Nuclear fusion....

[b0redom]

Lockheed Martin claim to have made a breakthrough in nuclear fusion which should see the 1st reactors ready inside 10 years.

http://www.businessinsider.com/andre...hrough-2014-10

[g8ina]

wow, if it's real then WOW, big time...

Ive been a long time fan of Culham Labs work and the JET, ITER and MAST Projects.

Science fiction come true at last ?

[watercooled]

This is another project which keeps popping up, about which it's still easy to have doubts: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...ty-of-gasoline

Coming from a company like Lockheed Martin though, it has my attention for sure...

[g8ina]

Hmmm, however, nothing here :
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/uk/n...-releases.html

[g8ina]

But more here :
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/lockheed-m...e-h-1646578094

Have to say, having now seen three or four news releases this is looking amazing !!

[b0redom]

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/new...ar-fusion.html

On the US website

[TheAnimus]

Isn't it always 10 years away? Or is it always 15 years? I forget!

If only we put as much in research into fission in general as we did into our weapon friendly fast breaders.

[aidanjt]

If only we put as much in research into fission in general as we did into our weapon friendly fast breaders.

Its weaponisation potential is probably the only reason why fission got government funding in the first place.

[RobbieRoy]

Yes, if true a VERY BIG WOW!!

I'd like to know, however, how they will have skinned the plasma containment cat and solved the 'how to keep it going' problem after pumping in giga-watts of start up juice.

A working and small enough reactor to be transportable and, implied, cheap, may be the solution we're looking for in terms of carbon free energy availability across the entire globe.

There's also the problem that its in the US and Lockheed Martin say 'looking for partners in academia, industry and among government laboratories to advance the work.' In other words, this could be swallowed by the military and government and either kept for strategic benefit purposes or sold at a very high price (political and financial).

But perhaps I'm being too cynical...

[RobbieRoy]

Oh, and the picture used of the sun having a major flare eruption burp on the LM site is my very own avatar picture elsewhere (and here too if I get to enough posts!)

[kompukare]

Its weaponisation potential is probably the only reason why fission got government funding in the first place.

Indeed. The weaponisation also meant that plenty of military type mindsets were running the show so any failings were quickly covered up which long term has made nuclear very unpopular.

But can you imagine the discussion when Thorium was first considered:

"I've found a new reaction cycle, very stable, almost totally clean, self-contained, can use waste as part of its fuel cycle, no possibility of containment break!"

"Sounds great! When can you start?"

"Very soon, it's a much smaller reactor so very cheap"

[Industrialists and CEO of mega corporation at first doesn't look to happy, but thinks well maybe better to sell a few million cheap reactors is better than selling a few hundred expensive ones]

[Military guy steps up]
"What about weapons grade materials?"

"That's the beauty of this cycle; there is none so no proliferation problems"

"Ah. Oh, in that case I veto this research"

[DanceswithUnix]

"That's the beauty of this cycle; there is none so no proliferation problems"

"Ah. Oh, in that case I veto this research"

Amusing, but I think a tad unfair.

The story goes that in the UK nuclear weapons program the lead engineer for creating the weapons grade plutonium said there was no way he was going to let all that heat go to waste so the plant wouldn't get built unless it generated electricity, and so our first nuclear power plant was created. So it wasn't weaponisation of a consumer technology, it was the consumer benefit of a weapons programme. The military didn't have to do that.

I get the impression that we have plenty of weapons grade material around. Now we just want power, there seems to be no shortage of modern safe reactor designs, but people get wierd when you mention nuclear anything.

[watercooled]

The perception of the whole proliferation issue seems too closely tied to fission in general. Reactor cores can be designed to produce more or less, or even consume fissile materials. Magnox is an example of a core designed to produce, but the same isn't necessarily true of more modern designs. On the flip side, the USA consumed huge amounts of Russian weapons-grade fuel through the magatons-to-megawatts program.

An extremely naive assumption made by the anti-nuclear crowd is that no commercial power reactors = no more nuclear weapons. As I said, modern cores aren't necessarily very efficient at producing fissile material as they're designed primarily to extract energy as heat, but either way having this production source is understandably a convenience and might even lower costs to an extent, but I can't see the presence or lack of commercial power reactors being a major barrier to weapons production.

I agree thorium probably deserves more attention than it is given at the moment, and also that the reason for the lack of development in favour of uranium is strongly related to weapons.

Modern breeder reactor attention isn't just focussed on producing fissile material; the same sort of reactor design is useful for burning up waste fuel leaving you with less high-level waste to deal with. And again, any power you can produce in the meantime is a bonus. The PRISM is one such reactor.

Even aside from power and weapons, reactors have lots of important uses for producing things like medical isotopes, and the US are also looking at potential future supply issues for Pu-238, which isn't weapons-grade but used in RTG's for powering things like satellites/probes/rovers/etc.

[Top_gun]

Good news with regards to fusion.

In spite of this good news, it was sad to the see the usual suspects given their usual pro fission nuclear power stance on this thread. These days, to build nuclear fission power stations, the Government is locked into 60 year contracts with energy companies. Each power station costing the tax payer anywhere between £24 to £34bn, making our energy even more expensive, with the energy companies getting generous subsidies.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ation-somerset

[watercooled]

Where did you pull those figures from? They're not even mentioned in the article you linked.

The strike price is an agreement for 35 years, and it works both ways; if the market price is less, the difference is made up; if the market price is greater, they have to pay back the difference.

And how exactly do you figure the taxpayer is paying 24-34 billion? The funding is provided by investors, not the government and hence taxpayers.

I can understand concerns around the strike price set given the current market price, but just pulling figures out of thin air and completely mangling the facts boils down to scaremongering.

Come back with some real figures and there might be grounds for a proper discussion.

[Top_gun]

Where did you pull those figures from? They're not even mentioned in the article you linked.

The strike price is an agreement for 35 years, and it works both ways; if the market price is less, the difference is made up; if the market price is greater, they have to pay back the difference.

And how exactly do you figure the taxpayer is paying 24-34 billion? The funding is provided by investors, not the government and hence taxpayers.

EDF believes the project will cost £16bn but the EC claimed construction costs alone by the time the plant is built in 2023 will be more than £24bn with a further possible £10bn of contingency payments.

It seems you're bad at maths, Watercooled, and the figures came from the EU.

I can understand concerns around the strike price set given the current market price, but just pulling figures out of thin air and completely mangling the facts boils down to scaremongering.

Come back with some real figures and there might be grounds for a proper discussion.

Hardly scaremongering, concerns and figures came from Nick Butler, a former No 10 energy adviser; Austrian chancellor, Werner Faymann; Guy Newey of independent energy supplier, OVO Energy; Mark Todd, director of independent price comparison site energyhelpline.

Sounds as though you didn't read the article properly.