DailyDirt: Still No Mr. Fusion Generators in 2015...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Oct 28th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Marty McFly visited us in the year 2015 in the Back To The Future franchise... but we still don't have flying cars or Mr. Fusion generators. There are some pretty cool DeLoreans out there that people have modified, but no "flux capacitor"-level upgrades, unfortunately. Fusion is making some slow progress, though. Check out a few of these baby steps towards a fusion generator. Just another 30 years or so....

There are a bunch of different ways that could potentially lead to an energy-generating controlled fusion reaction, and sonofusion (aka bubble fusion) is one approach that might be making a comeback. Still, there's no peer-reviewed evidence that points to sonofusion actually working in a way that could be harnessed in a practical way, but it's not a totally crazy idea, either. [url]
Physicists in Switzerland are working on their own fusion reactor to try to produce 500 megawatts of electricity from 50 megawatts of input power. The TCV tokamak is really just studying how to confine super-hot plasmas, but what is learned might help other fusion researchers design more advanced fusion containment structures. [url]
Fusion reactor designs might hinge on the behavior of "plasmoids" in a new kind of tokamak. Donut-shapped tokamak reactors currently require complex magnetic fields created by solenoids, but if plasmoids can be controlled without solenoids, future fusion reactors could look unexpectedly different from the prototypes of today (and, you know, actually work). [url]

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Filed Under: back to the future, bubble fusion, energy, fusion, mr fusion, plasmoids, sonofusion, tcv tokamak

9 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 28 Oct 2015 @ 6:53pm

sonofusion peer reviewed work?
Aren't there any physicists in academia working on sonofusion? Why not?
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Pixelation, 28 Oct 2015 @ 8:49pm

"but we still don't have flying cars or Mr. Fusion generators"

I guess we'll have to settle for Mr. Fission?
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JoeCool (profile), 28 Oct 2015 @ 8:59pm

Re: sonofusion peer reviewed work?
Not enough money in it. All the grant money is for Tokamaks only. Everything else has to scrape pennies together for funding. I'm surprised there's even one major laser-confined project still going. Billions of dollars for tokamaks, and nothing for anything else... :(
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Oct 2015 @ 9:27pm

I thought the problem had been solved years ago. Turns out, 'Government Fusion Centers' aren't what I thought they were at all. What's next? 'Dirt Boxes' aren't for composting?
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tek'a, 29 Oct 2015 @ 12:20am

Fusion keeps getting stuck "10 to 20 years away" no matter how often we get "promising results" or even "breakthroughs"
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alternatives(), 29 Oct 2015 @ 4:45am

Re: sonofusion peer reviewed work?
The problem for sonofusion is a group of someone's declared it as not possible and therefore it won't get $. Not like cold fusion where the US law says "nope" to fed funds going to it and a USPTO position where it is "not patentable".

Rather than quest for energy from centralized power which is 24x7 on demand why not look to re-jiggering the economy on a solarPV basis where 'you make hay while the sun shines'?
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jim, 29 Oct 2015 @ 5:46am

Sun,wind,and
I keep seeing those ads, power your house by, only problem, here in the Midwest, sun don't always shine, wind don't always blow on those extreme weeks. So, wouldn't be able to run the a/c or the furnace. Just immediate lighting then? No internet? No TV? Damn, may as well be back in the 1800's.
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Pixelation, 29 Oct 2015 @ 8:00am

Re: Sun,wind,and
"...here in the Midwest, sun don't always shine, wind don't always blow..."

I think you're on to something here. We should just unplug the Midwest! Think of the energy savings!
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Glenn, 29 Oct 2015 @ 8:54am

Given how clean, safe, and efficient the current and next gen breeder (fission) reactors are, why should we care about fusion generators that will always be "20 years away"? (And then there's time travel, which is a "never will be".)
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