Display MoreSo, let's consider candidate lithium "blankets". One, Lithium aluminum silicate (aka spodumene, or Corning "Visions ware"). Melting point around 1420 C. But of course the composition will also subject oxygen, silicon and aluminum to high neutron flux.
How about Li2C2 aka lithium carbide? Unfortunately melting point 550 C.
Perhaps lithium carbonate? MP 723 C
How about pure lithium metal? MP 357 C.
Wouldn't the lithium vapor interfere with the hydrogen fusion reaction?
Wouldn't the lithium vapor interfere with the hydrogen fusion reaction?
Yes, seems plausible. Another reason why a relatively refractory form of lithium would have to be used. Worth examining the vapor pressures of say L2C2 or lithium carbonate. If the latter has relatively low vapor pressure, then a working / cooling fluid on the back side might be supercritical CO2.
So, we instead strive to replicate something of a miniature H-bomb in these decades long failed and failing big hot fusion physics experiments, ALL at taxpayer's expense without perceivable taxpayer benefits... whether global climate or global security related.
Longview : I thought it was merely a Lithium bomb with minor hydrogen burn...
May be somebody has forgotten to tell this to the fusion folks... (top secrete...)
Li carbonate decomposes and releases CO2 starting at 700C. This will contaminate the plasma with C and oxygen. This is a problem because heavy elements greatly accelerate energy loss, by bremstrahlung (X ray emission). This cools the plasma and makes it harder to achieve sustaining fusion burn.
Carbonate in the first wall will become activated into radioactive C and O and daughter products.
The first wall and neutron activation problems are likely fatal for magnet confined plasma fusion. Claims that these problems can be solved are not persuasive because the constraints are so severe, and requirements for success are well understood. Solving the problem seems to require "unobtanium", i.e. materials with impossible properties and cannot be made from the periodic table.
Longview wrote ", ALL at taxpayer's expense without perceivable taxpayer benefits"
The cost of the magnetic fusion program in the US was about #300 million per year before it was decreased.
http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N9/olynyk.html
If the US was to cut annual military expenditure (>$600 billion) by 5% there would be more than enough for any kind of fusion R&D.
However this cutting would require real military intelligence.
Military intelligence is as rare and expensive as unobtanium.
"In September of 2017 the United States Senate followed President Donald Trump’s plan to expand military spending, which will boost spending to $700 billion dollars,"
The solution to all this problems is simple. Two new materials will be designed. One is a room temp superconductor and second is a material for reactor wall which had thermal conductivity of copper, strength of titanium, melting temp of tungsten and neutron absorption of led, transpearancy of quartz. Easily recycleable and cheap to manufacture.
The solution to all this problems is simple. Two new materials will be designed. One is a room temp superconductor and second is a material for reactor wall which had thermal conductivity of copper, strength of titanium, melting temp of tungsten and neutron absorption of led, transpearancy of quartz. Easily recycleable and cheap to manufacture.
lol! Im sure the smarty-pants scientists will come up with something! No problem is too hard for science!
No solutions for these problems have been found yet, but all it takes is just a little more money!
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What physics can do is unlimited. The only party to blame for the failure of ITER would be the government coughing up just mere billions instead of trillions for the research.
I believe that practical fusion energy production can only be achieved with a metal catalyst. Magnetized plasma fusion is a dead end. It will never be economically, practically viable, no matter how much money is thrown at it.
The likely reaction mechanism for cold fusion in metals is charge screening, like muon-catalyzed fusion. Within weeks or months of the P&F announcement in 1989, some scientists had already identified charge screening as the most likely or only plausible explanation. See the attached paper. Recent (last 5-10 years) experimental work has shown metals can catalyze D-D fusion, and that the reaction rate enhancement is much larger than predicted by theoretical models. So the models are wrong. Some metals are excellent catalysts for D+d fusion reactions (and other fusion reactions) and we dont know why. Palladium is the best metal for cold fusion, and also the best metal for D+D fusion catalysis in deuteron beam experiments. Isnt that interesting and a remarkable "coincidence"? I dont think its a coincidence; I think the reaction mechanism is the same. Palladium is simply a great charge screening catalyst in either situation: electrochemical loading or deuterium beam impact.
Cold fusion is already far ahead of magnetized plasma fusion in terms of COP.
Plasma fusion is greatly advancing science budgets and the wasting the careers and talents of fusion researchers on doomed projects. Its a shame.
Great article Debarium!
Do you or anyone else here think there may be other examples of transition metals and/or noble metals with similar m* (effective electron mass) values under the assumptions that Parmenter and Lamb suggest in that 1989 PNAS article you bring to our attention?
Display MoreI believe that practical fusion energy production can only be achieved with a metal catalyst. Magnetized plasma fusion is a dead end. It will never be economically, practically viable, no matter how much money is thrown at it.
The likely reaction mechanism for cold fusion in metals is charge screening, like muon-catalyzed fusion. Within weeks or months of the P&F announcement in 1989, some scientists had already identified charge screening as the most likely or only plausible explanation. See the attached paper. Recent (last 5-10 years) experimental work has shown metals can catalyze D-D fusion, and that the reaction rate enhancement is much larger than predicted by theoretical models. So the models are wrong. Some metals are excellent catalysts for D+d fusion reactions (and other fusion reactions) and we dont know why. Palladium is the best metal for cold fusion, and also the best metal for D+D fusion catalysis in deuteron beam experiments. Isnt that interesting and a remarkable "coincidence"? I dont think its a coincidence; I think the reaction mechanism is the same. Palladium is simply a great charge screening catalyst in either situation: electrochemical loading or deuterium beam impact.
Cold fusion is already far ahead of magnetized plasma fusion in terms of COP.
Plasma fusion is greatly advancing science budgets and the wasting the careers and talents of fusion researchers on doomed projects. Its a shame.
So: I agree with part of this as (1)
(1) Electron screening of nuclei in cold metal lattices (strongly-coupled plasmas) is highly significant and if something made this larger than expected it would be a good mechanism for cold d+d fusion. That was recognised as you point out in 1989 and remains true (as a hypothetical) today.
However, I disagree with some of your assertions here (2) and (3) which you have not properly justified
(2) Recent (last 5-10 years) experimental work has shown metals can catalyze D-D fusion and that the reaction rate enhancement is much larger than predicted by theoretical models.
Perhaps you could cite papers that you feel show this, and also do a citation search on those papers? The evidence here is very unclear because although some work 5-10 years ago appeared to show it, the same author, doing further experiments, found that more accurate results did not show this, and further that the inflated figures from older results could be explained by theory.
For example: 2008 anomaly (Coraddu,Lissia,Quarati)
Czerski & Huke do this stuff more authoritatively (2008)
Czerski et al 2010 found an experimental issue
Czerski et al 2016 have cracked it:
The reaction cross-section has been measured for deuteron energies below 25 keV in a deuterized Zr target under improved ultra-high-vacuum conditions and controlled target surface contamination. The increase of reaction enhancement factors towards lower energies is much weaker than that determined before and can result not only from the electron screening effect but also from a suggested 0+ threshold resonance in 4He. The cross-section calculations performed within the T-matrix approximation enable to estimate a coherent resonance contribution and explain the observed energy dependence of the enhancement factors. Additionally, indications for the increase of the screening energies due to impurities at the target surface could be found.
Now, I'm not saying this is the last word on the matter, but the story of initial anomalous results, further investigation of causes, and eventually nailing it here is pretty strong evidence.
(3) Cold fusion is already far ahead of magnetized plasma fusion in terms of COP.
The relevance of this is very debatable, because exactly what is the COP achieved from cold fusion experiments is unclear, and because the scaling factors are different. For the audience here let us suppose that CF experiments have shown some d-d fusion: many people here would agree with that. There does not seem to be any clear way in which the energy out of these reactions can increase by a factor of 10 or more. Such scaling may exist, but no-one has yet eitehr a clear theoretical proposal or experimental evidence. Whereas for MTF and other fusion methods the scaling is theoretically clear, and experimentally validated. fusion gain depends strongly on other parameters, and so COP = 10 can be obtained from a system currently showing COP=1.01.
I believe that practical fusion energy production can only be achieved with a metal catalyst.
Your assumption may not be true.
I am interested in any new type of hydrogen based reaction that shows transmutation and power gain. The Safire project is producing hydrogen based nuclear reaction results unlike any other so far studied.
The Safire reaction occurs using only hydrogen. This reaction seems to be activated using a mechanism called a "double layer".
This reaction is not fusion based since proton proton fusion cannot happen on earth. So the Safire reaction must be something else
this post shows the reaction byproducts:
Longview "Do you or anyone else here think there may be other examples of transition metals and/or noble metals with similar m* (effective electron mass) values"
Parmenter in 1989 was focussing about screening potential, rather than effective electron mass..although there may be some correlation between the two parameters.
Cserski and others have measured experimental values for screening for a number of metals .Zr,Ta,Pd
Oxide coatings on the metal monolayers appear to reduce exptal screening values
Longview "Do you or anyone else here think there may be other examples of transition metals and/or noble metals with similar m* (effective electron mass) values"
The meme that fusion is involved in the LENR reaction is wrong. This invalid thinking also pertains to screening.
Just as a reminder: The only people doing real fusion are Lipinskis.
The 7Li + p reaction runs at 100eV input energy. Their COP is
overestimated, because they had the wrong theory and did not measure
the full space angle.
Nevertheless with 100eV measured for maximum COP the Gammov and all other screening theory is a stockpile of rotten Horse manure.
Nevertheless with 100eV measured for maximum COP the Gammov and all other screening theory is a stockpile of rotten Horse manure.
For those with moderate physics backgrounds, with all due respect, kindly provide a bit of explication. I can deduce you are adverse to screening theory. Why? What is the alternative in say the understanding of ionization energies of heavier elements, for example?
For those with moderate physics backgrounds, with all due respect, kindly provide a bit of explication. I can deduce you are adverse to screening theory. Why? What is the alternative in say the understanding of ionization energies of heavier elements, for example?
Longview : Only to say, that there is no theory, that can be used to correctly (even estimate to +- 1010 factors) estimate the fusion probability.
Nice video about real and not so real fusion:
Much of the video describes the work of General Fusion:
http://www.ansys.com/-/media/a…ral-fusion-case-study.pdf
"General Fusion’s Magnetized Target Fusion system
uses a sphere filled with molten lead-lithium
that is pumped to form a vortex. On each pulse,
magnetically confined plasma is injected into the
vortex. Around the sphere, an array of pistons
impact and drive a pressure wave into the center
of the sphere, compressing the plasma to fusion
conditions."
I am pessimistic. How can a pressure wave reach the center if there is a hole there?
Molten metal splatter seems more probable.
For those who want to see a very impressive hot fusion talk:
Apologies if this has widely been seen here.
Highlights:
1) Cooling / heat exchange blanket is a molten salt: FLiBe
2) Magnetic field reaches well over 10 T due to much improved superconducting material "Rebco"
3) Modularity and easily indium-soldered coils allows "yearly" removal of activated vacuum chamber in a single 40 T lift, w/o piecemeal "hot" disassembly
