Inside Piston-Powered Nuclear Fusion Company General Fusion 117
quax writes "Slashdot first reported on the Canadian start-up company that is attempting piston powered nuclear fusion back in 2009. This new blog post takes a look at where they are now, and gives some additional behind the scene info. For instance, a massive experimental rig for magnetized target fusion in the US is currently underutilized, because ITER's increasing costs absorb all the public fusion research funding. Because this Shiva Star device is located in an Air Force base, security restrictions prevent any meaningful cooperation with a non-U.S. companies. Even if U.S. researchers would love to rent this out to advance the science of magnetized target fusion, restrictions make this is a no go."
What? (Score:4, Insightful)
That summary made no sense.
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That summary made no sense.
You were expecting somebody with the job title of "editor" to actually act like an editor. On this site?? Oh. Yes I suppose you are disappointed. If I performed my job as incompetently as Slashdot's "editors", I would be fired. So would you and so would anyone who reads this (except the pissypants editor who uses his infinite mod points to mod it down).
Slashdot "editors" are editors the same way the garbage truck driver is a "sanitation engineer". In this job market, Dice Holdings Inc. could hire b
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
Sanitation engineering is a real thing (different from driving a truck). Real sanitation engineers are civil engineers who design landfills, wastewater treatment plants and recycling facilities.
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Sanitation engineering is a real thing (different from driving a truck).
Real sanitation engineers are civil engineers who design landfills, wastewater treatment plants and recycling facilities.
Don't forget about the guy who designs the garbage truck!
It's a rather unique beast, since no other industry needs a design that's even remotely related.
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Ok, lets try it in English then.
There are some Canuks trying a specific type of nuclear fusion. Two other groups seem to be doing similar research, but one has been effectively denied funding because of a different project getting headlines, and the other is a military research so it has no headlines until the USAF decides to get some mass-produced.
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a new summary for you:
Tiny fusion project that's functionally pretty cheap wants more money, and publishes some promising, but uncertain results.
I could use that same summary for several different projects today.
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You can never take these things seriously when the never present their results at meetings like
APS DPP [aps.org]
Sherwood [sherwoodtheory.org]
MHD workshop [gat.com]
IAEA [iaea.org]
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I know what that published unprecedented energy density results in the journal of plasma physics. I'm not aware of any meetings they attended, though.
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They hold a couple of patents [google.ca] and published three papers [generalfusion.com] (the rest in the list is references on their approach to fusion).
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TFA is complaining that the ITER, an expensive experimental fusion reactor, is getting most of the fusion research money. This compares with the Canadian startup, and the Shiva Star, which don't receieve enough money to proceed as fast as they could.
Personally I don't think TFA's tone is useful. Sure, ITER is funded, but it should be funded; torus reactors (ITER is a torus reactor) are a well established line of research and it is important to follow that line of research until the end.
What should happen of
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Could you explain the profit part to me? That'll be most interesting.
Re:General Fusion? (Score:5, Funny)
I ran out of oil once in my car and my gasoline engine did piston fusion into a single block of metal
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If Robert Zemeckis is to be believed, in less than 2 years.
Re:General Fusion? (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion this same phenomenon explains perfectly why the JJAbrams Star Trek is perfectly justified in having more advanced ships and transporters than the Roddenberry continuity. 8 minutes of sensor scans of a ship 129 more years advanced than anything ever witnessed would change the course of technology forever.
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Refrigeration wouldn't be disruptive, there were commercial ice-making machines in 1855 [wikipedia.org]. Now, all the DeLorean/time machine parts lying around are another story.
Effect of DeLorean parts in 1885 (Score:2)
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It has been a while since I have seen the movies, but was he building a vapor condenser?
I ask because while they were around almost nobody used them. Far more economically to harvest ice in the winter and store it for the summer. I mean today we have jet packs and space rockets but they are not “consumer grade”, like today’s refrigerators or the future Mr. Fusions.
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8 minutes of sensor scans of a ship 129 more years advanced than anything ever witnessed would change the course of technology forever.
If and only if the scans expose the core technologies in ways that you can understand ---
If and only if you can reproduce the core technologies or their precursors on less than 120 years.
Doc Brown's refrigerator and telescopic sights were mid-nineteenth century tech. The really interesting possibilities open up only when you can build an air conditioner and have refrigerants safe enough for domestic use.
Awesome (Score:1, Interesting)
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Re:Awesome (Score:4, Informative)
Better than Polywell fusion? They're still under a publishing embargo, but if the Navy progress report is to be believed they have managed to demonstrate p-B fusion last year which is practically the holy grail of fusion for electrical-generating purposes - no neutron flux from the primary reaction, no clunky inefficient heat engine necessary to generate electricity, and the main researchers seem to have mostly all jumped ship to found an energy-related company.
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Again, this is my opinion so it will be modded down.
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That's probably the best approach, but there are a few others. MHD might work.
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The retrofit option is nice, and would also be an option for self-contained fission reactors such as...emc2's(??? formerly Hyperion) design.
But make no mistake, it's still a bad thing. A heat engine that's 50% efficient is something to be justifiably proud of, but that still means you're throwing away half of the energy you've generated, likely with rather unpleasant ecological fallout. (yes, thermal pollution is a thing, and its effects can be pretty ugly). If you have the infrastructure to capture and u
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"Here's not really all that much demand for megawatts or gigawatts worth of relatively low-temperature heat energy, short of building a nuclear reactor in your basement and using the waste heat to for home heating."
Once you get away from high pressure systems (LWR, etc) then there's nothing stopping you putting the plant near civilisation and creating district heating schemes - which can then be leveraged to produce cooling systems as well, using a 21st century version of the 19th century Ammonia bubble pu
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For now yes - not much point in developing efficient particle-decelerators until you have a reliable charged-particle based energy source. But the point is that a decelerator can theoretically approach 100% efficiency, whereas we've already taken heat engines about as far as is theoretically possible. Also - waste heat is only a mandatory concept if you are dealing with thermal energy - that is to say chaotically moving particles with a given average kinetic energy. If instead you are dealing with ordered
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Not necessarily - using a turbine or other heat engine is only necessary it the energy has been thermalized - which yes, to the limits of current scientific understanding is necessary for any fusion reaction that releases the bulk of it's energy as fast neutrons, and may be the most practical route for reactions that release most of their energy as gamma radiation as well, at least until we develop high-efficiency gamma-radiation "solar cells" (gamma-voltaics?).
But p-B fusion is something special, it doesn'
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This is not much to go on but slide 13 has a bit on the vortex development:
http://fire.pppl.gov/FPA12_Richardson_GF.pdf [pppl.gov]
This thesis though should hit the sweet spot:
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~jgregson/images/JamesGregsonMAScThesis.pdf [cs.ubc.ca]
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Ooh, I like it. Eminently simple in principle, even if the piston synchronization looks to be a nightmare. Still, with enough high-speed adaptive control circuity I could see it potentially being kept within acceptable tolerances.
Thank you, you've opened my eyes to a new and promising fusion technology to keep an optimistic eye on.
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That's basically what I said - C12 is only an intermediate stage on a subatomic timescale, you're not going to find any in the final products. And you get 0 neutrons from the primary reaction path - p+B = 12 nucleons = 3 * He4, though it is definitely worth drawing attention to the fact that their are also side reactions going on that prevent neutron flux from falling below a certain level, at least in a plasma. (We also seem to be accumulating a growing body of evidence for the existence of solid-lattice
A problem with Canada? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because this Shiva Star device is located in an Air Force base, security restrictions prevent any meaningful cooperation with a non-U.S. companies.
We have a problem with Canadians because of security restrictions? WTF - NORAD is a joint US-Canadian operation. The 2nd in command is always Canadian. If that's not giving Canadians access to important military operations (specifically USAF no less) then I don't know what is.
Re:A problem with Canada? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you don't know what "access" is, in a government-secret sense.
We've built up a program as a joint effort. That's fine for that program. That does not mean there's a blanket trust for Canadians to access all programs at all locations. Military secrecy is handled on a need-to-know basis, and outside of NORAD, the Canadians do not need to know.
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Nobody is talking about giving them access to nuclear weapon or stealth research. Shiva Star hasn't been used for military research in almost 20 years. It's been re-purposed for civilian research, and happens to be located on an AFB for historical reasons. If this is anything like other civilian research in the US, it involves many foreign nationals whose allegiances are far more questionable than Canadians.
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It doesn't matter much what Shiva Star is used for. It's still on an Air Force base. What else is on that base that the foreigner can get to more easily because of his access to Shiva Star?
Re:A problem with Canada? (Score:5, Funny)
What else is on that base that the foreigner can get to more easily because of his access to Shiva Star?
Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's, Mini Wal Marts and other hallmarks of American 'culture'. You want to be careful letting these things out in the world - they can cause amazing damage in the wrong hands.
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It's still on an Air Force base.
There are plenty of US military bases that just about any civilian can enter. I've done it myself on a number of occasions. Access is compartmentalized. Getting to the PX is a lot easier than getting to the nuclear weapons storage.
Ever visit the USAF museum? Anyone can go there, and it's sitting right on Wright-Patterson AFB, where lots of highly classified work is done.
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If it's not in a separate security zone than weapons (nuclear or otherwise) or other purely military activities (e.g. intel) then they're got a serious security problem. There are loads of civilians on any military R&D project that are not authorized to come near purely military operations.
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...American civilians? Or foreigners? Even without a security clearance, American civilians are allowed to work on export-controlled materials that foreigners aren't allowed to see. Some of that work is indeed done on military bases, regardless of whether or not there's an immediate military application.
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American civilians are allowed to work on export-controlled materials that foreigners aren't allowed to see.
Who said this was export controlled? As I mentioned, this hasn't been used for military research in almost 20 years. Also, if we're so concerned about sensitive things that should be export controlled, then why the hell are we letting GE teach China how to build better jet engines? At least Canada is an ally.
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Dude, it's the Pentagon. The Pentagon considers the US a foreign country. ;p
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But Canada and everyone else will be buying their fusion power plants from General Electric and/or Westinghouse.
As designed and built in their Chinese facilities.
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Thank you Gen. Turgidson. That only applies to Russkies though - Canucks already get to see the big board at NORAD. They still haven't let us see their top secret battle moose battalions though.
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Of course we have a problem with Canada. China's been using them as a backdoor into US military secrets for years. [arstechnica.com]
I don't know why they bother with the back door when they just walk right in the front: G.E. to Share Jet Technology With China in New Joint Venture [nytimes.com]. Nor does it matter that it's supposedly for civilian applications - if ever there was a dual use technology it's jet engines. There's a reason why the three major Western jet engine companies (GE, Pratt-Whitney and Rolls-Royce) make both civilian and military engines. Also, all three of those companies have been in the business since the end of WWII, which sho
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This post about "access" is complete bullshit. I've worked at the Air Force Research Lab since 1968 (slacked off a bit lately), and worked alongside visiting Canadian Forces officers. You people have watched too many movies about how the military works. That said, I got no idea what the real story is. And neither does the OP.
MIT teaching COld Fusion seminar in January (Score:4, Interesting)
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Just because you went to MIT or teach there doesn't mean your smart. The most successful fusion researchers came from Madison WI.
There will never ever be cold fusion. Over coming the Coulomb barrier is an inherently thermal process.
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The most successful fusion researchers came from Madison WI.
Are you talking about D.T. Anderson, or someone else? I had him for undergrad electromagnetics, and he is an excellent professor. I still remember the two dumbed-down lectures he gave on his quasi helically-symmetric stellerator.
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There will never ever be cold fusion. Over coming the Coulomb barrier is an inherently thermal process.
Oh really? This does not seem to be a problem for muon catalyzed fusion.
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That is still thermal. It just lowers the barrier but the barrier still exists.
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Re:MIT teaching COld Fusion seminar in January (Score:5, Insightful)
There will never ever be cold fusion.
Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.
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The laws of physics are a lot more friendly to flying machines than contained and controlled fusion.
Fusion researches have told us that they were 10 years away from a huge breakthrough for 40 years. Is it possible that my home will be powered by a fusion reactor in my lifetime? Sure. But I would not bet a dollar on it.
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I took Physics 101, which is all that is required to know that. Did they teach physics back when you were in school or just alchemy?
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The laws of physics are a lot more friendly to flying machines than contained and controlled fusion.
That's easy to say on this side of it. The path to controlled fusion was a lot more clear in 1980 than the path to controlled flight in 1880. See this graph [imgur.com] and this story [slashdot.org] for an understanding of why fusion is taking so long.
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It's a historical anecdote - Lord Kelvin, a renowned physicist is behind the quote about flight. A nice example of Clarke's first law [wikipedia.org].
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This is simply not the case with "cold fusion".
That should, of course, say "is not the case with the criticism of "cold fusion".
Sounds Very Steampunkish (Score:5, Insightful)
you *do* realize... (Score:1)
"piston powered nuclear fusion" sounds an awful lot like a technical description of an internal combustion engine.
Wait for it (Score:2)
Soon to be acquired by... Apple, Google or Facebook?
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Try Amazon, after all Jeff Bezos already invested. [reuters.com]
Brilliant Summary (Score:3)
In all seriousness, it's nice to see new approaches to the problem of creating a fusion reaction that produces more usable energy than it consumes. Between the National Ignition Facility (which unfortunately was largely but not entirely dedicated to military research at the first sign of success), going massive with ITER, and this piston powered approach, I believe we will one day get there. We may try and fail and try and fail, but ultimately there is no stopping humanity.
Canada should be jumping all over this (Score:2)
"Canadian technology!" is going down the tubes now that Blackberry has failed. But this can put Canada back in the lead as the global technology powerhouse.
Don't look to the Americans. All they care about is making a quick buck. Their best and brightest minds are busy at work trying to figure out how to get more people to click on website ads, or how to make portable electronic gadgets a "magical experience".
Road to nuclear fusion piston-power P-51 Mustangs! (Score:2)
Even a small chance of this leading to nuclear fusion piston-powered P-51 NukeMustangs must be supported!
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As someone who has worked for a UK defense company - ITAR is more of a problem for the US than it's allies. The US has a nightmare contracting out work to european companies that have a technology/experience they need. You should see the time and money they waste, it is extraordinary.
Re:Sucks to be a foreigner (Score:5, Interesting)
ITER is an initiative 45% funded by the EU and 9% funded by the US, that Americans repeatedly complain about sucking away all of America's money, even though it was America's idea to build it in the first place, America gets an equal share of the knowledge gained and America only has to pay one 11th of the cost, despite having the largest economy out of the participants.
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Interesting, thanks, mod this up!
Re:Sucks to be a foreigner (Score:5, Informative)
Actually the EU has a higher GDP than the US, the usual marker for the strength of an economy. Mostly that's due to the greater population (505 million EU citizens compared to 310 million or so Americans) as per-capita GNP in the EU is a bit less since we don't have quite as much raw materials production (oil, gas, coal) which inflates the figures.
The US tried withholding its funding contributions for ITER during the run-up to the off-the-books trillion-dollar war in Iraq after most of the other participants in the project decided it should be built in Cadarache in France, home of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys, instead of Japan. It didn't work, America decided to rejoin the project and they're pouring concrete this month in southern France for the reactor vessel's base.
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per-capita GNP in the EU is a bit less since we don't have quite as much raw materials production (oil, gas, coal)
Do you have figures that show that that's the main difference in GDP/capita? (GNP is not usually used these days).
As for "raw materials production ... which inflates the figures", by that standard the GDP's of Norway, Canada and Australia are even more inflated.
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Yep, that's why Qatar's per-capita GNP is twice that of the US. Moving money around also inflates the GNP figures hence the appearance of Monaco, Leichtenstein and the Bermudas at the top of the world tables. Japan has virtually no raw materials it can export and it's not a financial black hole for rich people to hide funds from their national governments but it still holds up well in terms of GNP per-capita due mainly to its industrial base.
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Yep, that's why Qatar's per-capita GNP is twice that of the US.
And your point is? Qatar does have a GDP/capita about 2x the US. Do you think that's fake money? Parties outside of Qatar seem to happily accept it.
While we're at it, you still haven't cited figures showing that most of the difference between the US and the EU GDP/capita is due to differences in raw materials production.
Moving money around also inflates the GNP figures hence the appearance of Monaco, Leichtenstein and the Bermudas at the top of the world tables.
Yes it does. I think a good chunk of that (including Wall Street and the City of London) is rent seeking and activities that should be banned, but it still doesn't change the fact that it's
US vs EU GDP (Score:5, Informative)
Actually the EU has a higher GDP than the US
Depends on how you measure it. The EU has a higher nominal GDP but a slightly lower GDP under PPP [wikipedia.org]. Both are right around $16-17 Trillion in 2013.
per-capita GNP in the EU is a bit less since we don't have quite as much raw materials production (oil, gas, coal) which inflates the figures.
As for GDP per capita, it isn't even close. The US population is around 315 milliion versus 510 million in the EU. Since the GDP is roughly the same, the US GDP per capita is about 40% higher at around $52,000 versus $34,000 for the EU. The differences in GDP are not explained by energy production [wikipedia.org]. The EU is the 7th largest energy producer and 2nd largest consumer) while the US is the 3rd largest energy producer and largest consumer (with China catching up fast). Both economies have services sectors that comprise around 68-69% of the economy. Both have similar sized manufacturing sectors and agriculture sectors. Frankly the US and EU economies are remarkably similar in many ways.
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So because America has more money, they should pay more?
Hint: that philsophical, political and economic system doesn't work.
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A hoax Jeff Bezos invested in [reuters.com]. I'll take it you didn't bother to read any of the links.