Lockheed Skunkworks hopes to have a prototype fusion reactor in 5 years

[Olo]

These are the guys normally making next generation weapons for the US military.

They hope to have a 100MW prototype in 5 years and a 100MW production model by 2022. Until now, most estimates have been an optimist 50 years away.

Despite the fact that nuclear fusion has been pursued as a power source since the 1950s, fusion reactors have yet to be effectively turned into a regular power source. Tokamaks, the first kind of fusion reactor attempted, generated power by using magnets to squeeze and heat plasma in a giant ring. To make it work, you need a massive donut-shaped vacuum chamber, and it can take years to go from construction to power generation. There has been something of a modern revival of fusion reactor attempts, but most designs still are tremendous undertakings, requiring the kinds of resources and infrastructure that usually only governments can provide. And such coordination efforts are difficult in the best of times and can be an impossible sell during severe financial constraints.


So in part, it's the feasibility of the new Lockheed project that makes it so compelling. Much smaller than traditional fusion attempts, the compact fusion reactor uses a cylinder, not a ring, which makes for a stronger magnetic containment field and leaves fewer points where the energy could escape. This could make for a reactor that's small enough for a truck to transport and still robust enough to generate power for 100,000 homes. Lockheed hopes to have a test model available by 2017, and scale up to regular production by 2022.

[Shangalar]

Color me impressed and if they can safely pull it off, fuck yeah!

[Templar 331]

Someone's trying to keep their government funding, :P. If they can do it, I'm all for this.

[Reg]

I should start building my Batmobile now then.

[Elegiac]

The Skunkworks have a long history of producing high quality and innovative technology, so they may very well succeed.

[goobernoob]

we have been after this since the 50s, so i'll believe it when i see it.
I still think it deserves funding, probably more then it is getting, i'm just not as optimistic about the time frame.

[Netherspark]

Um.. somewhere in France a prototype fusion chamber is supposedly being activated next month.

It apparently focuses loads of lasers onto a single point to achieve fusion.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Anything to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels

[Olo]

Um.. somewhere in France a prototype fusion chamber is supposedly being activated next month.

It apparently focuses loads of lasers onto a single point to achieve fusion.

creating a fusion reaction isn't new, getting more energy out than you put in and harnessing it is the problem. the project in France is 40-50 years away

[pawsz]

Cool video, but frustratingly short on technical detail. He talks about magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability, but doesn't discuss turbulent energy transport at all. If MHD stability were all that mattered, we would have a tokamak-based fusion reactor decades ago! It's the turbulence that kills you.

It wouldn't be appropriate to have these plasma physics details in a talk to a non-specialist audience, but it would be good if he ended his talk with a link to a paper with all the gory detail.

Comment on youtube, this whole things seems very fishy and I wont believe it unless I read an actual paper or something more than a power point presentation.

What fusion is, is its basically creating your own sun on earth, causing immense heat, and thats the turbulance he is talking about, which is why we dont have fusion reactors yet.

[kunah]

What would be the advantage of having a fusion reactor over a fission reactor? idk

[oblivionx]

The Skunkworks have a long history of producing high quality and innovative technology, so they may very well succeed.

Yah they are way ahead of the curve, and even better at keeping it secret.

[Netherspark]

creating a fusion reaction isn't new, getting more energy out than you put in and harnessing it is the problem. the project in France is 40-50 years away

Oh, I seem to remember reading it being ready to test in March 2013. It will supposedly generate 500mw.

What would be the advantage of having a fusion reactor over a fission reactor? idk

If done right it's nearly endless amounts of clean energy with almost no waste or nasty byproducts.

[Olo]

What would be the advantage of having a fusion reactor over a fission reactor? idk

Can’t be weaponized, no risk of meltdown, minimal waste, more energy, cheaper

[narzinor]

What would be the advantage of having a fusion reactor over a fission reactor? idk

Fission has a lot of waste products associated with it in power plants. They are also (supposedly) less stable than if someone made a functioning fusion reactor. Fission also produces less power out/in ratio than what a theoretical fusion reactor does.

[Chickat]

Nice I hope they pull it off.

[Alski]

Um.. somewhere in France a prototype fusion chamber is supposedly being activated next month.

It apparently focuses loads of lasers onto a single point to achieve fusion.

If its the ITER your talking about, 2013 is when they are staring the construction of the Tokamak complex. According to their projection they are still ~30 years away from actually putting fusion power in to the grid.

[oblivionx]

Can’t be weaponized, no risk of meltdown, minimal waste, more energy, cheaper

Fission requires raidioactive fuel as well. Fusion, in this case, is just hydrogen as fuel and emits helium.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

What would be the advantage of having a fusion reactor over a fission reactor? idk

The only waste products are water and helium.

Helium is getting scarce, we won't have any left in 30 years time (people in research that require liquid helium to cool their equipment (x-ray diffractometry for example) are already limiting the time they use liquid helium instead of nitrogen due to costs).

You also get a huge amount of energy out of the reactor compared to the mass of fuel that goes into it.

Fusion on a commercial scale would reduce our dependency on oil, gas and coal, it would reduce the influence of the oil sheikhs on energy policy (remember how OPEC shut down the world in 1973 causing economic turmoil?) and it would reduce the amount of CO2, SO2 and other greenhouse gases we emit by a large amount.

[Sam the Wiser]

5 years seems way to fast for me to believe.