Clean and economic boron fusion power reactor

1st Official Post

    New conventional fusion preprint - Authors include Miley, Hora, et al -


    AVALANCHE BORON FUSION BY LASER PICOSECOND BLOCK IGNITION WITH
    MAGNETIC TRAPPING FOR CLEAN AND ECONOMIC REACTOR


    ABSTRACT: After the very long consideration of the ideal energy source by fusion
    of the protons of light hydrogen with the boron isotope 11 (boron fusion HB11)
    the very first two independent measurements of very high reaction gains by lasers
    basically opens a fundamental breakthrough. The non-thermal plasma block ignition
    with extremely high power laser pulses above petawatt of picosecond duration in
    combination with up to ten kilotesla magnetic fields for trapping has to be
    combined to use the measured high gains as proof of an avalanche reaction for an
    environmentally clean, low cost and lasting energy source as potential option
    against global warming. The unique HB11 avalanche reaction is are now based on
    elastic collisions of helium nuclei (alpha particles) limited only to a reactor for
    controlled fusion energy during a very short time within a very small volume.


    http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.02579

    This sounds like a real breakthrough. Also the Fusion coupling (kinetic Alpha induced magnetic field) to electricity generation is very promising! Expected COP 30000!


    I wait for the shutdown of ITER and all the other funny hot fusion projects - which never had any real idea how to continously convert Plasma to electricity. 'Continously' is mandatory in hot fusion because all the magnets must be kept alive and the heating of the plasma is very inefficient & thus expensive!
    (Still nothing said about the excess neutron of the H3! which activates the containment...)

    Lou Pagnucco this is a good find. Maybe not as easy as a Cat for the garage replicators but undeniable fusion.
    The use of a second laser to generate the confinement is genius. In a very very long reach maybe Mills will adopt this. I mention this as he as an experimenter has large resources at hand. I am interested on what Axil, Thomas, Alain and others think of this.

    • Official Post

    It is fun for me to read about Boron as a fusion fuel as in the area I live boron is relatively abundant and is also present in phytotoxic quantities in the irrigation water, which is what gave rise to my current small company, as we sell boron removal plants for irrigation water. The idea that the waste of my treatments plants could some day be used for nuclear fusion fuel is nice.


    I have for years been following conventional fusion shenaningans and since 2006, when the reports of the late Dr. Malcolm Haines about reaching temperatures of above 3 billion degrees Kelvin in the so called "Z machine" of Sandia Labs, I knew that Aneutronic Boron fusion would be down the road if that inertial confinement approach would have been pursued. The fact that it was not pursued has much more national security reasons than technical ones, specially given that Z machines cost a fraction of what "Tokamak" toroidal reactors do.

    • Official Post

    Indeed Lithium is still abundant. Bolivia has even bigger deposits, but they have restricted extraction due to it being considered a strategic mineral and owned by the state. Chile has a completely open and neoliberalist economy so the policy is almost "whoever digs faster gets it".

    New patent application from aneutronic fusion company, TRI ALPHA ENERGY --


    CONVERSION OF HIGH-ENERGY PHOTONS INTO ELECTRICITY - USPTO 20160218235, July 28, 2016


    ABSTRACT: Systems and methods for the conversion of energy of high-energy photons into electricity which utilize a series of materials with differing atomic charges to take advantage of the emission of a large multiplicity of electrons by a single high-energy photon via a cascade of Auger electron emissions. In one embodiment, a high-energy photon converter preferably includes a linearly layered nanometric-scaled wafer made up of layers of a first material sandwiched between layers of a second material having an atomic charge number differing from the atomic charge number of the first material. In other embodiments, the nanometric-scaled layers are configured in a tubular or shell-like configuration and/or include layers of a third insulator material.


    http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=2&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=(photons.AB.+AND+20160728.PD.)&OS=abst/photons+AND+pd/7/28/2016&RS=(ABST/photons+AND+PD/20160728)


    Excerpt: "high energy photons absorbable by the first layer of material include X, XUV or gamma rays"


    Perhaps also relevant to other fusion ventures.

    The boron fusion reactor is clean only theoretically, because few percents of reaction will always run with production of neutrons, which will make everything radioactive nearly as fast, as tokamak or NIF reactors. In additon, I've serious doubts about effective energetic utilization of produced alpha particles - after all, it's hot fusion reactor and not just hot, but extraordinarily hot fusion reactor, even hotter than ITER given the high coulombic barrier of boron fusion. The hoter fusion is, the less thermodynamically effective it gets due to waste of energy in acceleration and deceleration of particle involved (in form of synchrotron radiation) - as explained here

    Fusion power is the generation of energy by nuclear fusion.


    Dear dencipriya. I think most people here know that.


    You are welcome here, but please do not use this forum as a place to post advertisements for software training. Alan (moderator)

    • Official Post

    I really would like to know what you folks think about the Z machine results. They are very intriguing to me, a 4X over unity that no one expected and that they had to check and re check tens of times just to be sure they weren't being fooled, and a peak temperature of 3,6 billion °K, I am really baffled why this issue is not much more openly discussed in the Fusion community, because even if a those high temperatures, I think that machine has much more to do with LENR than anyones could imagine.

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