Hi, 2014, October 15, Wednesday

Today Lockheed Martin, the USA Pentagon's largest supplier, announced a break in the research to develop the first practical fusion reactor. The first working lab version would be developed and tested, expected to be functioning in about 1 year. A prototype could be ready in about 5 years.

Lockheed says that the reactor section could be towed by a large truck with main component size measuring about 7 feet by 10 feet. The output could be as high as 100 megawatts.

The immediate implications are that viable fusion power is only around the corner. The fusion reactor could economically provide energy for a city or for other major applications such as large ships.

My personal view is that this advancement will enable permanent colonization of space in the foreseeable future, as well.

If this is real, then it would be one of the most important advances in human history!

http://news.yahoo.com/lockheed-says-makes-breakthrough-fusion-energy-project-123840986--finance.html

Clinton

Sounds too good to be true

Reminded me of this:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623#comic

I think we heard the sentence "A working fusion reactor is just around the corner!" so many times before it is hard to actually believe it.

Don't get me wrong, one day, someone has to get it finally right. But if this will happen in the next 5 years, I am skeptical. Strange things happen all the time, like OLED suddenly becoming cheap thanks to sudden and unforseen advancements in panel production technologies. But the working fusion reactor is a much larger scale than this!

Also, the time from a working prototype to an economical sensible production version could be another 5 years... or another 50 years, depending on who pulls what strings.

See what happened to electro-mobiles. They were the shizzle in the 20's and 30's of the last century, before gasoline engines became economical, powerful and reliable. They were completly outpaced by the gas engines then because of the impractical size and weight of batteries back in the days... but there was very little movement on the issue until there was the eco movement happening, suddenly people realizing that oil is running out in the foreseeable future, and silent small cars suddenly becoming trendy instead of big loud ones.

And then I read somewhere about automobile and oil companies buying a lot of technological advancements in the 40's and 50's in the field of batteries and electro motors and mothballing them for later use... or just protecting their investment in gas engines and oil rigs? Who knows?

One thing is clear, fusion reactors would destroy some peoples investment and wealth. Some of these people have a lot of power in the energy sector. Might play a role in why it is so damn hard to come up with a working prototype... well, gonna take my foil hat off now :)

Yeah, I agree that conflicting interests have often stalled development of technologies.

Reminded me of this:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623#comic

That is exactly how I read the article.

Compare the actual quotes with the paraphrases. The reporter's paraphrasing looks like he pushed hard for a firm number, when can we see this in the market, and rewrote the statement into this lovely lead-in:

Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

And since it is all over the interwebs, there are a small number of sites with the actual quotes, and an enormous number of quick-and-dirty rewrites. Many other headlines on the situation are similarly strong: Zero-emission fusion reactor promises 'cheaper than coal and Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details.

I imagine an exchange like:
Reporters: "Tell us about your big announcement!"
Scientist: Well, fusion reactors have come a long way since the first ones in 1946. We've made an incremental improvement to build a smaller facility, with the reaction chamber small enough to be assembled and delivered on the back of a truck and delivered to the facility. Currently the reaction chambers are just barely too large and need to be built on site, which is expensive.

Reporters (murmuring while writing): "... mobile reactor fits on back of truck... And how much does it cost?"

Scientist: Well, it is quite cheap compared to the current research going on at the National Ignition Facility. Once the facilities are built, the control system built and configured, and the lasers are all installed, we can generate the Deuterium fuel for a little cheaper than we can buy coal. Of course there are still all the costs of the facility itself, the staff, waste disposal, and so on.

Reporters (writing quickly): "...energy cheaper than coal... Got it. When will it be ready?"

Scientist: "We have a prototype and we're looking for commercial and government agencies to help fund it. Once we get funding, we could probably have our first 100MW test system available in about three to five years, and if everything goes perfectly, probably eight to ten to build a commercial scale reactor."

Reporters (still typing frantically): " ... 100MW generator functional by 2017, producing commercial energy by 2022... "

Reading the actual quotes, I'd guess it only means they can build smaller and cheaper research facilities. Doing some quick research, the NIF is currently doing research around the 500TW range, which is about five million times more energy than what these writeups are talking. It is also far less capacity than current experimental facilities are seeing as I read about them online, it looks like tens of gigawatts is the typical range. So at 100 megawatt, they're relatively minuscule power.

And if I'm misreading it and we really do have high capacity fusion energy in eight years, then yay! Good job,, Scientists!

What happens next?