This just might be a game changer if the underlying science is valid.
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#3 Turnbuckle

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Posted 17 October 2014 - 01:23 PM

Pure marketing with no science whatsoever. That's fusion power for you.


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#4 Mind

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Posted 17 October 2014 - 01:31 PM

I wish them luck....nothing too much revealed in the video. I suspect the video is part of an attempt to get more government grant money.



#5 platypus

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Posted 17 October 2014 - 01:34 PM

I don't think that containment of the plasma will be a walk in a park in this design either. 



#6 Lazarus Long

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Posted 17 October 2014 - 03:14 PM

Building smaller should make containment easier.

As for the marketing aspec, this company doesn't need to play the pander to the public game. They get more pandering in private to DARPA.

#7 Lazarus Long

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Posted 17 October 2014 - 04:00 PM

BTW, I agree with Mind that very little is actually disclosed about the underlying science in this announcement, other than the miniaturization aspect.

#8 niner

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Posted 17 October 2014 - 08:11 PM

I think that in the next ten years or so, we will see some step-change technology developments in the energy space.  Hot fusion has to date mainly been a way to efficiently vaporize money.  Eventually one of the small versions might work, but I don't see it ever being economically competitive, except perhaps in niche applications.  There have been some interesting developments in the LENR arena, but I think it will take a long time to get the engineering truly sorted out.  Once this happens, it could be very interesting.  The Bloom Energy solid oxide fuel cell device looks like it's actually ready for prime time, and will find a lot of uses, but it's not a miracle.



#9 A941

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Posted 17 October 2014 - 09:27 PM

They say very little about the details... actually nothing ;-)

Hell, I would donate money for that cause, many people would.

 

Getting rid of pollution, wars for ressources, expensive and dangerous means of transporting oil, and the dependance on insane Muslims, wo spend our money on killing human civilization, is something that we should try to achieve as soon as possible.

 

Imagine a world with Fussion.


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#10 niner

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Posted 18 October 2014 - 03:16 AM

Imagine a world with Fussion.

 

To be honest, when I imagine a world in which fusion is the primary source of energy, I see a world where energy is expensive due to enormous capital, operating, and decomisioning  costs.  I imagine a world where the power is provided largely by the government, which must maintain a large security apparatus in order to maintain control over its massive investments in fusion plants.    I'd rather imagine a world where energy production was decentralized and lower cost.   The new small(er) hot fusion designs are interesting, but in the end I don't think they will be cheap.


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#11 A941

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Posted 19 October 2014 - 05:56 PM

Maybe not on the first day, but after they have been sold and the technology has become more sophisticated, the price will drop, and in the end thell be used in every city, and for sure in smaller towns far away from civilization.

Maybe theyll even go to mars.

 

 

(but only if this whole story was not made up)


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#12 Lazarus Long

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Posted 20 October 2014 - 03:04 AM

As a point of reference don't hold your breath for civilian applications right away.  This is a major mega billion dollar weapons manufacturer.  They build missile systems, stealth aircraft, advanced strike fighters and advanced naval attack vessels, like submarines, and rail gun systems.  If they are telling the truth then the first applications will inevitably be a major overhaul of existing nuclear powered weapons platforms to make them even more powerful.  They are also involved in the recent laser anti-missile system development and hypersonic transport tech. If they can make this as small as they claim then you can expect that it will redefine the idea of conventional weapons before anything else.

 

I suspect the first civilian applications will be to replace existing nuclear fission plants after the military goes bonkers with this.  However, they probably will allow NASA to incorporate it into their deep space designs and it could make a Mars mission more viable.  Again, if the underlying science is valid.

 

Also, this company has much more to lose making a false claim than if they are telling the truth.  They already get tens, to hundreds of billions annually from governments around the world that buy their products.  A false claim could cost them considerable loss of credibility and for a company like this that is measured in ten digits.  Frankly, I'm surprised they said anything at all.



#13 John Schloendorn

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Posted 23 October 2014 - 09:42 PM

Frankly, I'm surprised they said anything at all.

 

Sometimes, gov't likes to evaluate the legit-ness of their contractors by looking at how much popular press they're getting, among other metrics.  Maybe some department whose job it is to increase LMT's favorable press exposure decided, hey, why don't we say something fusion today, that's an innocuous area where nothing ever happens, and it will get parroted around the internet a lot. 

 


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#14 mikela

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 03:04 AM

Having spent 30 years as a senior technical leader at a major aerospace firm, I would not underestimate their claim.



#15 Antonio2014

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 10:31 AM

Until they have a reactor and some actual data (like its triple product or its gain factor) this is only vaporware. Also, the news report barely has any detail about the reactor. Talk is cheap, show me the data.


Edited by Antonio2014, 24 October 2014 - 10:31 AM.

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#16 Turnbuckle

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 01:02 PM

Until they have a reactor and some actual data (like its triple product or its gain factor) this is only vaporware. Also, the news report barely has any detail about the reactor. Talk is cheap, show me the data.

 

 

Exactly. This sounds like the sort of hype New Scientist reports in every issue. Even Black Light power provides more details than this--a lot more. And whereas Lockheed will have one on the back of a truck, the Black Light hucksters will put theirs in a car--

 

A smaller unit having one million times the power density of an internal combustion engine and a range of 3000 miles/liter H2O was integrated into an electric vehicle engineering design. A prototype electric power system has been developed that intermittently produced millions of watts of power with sequential ignition of H2O-based solid fuel pellets. 

 

http://www.blackligh...ight_power_inc/

 

 



#17 mikela

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 01:20 PM

Do you really expect them to give you those details now  :laugh:

 

I am pretty sure they will do it on their own terms.  Getting information out to the public is a bureaucratic nightmare in my experience.


Edited by mikela, 24 October 2014 - 01:26 PM.


#18 Antonio2014

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 02:22 PM

Do you really expect them to give you those details now  :laugh:

 

I am pretty sure they will do it on their own terms.  Getting information out to the public is a bureaucratic nightmare in my experience.

 

I'm not asking for detailed instructions to build every part of it, only a broad explanation of how it works. Does it operate continuously or by pulses? How do they manage plasma instabilities? How do they extract impurities and spent fuel? Do they use superconducting magnets or regular magnets? How do they compress the fuel? It's like a z-pinch or like a magnetic mirror?

 

C'mon... tokamaks, stellerators, z-pinch machines... are investigated everywhere and there is plenty of information about then. The little details are patented or industry secrets, but apart from that there are lots of details in the open.

 

See for example the ITER web page: http://www.iter.org/mach

 

See for example the future fission reactors: http://en.wikipedia....tion_IV_reactor

 

See for example the Skylon: http://www.reactione...e_howworks.html

 

Nobody is asking for industry secrets, only some information so that we can judge the feasibility and novelty of their proposed approach.


Edited by Antonio2014, 24 October 2014 - 02:35 PM.


#19 Turnbuckle

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 02:36 PM

Do you really expect them to give you those details now  :laugh:

 

 

 

 

Yes. If they had anything real they would at least furnish the experimental results. And if they had anything real, they would not need outside investors.



#20 mikela

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 04:26 PM

I guess they do not agree with you...and besides it would take away from the conspiracy theories ;)   I am sure those researchers would love to tell you about their life's work, however, they have so called "communication experts" that typically are non-technical risk averse people that stand between you and them.  I am not saying that they have legitimate results - I really don't know (and neither do you).  It has been my experience that things can get very filtered in an overly conservative fashion in these situations.


Edited by mikela, 24 October 2014 - 04:27 PM.


#21 Turnbuckle

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 05:27 PM

Speaking yesterday at a press conference at the company’s facility in Palmdale, California, Tom McGuire defended the project’s scientific merits: “We think we’ve invented something that is inherently stable,” McGuire told reporters. But he acknowledged that “we are very early in the scientific process.” He said he has been working with a team of five to 10 people for the past 4 years and hopes to expand the team now that the project is in the open.
 
He said that their magnetic confinement concept combined elements from several earlier approaches. The core of the device uses cusp confinement, a sort of magnetic trap in which particles that try to escape are pushed back by rounded, pillowlike magnetic fields. Cusp devices were investigated in the 1960s and 1970s but were largely abandoned because particles leak out through gaps between the various magnetic fields leading to a loss of temperature. McGuire says they get around this problem by encapsulating the cusp device inside a magnetic mirror device, a different sort of confinement technique. Cylindrical in shape, it uses a magnetic field to restrict particles to movement along its axis. Extra-strong fields at the ends of the machine—magnetic mirrors—prevent the particles from escaping. Mirror devices were also extensively studied last century, culminating in the 54-meter-long Mirror Fusion Test Facility B (MFTF-B) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. In 1986, MFTF-B was completed at a cost of $372 million but, for budgetary reasons, was never turned on.
 
Another technique the team is using to counter particle losses from cusp confinement is recirculation. “We recapture the flow of particles and route it back into the device,” McGuire said. The team has built its first machine and has carried out 200 shots during commissioning and applied up to 1 kilowatt of heating, but McGuire declined to detail any measurements of plasma temperature, density, or confinement time—the key parameters for a fusion plasma—but said the plasma appeared very stable. He said they would be ramping up heating over the coming months and would publish results next year.
 

 

 

 
 
So it is old, failed technologies cobbled together, and evidently it has been run at very low power levels--equivalent to a hair dryer--and not continuously. Back when I worked in research, new guys who wanted to get ahead called this approach "loading for success." They'd throw in everything they thought they might need and hope to get one experiment to work so they could get funding (or better, get promoted). This would never produce anything useable in the end.

Edited by Turnbuckle, 24 October 2014 - 05:37 PM.


#22 Antonio2014

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 05:49 PM

Thanks for the info. Yeah, it looks a lot like only hype and waste of money. It seems it's in a very early stage of development and not peer reviewed. I will not hold my breath for it.



#23 mikela

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Posted 24 October 2014 - 07:00 PM

It doesn't prove anything to me one way or the other...and I have no vested interest other than the hope that this technology comes to fruition at some point in time.



#24 Lazarus Long

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Posted 03 November 2014 - 04:31 PM

Here are two contrasting views but at least a little more information.

http://www.nature.co...pticism-1.16169

http://m.aviationwee...reactor-details

#25 mikela

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Posted 03 November 2014 - 05:32 PM

Thanks for that!  You will find Aviation Week in the offices of almost every aerospace firm...good source for basic information about what's happening in the industry.


Edited by mikela, 03 November 2014 - 05:34 PM.


#26 Antonio2014

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Posted 04 November 2014 - 08:28 AM

Another critique of the design: http://www.ipp.mpg.d...558/cfr?c=14226



#27 Russ Maughan

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Posted 03 June 2015 - 05:01 AM

The magnetic fields create a high-intensity electrical current through induction, and as this current travels through the plasma, electrons and ions become energized and collide. Collisions create "resistance" that results in heat, but paradoxically as the temperature of the plasma rises, this resistance—and therefore the heating effect—decreases. Heat transferred through high-intensity current ...etc etc

 

Has anyone tried syphoning off pure electrical current from this process as a way to both cool and cycle it? Pulsing might ware it out faster but that would satisfy FMECA.



#28 A941

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Posted 06 June 2015 - 07:24 PM

I got a dislike!

Iam sure it was because of "Insane Muslims"

What else, political corectness has always opposed truth.


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#29 A941

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Posted 08 June 2015 - 03:04 AM

:)



#30 Antonio2014

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Posted 13 July 2015 - 11:40 PM

Recently I saw another project for a small reactor that looks much more promissing than this one. It's simply a tokamak with stronger magnets than JET, ITER and the like, of around 20-30 T. Since the magnetic field is stronger, the machine can be much smaller (and thus cheaper and easier to build and manage). It's a project from MIT: http://www.americans...er-and-cheaper/






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