Scientists skeptical of Lockheed Martin's truck-sized fusion reactor breakthrough boast

Re: To the skeptics...

They also haven't ever asked for outside investment either. I thought that was really weird when I read it, and seems weirder the more I think about it.

Re: To the skeptics...

I would find a public statement from e.g. the Culham laboratory in the UK to be considerably more significant.

Re: To the skeptics...

"To the sceptics, consider where this is coming from. This is the **Lockheed Martin Skunk Works**. They don't DO hype."

No, but they do deception.

Re: To the skeptics...

The main problem is the startling lack of detail they provide - however that diagram has one major flaw. The end of the 'bottle' are, as far as I can see, magnetic mirrors. They suffer from the fact that high energy partiicles escape from them cooling the overall plasma and drasticallyt reducing the temperature. As a technology it was obsolete thirty years ago. The neutral beam injetors, well they are quite inefficient and I'm not sure how far it takes to stop the beam (depends on the density of the plasma - again not stated) but that superficially looks too short.

Thermonucear fusion is hard to do, but the required parameters have been around for a *long* time. A Tokomak at least as big as DEMO. It takes time and money and in the 1990s petrol was too cheap and that killed the last big international attempt (particularly the Americans - they did their best to kill it off).

Re: To the skeptics...

Lockheed-Martin hasn't asked for external finances since the Almighty was young.

That is already a warning.

A second warning is their diagram, where anything that does not fuse ends up slamming into the containment vessel.

A third warning was no mention of mitigation neutron embrittlement.

Finally, they're talking magic. Useful energy from something the size of a jet engine. OK, nice source, the collateral equipment necessary to make the damned thing work *and* cool and make work is a hell of a lot bigger.

Now, add in the fact that deuterium isn't cheap by far and tritium is royally expensive...

Finally, despite what our intrepid author has said, fusion is trivial to achieve. People all over this planet, even on Old Blighty have produced fusion devices. Neutron generators are available for sale, the more hazardous requiring various regulatory hurdles to overcome. The overwhelming majority of those are fusion units. Every hydrogen bomb on the planet and most fission bombs today have a neutron source that is a fusion unit.

But, for those, energy input is much higher than the output.

The former examples are curiosities, the latter, neutron sources.

Sorry folks, I call bullshit.

If asked to invest, I'd invest in cold fusion. Just for the comedic results.*

*I have many other objections, some are based upon things covered under various NDA's, some of which could put me in prison. So, no. I'll not discuss some other objections. Anyone who knows collegiate physics will know where I'm thinking, mostly.

If they're in business to raise money, why are they looking for outside investment for this? If Apple developed a revolutionary new device that would rival the iPhone in sales, would you expect them to ask for investors and share the profit with them, or fund it themselves and keep 100% of the profit?

If they're in business to make money and have not only solved the world's energy crisis, but done it in a transportable form, then why are they publicly asking for a handout?

Maybe, Just Maybe - Lockheed is a bit slow on the uptake like most corporates are and they are now IN BUSINESS to TAKE money, like, pretty much everyone did all the way through the 'naughties?

The confinement system they propose is simply not going to work in steady state* - unless, perhaps, they can somehow manage to compress the plasma magnetically to a density *much higher* than seen before and then hit it with neutral beams in the right moment and spot.

If they miss, the 16-20 MW or so of neutral beams will make a fine dent in the vacuum chamber. Even if they don't miss, neutral beams are terribly inefficent; one wonder why they do not simply shoot charged beams through the magnetic axis of the thing - the ends will be pretty "leaky" anyway to a high-energy beam. (The power supplies, vacuum systems, bending magnets and cooling pipes for the neutral beams will be a building in itself; I would say 30 x 50 x 10 meter).

This confinement system is not a new invention. Many, Many people have attempted this.

We don't have "abominations" like ITER, JET and Wendelstein because some researchers made a bet on who could make the most complicated machine with the biggest budget overrun. We have them because all "the easy" ways did not work with the physics involved.

*) Charged particles are going to spiral around the magnetic field lines, then get "reflected" at the ends if the field is strong enough; but all this bending of the particle paths mean lots of Synchrotron radiation and the plasma density increases "Bremsstrahlung" - so the steady- state losses will be huge and they have to pulse the machine.

Re: Beware

Add to that: Investors wanted. Cash only. There's more to that part then meets they eye. Spin-off? Too much investment for Lockheed to spend? Maybe a spin-off as they feel they make enough money from military and space products?

Re: Beware

Especially if they use 'neutral beams'.

Re: 10 years

Despite the naysayers, fusion power has made considerable progress. It hasn't progressed as fast as we would like, but sometimes new technology works that way.

For example, Lawrence Livermore and MIT have both produced fusion reactions that net more energy output than energy input. They don't do it for long, but they do do it, which shows it is possible.

I for one would like to see more research put into fusion power. If and when it can be made to work, it's a civilization-wide game-changer. A lot of political, social, economic, and resource problems turn out to be power problems, when you have copious amounts of cheap power. (For instance, much of the developing world, and more recently the developed world, struggles with water shortages; cheap and plentiful power make desalination easy.)

It pains me that we as a species spend more money on spectator sports every year than we do on something that can profoundly change human civilization for the better.