Fuel gain exceeding unity in an inertially confined fusion implosion

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13008.html

Fusion energy milestone reported by California scientists

View Photo Gallery — Inside the National Ignition Facility: Here’s a look inside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s $5 billion National Ignition Facility, where scientists recently got a tiny bit closer to their goal of creating a controlled fusion reaction by mimicking the interior of the sun inside the hardware of a laboratory.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fusion-energy-mile...

Gwynne Dyer: Hello fusion power, good-bye fossil fuels?

Fusion power would not replace the “renewables” (wind, solar, and “bio” power), whose cost would probably fall fast enough to stay competitive. But it would rapidly replace the fossil fuels, mainly coal and gas, that are used to generate “base load” power—power that is always available even if the sun is down and the wind drops—especially because the compact reactors would easily plug into the existing gas turbine power infrastructure.

Lockheed Martin’s T4 project reduces the size of the reactor tenfold for the same output, so nuclear fusion could also replace oil directly in a great many uses, like powering large ships. Its abundant, cheap electricity from a compact source could also eventually drive oil out of most other transportation uses, including automobiles and aircraft. Lockheed Martin talks about meeting global base load energy demand with fusion power by 2050.

Lockheed Martin is not alone in the field. EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. is working on a similar concept in New Mexico, and other significant players in the field include Helion Energy in Washington state, Canadian-based General Fusion, and Tri-Alpha Energy in California. After half a century of desultory tinkering with fusion power, this is an idea whose time has come. Assuming that it really happens, what would that do to the world?

For a start, it would kill off the coal industry entirely. Gas would be the next to go, but the demand for oil (and therefore its price) would also go into a long-term decline. The existing nuclear power plants, which depend upon fission for their energy, would be replaced with fusion plants on both cost and safety grounds. The geopolitical impacts would also be very large, as major countries that live on oil exports see their cash flow dry up.

Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, and other countries whose precarious prosperity and stability depend on large oil exports might face revolution or civil war when their income collapsed. So might Mexico, Indonesia, Iran, and perhaps some Arab countries. On the other hand, countries that currently spend a lot of their income on energy imports would suddenly find themselves much richer. (The United States leads the pack in this regard.)

But above all, the threat of runaway global warming would go away.

It’s already too late to avoid some very large impacts, because there is a great deal of carbon dioxide in the air that has not yet produced its full warming effect, and there are a lot more emissions to come even if fossil fuels are successfully phased out in a matter of decades. If fusion power became available soon enough, however, we would never exceed 2 degrees C higher average global temperature and trigger a global catastrophe.

So you can fret all you want about terrorism and the other minor complaints of our times, but this is major-league Good News. And if you’re not happy with those predictions about “hot” fusion power, here’s something else to cheer you up.

Cold fusion power, which depends on low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), was dismissed with much ridicule when it was first mooted in 1989. Now it’s back on the table, and highly reputable organizations like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are taking it seriously.

As Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA’s Langley Resarch Center, said in an interview last year, “Several labs have blown up studying LENR and windows have melted....When the conditions are ‘right’, prodigious amounts of energy can be produced and released.” The Age of Wonders is not past.

http://www.straight.com/news/756716/gwynne-dyer-hello-fusion-power-good-...

So which is it?

Hopefully, fusion is our future, and anyway I appreciate Gynnne Dyer and prefer to be optimistic.

Anyway this week has been too heavy, and it is time for some good news.

Fusion won’t save us from climate change

http://grist.org/climate-energy/fusion-wont-save-us-from-climate-change/...

http://www.generalfusion.com/

So which is it?

Does Lockheed Martin Really Have a Breakthrough Fusion Machine?

Lockheed Martin says it will have a small fusion reactor prototype in five years but offers no data.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531836/does-lockheed-martin-really-...

 This is part of why oil prices are taking a major hit. Oil is taking it from all side, different technologies of hot fusion, LENR, Improving Wind and Solar tech, Fracking, Energy effiency, car mileage effinancy, upcoming Algea Oil, Hydrogen Fuel Cells, even new and improved technologies for Nuclear Fission that is cheaper and afer.

 Terrapower's fission alone if it works, is supposed to produce 50 times as much power from the same amount of fuel as other reactors, as well as safer.

 80% of Frances power comes from Nulcear fission, if those plants were upgraded to this new type of fission, it would produce enough power to power europe all of europe.

 So oil prices are talking it from all sides, some near term, others longer term, but promising enough to make investors nervious. This is not to discount geopolitical elements, but the tech will be a more long term element. 

Have you read the Salon article in the Cold War thread?

NR:  a bit OT but what is your opinion on the feasibility of Thorium to replace Uranium?  A few groups are working on Thorium reactors and they claim it could be better than Uranium. But no commercial reactors in production seemingly

 I believe the Candu reactors will have an update in 2015 that can use Thorium and depleted uranium from light water reactors or Plutonium.

Lockheed Martin Claims Sustainable Fusion Is Within Its Grasp 

http://www.eweek.com/news/lockheed-martin-claims-sustainable-fusion-is-w...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works

Some interesting comments in the comment section

http://grist.org/climate-energy/fusion-wont-save-us-from-climate-change/...