Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Nuclear fusion's only obstacle: Confinement

Nuclear fusion's only obstacle: Confinement

AsocialSurvival - 9-10-2014 at 08:47

So, after investigating how to make any element from any other element, I realized that nuclear fusion is the solution. All we do with it is combine atoms (protons to make different elements, and neutrons to make different isotopes).

We only have to overcome Coulumb force which repels atoms by using extremely high pressure and heat. Since I am more interested in quick and simple, rather than complicated expensive methods which involve using particle accelerators, radiations like x-ray, or gamma, I am asking this:

How to make extremely high temperature and pressure in an extremely small space, even if for just a second using electrical and chemical, simple methods? At least about 1 000 000 000 °C if we don't increase pressure (meaning if we do it in open space).

Can we cause short circuiting of some two metals so that they melt and vaporise or even explode and damage nearby equipment. Can we use explosions because they raise both temperature and pressure?

For example if we expose iron to such conditions, it will convert to Tellurium: 26 Fe + 26 Fe => 52 Te (if we ignore neutrons, isotopes, and possible radioactive decays from newly formed unstable isotopes of Te)

With this we could make not only precious metals, but any other rare element!
Energy is not problem, but only concentration of such high energy in such small space.
For example we could become rich by using free energy (burning wood and scrap) to make electricity from it, or use it directly (in case we want to make gold and sell it).
In some cases it's not all about effeciency and earning money, but about possibility of making some element.

The problem with for example selling wood, iron, water, coal and other common resources is because hardly anyone will buy it, and it is very huge and heavy for transportation. But gold is easy to sell! So how can we solve these confinement problem?

Additional information:

* Elements up to Iron will produce energy, while those after iron will use it. This is not so important in our case, because we don't intend to harness energy (it would be additionaly complicated).

* We can make any element from any other, for example we can make any by element using hydrogen only.

* For making real (not radioactive) elements we need to make those stable isotopes of elements. For example for Gold: 197 Au. But even this is not neccessary, we can still make short-lasting radioactive isotopes which quickly decay to stable isotope of the ssame element, or even other elements isotopes.

Artemus Gordon - 9-10-2014 at 10:06

You need to read up on the history of Hydrogen fusion research. Fusing Hydrogen to Helium is the easiest fusion reaction there is, yet scientists all over the world have been trying to do it for more than half a century in huge, government-funded labs with only the tiniest specks of success.

[Edited on 9-10-2014 by Artemus Gordon]

Texium - 9-10-2014 at 13:48

"We" can currently only do this in our imaginations, unfortunately, since as Artemus Gordon pointed out, research into fusion has been happening for a very long time almost fruitlessly.
Trying to fuse elements using controlled explosions would be near impossible to accomplish, as that would mean willingly setting of a gigantic nuclear bomb for each fusion. It would be suicidal and would really not make you any money even if you somehow fused yourself a lump of solid platinum.

Oscilllator - 9-10-2014 at 17:54

The key problem here is that the strong nuclear force is, unsurprisingly, really fucking strong. The forces that bind a nucleus together are so much stronger than the forces that bind atoms together that is is impossible (read: IMPOSSIBLE) to use a collection of atoms to directly contain a nuclear reaction. Think of trying to contain a block of C4 with tissue paper, and you have not come close to imagining how difficult this is.
The only way we currently have to contain a nuclear reaction is to
a) use the most benign and easy to contain reaction we can find
b)use insanely strong magnetic fields to keep the reactants whizzing round in circles without actually touching the walls of the chamber
Even then we have not had any success yet

Tdep - 9-10-2014 at 21:21

Ah yes, fusion. One day in the future, but I still feel like it's a little while off.

Except for those shrimp that nearly do it.

hyfalcon - 10-10-2014 at 01:34

Quote: Originally posted by Tdep

Except for those shrimp that nearly do it.

Explain!?

Simbani - 10-10-2014 at 02:10

Dense Plasma Focus, look into this:
http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/fusion-power/dpf-devic...

Shrimp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence
[Edited on 10-10-2014 by Simbani]

[Edited on 10-10-2014 by Simbani]

Tdep - 10-10-2014 at 02:24

Yep, that guy's on it.

The article wiki references:

"According to the laws of black-body radiation, the wavelength trend corresponds to an exponential increase in temperatures as high as 100,000 kelvins. However, this does not take into account the high pressures in the bubble, which could produce much higher peak temperatures on the scale of millions of kelvins."

Theoretical of course, and nanoseconds at best. But most definitely hot enough for fusion. And those Pistol shrimp guys are doing a basic version of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKPrGxB1Kzc

Also: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp

AsocialSurvival - 10-10-2014 at 06:00

Quote: Originally posted by Artemus Gordon

You need to read up on the history of Hydrogen fusion research. Fusing Hydrogen to Helium is the easiest fusion reaction there is, yet scientists all over the world have been trying to do it for more than half a century in huge, government-funded labs with only the tiniest specks of success.

Wrong. The problem of fusing Hydrogen into Helium is not in that it's energetically impossible or hard to do, but because yeild is low it is energetically inefficient.
You are right - it is easiest fusion reaction (by element, but by isotope it is D-T fusion).
And you're right with "with tiniest specks of success".

Where are those tiny specks of success?
They're in isotope abundance of hydrogen (very low concentration of D and T isotopes), and in reaction alone of the most abundant hydrogen isotope - protium.

Here's fusion of Hydrogen (protium) and reason why it gives tiny percentage of He:

1-H + 1-H => 2-He (unstable isotope)
2-He => 2* 1-H (99.99%) + 2-H (<0.01%)
1-H + 2-H => 3-He

That's why "Despite the sun's high density, the low rate coefficient means a proton in the sun will exist for an average of billions of years before it fuses. By comparison, a deuteron in a magnetic fusion power plant would only exist for about 100 seconds, and a deuteron in an imploding, fully-burned inertial confinement pellet only for 1.0E-9 seconds."http://fusedweb.llnl.gov/cpep/chart_pages/3.HowFusionWorks.h...

It's actually very energy effecient, and we could become rich if we can confine energy in such small space. For example, for fusing 1 mol Fe (55.85 g) we only need less than half a kWh of energy. And if we consider losses and worst case, it not more than 1 kWh.
Also Iron is the most energy intensive to fuse, all others need less energy.

That calculation is based on the fact that all elements will fuse at energy < 10 MeV/nucleus.

Even if it would be 10 kWh, I would go for it, and become rich in a second!

[Edited on 10-10-2014 by AsocialSurvival]

Tdep - 10-10-2014 at 06:09

The concerning thing to note is that this doesn't even happen the in the middle of the largest stars. Even protons and electrons get crushed together to form neutrons (which is some goddamn huge force) instead of Fe-56 fusing. You're talking not just the energy at the cores of neutron stars, but only supernova to do what you want to do.

I know sciencemadness has some wild ideas, but channeling supernovae in the hope of getting rich is pretty up there.

AsocialSurvival - 10-10-2014 at 06:38

Quote: Originally posted by Tdep

The concerning thing to note is that this doesn't even happen the in the middle of the largest stars. Even protons and electrons get crushed together to form neutrons (which is some goddamn huge force) instead of Fe-56 fusing. You're talking not just the energy at the cores of neutron stars, but only supernova to do what you want to do.

I know sciencemadness has some wild ideas, but channeling supernovae in the hope of getting rich is pretty up there.

Electrons are stripped off by heat, so they can't exist in a star.

From the point of view of energy, it is possible and very energy effecient.
From the point of view of confinement of that energy it looks complicated.
There are no any tricks there, we just use the certain amount of energy concentrated in small space. That is obviously possible. Why do you think nuclear bomb is so strong? Because tons of energy are concentrated on small space, but it is still the same energy. Next time you imagine nuclear bomb, imagine it like dropping million tons of wood on people and buildings. That's exactly what it is.

That's what am I trying to do. Go to forest, burn whole forest, make gold, bring it to city in my pocket, sell it, and finaly become rich. I wouldn't go without at least half a million dollars worth gold in my pocket.

The only reason why it sounds too good to be true is that people use gold as monetary exchange, they think it is hard to obtain, but that is no longer going to be true in case of my newly discovered nuclear fusion confinement solution.

Also, who said that confinement is impossible to attain. We can concentrate x-rays, lasers, electricity, explosions, thermites - all in one place! Maybe use superheated accelerator if no other possibilities Even heat the sorrounding environment to very high temperatures, just like air is preheated for Iron production from ore.

I bet that I can produce Gold in my home, without any danger. Maybe 1 gram at once is dangerous, but few miligrams or micrograms is not. And if repeated few times, we get a gram. I bet that I can hold artificial supernova in my pocket without getting burned if reaction rate is low enough (in the range few micrograms at once or less). Even one gram equals that amount of Gold found in one kg earth.

Also, gold price would collapse if everybody knew this method, so anybody interested must do it quickly before it gets discovered by government!

And if my calculations are correct, you can get a gold worth a car for a few chewing gums.

[Edited on 10-10-2014 by AsocialSurvival]

Tdep - 10-10-2014 at 06:49

Well, alrighty then. Don't let me stop you.

But if you succeed, by all means get quite rich first but don't be an asshole and keep it all to yourself. Fuck the gold price, I wanna do some gold chemistry on the cheap.

Finally, I know gold is nice and all, but at some point we're gonna need the forests more than we need gold ok.
And turning gold into forests requires more than a pocket full of supernovae.

careysub - 10-10-2014 at 09:58

Quote: Originally posted by AsocialSurvival

The concerningAlso, who said that confinement is impossible to attain. We can concentrate x-rays, lasers, electricity, explosions, thermites - all in one place! Maybe use superheated accelerator if no other possibilities Even heat the sorrounding environment to very high temperatures, just like air is preheated for Iron production from ore.
...

And if my calculations are correct, you can get a gold worth a car for a few chewing gums.

a) What does "superheated accelerator" mean?
b) Analogies are useful for explaining physics and chemistry to the public, but they are not useful in actual physics or chemistry since we must instead deal with specific physical processes and associated laws and everything must be formulated using the precise details of those processes and law. Descriptive words don't cut the mustard.
c) What calculations have you done?

The subject of fusion confinement has been exhaustively explored by many of the best minds in the world for seven decades or so. Have you familiarized yourself with the work that has been done?

[Edited on 10-10-2014 by careysub]

careysub - 10-10-2014 at 10:02

Quote: Originally posted by Tdep

Yep, that guy's on it.

The article wiki references:

"According to the laws of black-body radiation, the wavelength trend corresponds to an exponential increase in temperatures as high as 100,000 kelvins. However, this does not take into account the high pressures in the bubble, which could produce much higher peak temperatures on the scale of millions of kelvins."

Theoretical of course, and nanoseconds at best. But most definitely hot enough for fusion. And those Pistol shrimp guys are doing a basic version of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKPrGxB1Kzc

Also: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp

Energy focusing in implosion can produce extremely high temperature in a very small volume for a very short time very inefficiently (only a small fraction of the original energy gets to the center). High explosive generated implosions have produced detectable fusion in deuterium gas, and especially D-T gas. But no method has been found to turn that into any sort of useful process.

phlogiston - 10-10-2014 at 11:43

An awesome project would be to make a Voitenko compressor at home and show that you can cause fusion with it!

TheAlchemistPirate - 10-10-2014 at 12:35

I don't know much at all about this, but has anyone tried using lasers concentrated over an insanely small area? Wouldn't this (Theoretically shone on a material with no melting point) be able to make an unlimited amount of heat? (As long as the chamber or whatever is insulated well) (And electricity is continuously supplied)

careysub - 10-10-2014 at 13:08

Quote: Originally posted by TheAlchemistPirate

I don't know much at all about this, but has anyone tried using lasers concentrated over an insanely small area? Wouldn't this (Theoretically shone on a material with no melting point) be able to make an unlimited amount of heat? (As long as the chamber or whatever is insulated well) (And electricity is continuously supplied)

A vast amount of work, by groups all over the world.

Billions of dollars have been sunk in it.

Check out the National Ignition Facility:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

It was originally budgeted at $1 billion, eary work began in 1994, and ground-breaking for the main facility was in 1999. Break-even ignition (fusion energy-to-laser energy ratio of 1) expected in 2004.

It has now cost $4.5 billion, and in 2014 has yet to achieve break-even. Its best energy ratio to date is 0.0077.

This is the most advanced laser fusion facility in the world.

Artemus Gordon - 10-10-2014 at 14:16

Quote: Originally posted by AsocialSurvival

I bet that I can produce Gold in my home, without any danger.

LOL!

Good luck to you! Maybe after you do that, you could invent a time machine too!

neptunium - 5-12-2014 at 19:32

lets wait and see what Asocialsurvival has to say about this... i want to know more about pocket supernovae and deforestation for precious metal !

Zyklon-A - 5-12-2014 at 20:06

Quote: Originally posted by AsocialSurvival

Electrons are stripped off by heat, so they can't exist in a star.

Eh, hehe.
Just because they're stripped from their shells doesn't mean they cease to exsit.

[EDIT] for my contribution to your knowledge, I demand 20% of the stock in your buisness, but will take no credit for any damage you do.
Best of luck in this season of joy!

[Edited on 6-12-2014 by Zyklon-A]

aga - 6-12-2014 at 12:49

As a wild spanner, perhaps the reasoning and approach are all wrong ?

Not that i know anything at all ...

Perhaps, rather than trying to crush two hydrogen atoms together, start from Helium and see if there is a way to work backwards, in order to explore 'other' pathways.

Currently we have Iosotope decay, fusion and fission mechanisms that convert element A into element B.

It is likely that there are more than 3 ways to skin a cat.

P.S. if you make Gold from water, your Gold will pretty soon be worthless.

[Edited on 6-12-2014 by aga]

neptunium - 7-12-2014 at 05:41

you mean some nuclear reactions we have not witnessed in nature and have not thought of yet?
you are making my cat very uncomfortable...

much like with the electron (chemistry) the only way to free up some energy is by combining and seperating nucleons . because the nuclear force is so much stronger that the electromagnetic force but act at much shorter distance makes fusion a real challenge.
nature does it by using one force (gravity) which is extremely weak , to confine hydrogen in astronomical quantity.

we tried with another force , electro-magntism, with mixed results.
outside of breaking and recombining nucleons to get the energy out , and using one universal force against another .. I think we will have to rethink the whole idea, get much more strategic, or abandond it completly.

aga - 7-12-2014 at 08:47

Never assume that the Known body of science is 100% true, accurate, and immutable.
It's just the best it has ever been, at this point in time.

At one stage it was stated that What Goes Up Must Come Down, and this was taken as 100% true.
Only really works for a narrow range of Up-ness.

Personally i think it would be very interesting to play with magnetic and electrical fields, along with high masses and sharp temperature changes and electrical discharges, all occurring in varying patterns.

Basically vary all possible dimensions randomly and see what happens.

neptunium - 7-12-2014 at 10:49

Quote: Originally posted by aga

Never assume that the Known body of science is 100% true, accurate, and immutable.
It's just the best it has ever been, at this point in time.

thats absolutely true, thats why i wont dissmiss it but remain skeptical.
I have my own idea about how to make it work as well ...
Always interesting to read about other people`s idea i might learn something !
it just takes so much resources (money!!) its not impossible for the amateur like us but so consuming.. (i mean i/we have to work alot to make that money right? )

[Edited on 7-12-2014 by neptunium]

aga - 7-12-2014 at 11:21

Skepticism is essential, especially as i have no proof whatsoever, nor any evidence to support anything i said, apart from the fact that 'how things work' gets re-discovered quite often, and tends to augment our understanding.

careysub - 7-12-2014 at 14:48

Quote: Originally posted by aga

...
Personally i think it would be very interesting to play with magnetic and electrical fields, along with high masses and sharp temperature changes and electrical discharges, all occurring in varying patterns.

Basically vary all possible dimensions randomly and see what happens.

And here you have the history of research into controlled thermonuclear power in a nutshell (more or less).

There is certainly no know physical reason why some combination of temperature, pressure (read ICF), magnetic, electrical (read MCF) forces implemented in some way could not lead to a viable system for producing fusion power. Thats why so many keep trying to do it.

At this point an enormous panoply of schemes have been proposed, analyzed, tested (in decreasing frequency of occurrence). Some have been very promising for a long time.

The physical conditions for practical commercial fusion energy seem curiously off-limits to close approach from any side.

Making hydrogen bombs was really easily. But approaching commercial fusion from above - scaling the process down so that something other than a fission bomb can drive it - has proven impossible so far, with the NIF, the last biggest effort hitting a dead end after 20 years and 4.5 billion dollars was spent and still ridiculously far from the performance needed for practical use. They even had successful test of ICF targets using a nuclear bomb as the energy driver to show that the scheme could work, if you had enough driver energy (these were the Centurion/Halite test series, the driver energy is classified). The empirical (and numerically simulated) scaling laws they depended on apparently did not work.

Magnetic and electrostatic confinement is trying to approach from below, but again everything seems to run into scaling problems far short of the goal. Tokamak looks like it would actually work - but even an optimistic assessment of the technology once scaled to commercial size makes it uncompetitive with every other way of making electricity in use today. And that's our BEST candidate.

Polywell fusion is a completely different magnetic confinement scheme, and has put out some good performance as a laboratory fusion plasma source. But so far we are a long way from being able to envision a commercial power source out of this approach. It is looking more like a niche tool than anything. It is not unique in this way.

There are a lot of stories like this (usually less successful). If only the physical parameters were 10 or 100 times more favorable that they actually are... Heck it muons did not stick to fusion fragments quite so much we might have muon-catalyzed fusion today!

Chemosynthesis - 7-12-2014 at 15:45

A few years ago (prior to 2013, but my memory fails me as to when exactly), I had the wonderful opportunity to have a small meal with the then head of NIF and a couple LLNL researchers after a presentation. I remember that after a technologically impressive speech on the theoretical capabilities of NIF, her being visibly annoyed was unmistakable when I had asked her what the largest fusion product they had synthesized was. I suppose it didn't help that most of my subsequent conversation was on tokamak designs and asking about how feasible using the cancelled Superconducting Super Collider to initiate fusion, possibly with a scaled up version of LHC's "ALICE" experiment, would have been (extreme overkill and not very efficient, I learned, as according to my old proton-proton chain nucleosynthesis notes even at at T>5×10^6K and ~100 g/cm3, only 1 in 10^22 collisions of 1H + 1H results in a reaction). Anything larger would need more force to overcome the greater Coulomb repulsion.

As for electrons not existing in stars, aga is very correct to point out that ionized, free electrons do exist very much, and this contributes to Birkeland currents and Marklund convection with sunspots, solar flares and the like. As far as determining quality factors for energy output, at NIF you have to see if the Q is calculated to take into the facility engineering (laser efficiency) or is just output from the accelerated particle's kinetic energy. It makes a huge difference.

careysub - 7-12-2014 at 17:17

Quote: Originally posted by Chemosynthesis

As far as determining quality factors for energy output, at NIF you have to see if the Q is calculated to take into the facility engineering (laser efficiency) or is just output from the accelerated particle's kinetic energy. It makes a huge difference.

Yep. The laser beam-to-fusion ratio achieved is about 2 orders of magnitude short of laboratory break-even. The wall-to-laser pulse efficiency is something like 1%, and to produce commercial power you need about 10 times laboratory break-even in the energy output.

All together they are five orders of magnitude short (and this is even spotting them a bit on the rounding).

They are three orders short even with a magic 100% efficient driver.

And that ignores the gruesome number for how fast a commercial system would have to cycle to produce cost-effective power, or how cheap those little targets would have to get.

An ICF explosion might produce about 10 MJ of line current in a commercial system. This is no more than 10 cents worth of wholesale electricity. Currently those little targets cost several thousand dollars, are still aren't effective enough to break-even. Perhaps even more complex and costly designs will be needed. For a gigawatt powerplant (probably would need to be larger than this) it would need to cycle 100 times a second.

As far as I know the ICF community currently has no real Plan B.

Looking at LLNL, I see they are still keeping the pretense of ICF Power! It's almost here! In any day now we are going to be producing 10-100 times breakeven (instead of 1/130 breakeven) and we can build a demonstration powerplant (LIFE, little more than vu-graph engineering at this point) in the 2020s!

The hype is so far from reality that you just shake your head in wonder.

(Oh, and then there is the problem with NIF's availability for real science, not weapon research. LLNL requires outside researchers to pay the operating cost for any experiment, which runs more than $1 million per shot. Currently U.S. investment in science as % of GDP is at a 60 year low. Only weapons program have that kind of dough.)

[And that provides yet another yardstick to show how far the NIF technology is from commercial feasibility. The cost needs to drop 8 orders of magnitude to a penny a shot or so, and the repetition rate need to increase 7 orders of magnitude, from once a day, while also improving performance by 4 orders of magnitude.)

[Edited on 8-12-2014 by careysub]

[Edited on 8-12-2014 by careysub]

neptunium - 7-12-2014 at 17:30

yeah it does popo up every so often in the news... i was excited the first time too. now its just media sensationnalism..

Chemosynthesis - 7-12-2014 at 18:10

Quote: Originally posted by careysub

(Oh, and then there is the problem with NIF's availability for real science, not weapon research. LLNL requires outside researchers to pay the operating cost for any experiment, which runs more than $1 million per shot. Currently U.S. investment in science as % of GDP is at a 60 year low. Only weapons program have that kind of dough.)

So true! It's kind of odd when you put it in perspective with how relatively inexpensive and easy the old gun type nukes are to make now, assuming you have highly enriched uranium-235 or plutonium (latter if you could mitigate premature criticality). Even "fizzle yield" is useful in a weapon.

I can't remember any specifics in this story, so I hope I don't butcher it too much, but as a .gov proliferation thought experiment, a group of scientists/engineers were stuck in one of the modules of LLNL, I believe, and told essentially not to come out until they made a gun type weapon design from open source materials which should be feasible for a dedicated rogue nation state to produce. Their simulations were run for them to see if their design would work. They finished so far ahead of the expectations and deadline that they had to try to make an implosion device because it was "too easy" to go with a gun type.

I know we've obviously come a long way since then (probably much more than I am remotely aware), but it is stark to contrast how different open progress has been between fission and fusion (pure fusion in the case of weapons), and yet we still have announcements such as this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/10/17/a-working-...

At least that million or so bucks spent at LL gets you a nice view of the wildlife, and should be a treat for some avian enthusiasts.

careysub - 7-12-2014 at 19:33

Quote: Originally posted by Chemosynthesis

Quote: Originally posted by careysub

You are referring to the "Nth Country Experiment":
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20030701/nth-country.pdf

Chemosynthesis - 7-12-2014 at 19:42

Quote: Originally posted by careysub

You are referring to the "Nth Country Experiment":
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20030701/nth-country.pdf

Thank you very much! I was almost certain you'd know exactly what I was talking about, not surprisingly better than I.

MrHomeScientist - 18-12-2014 at 13:37

This is why I love this site. Even a trolling post can spawn a wonderful thread full of great information. So many skilled and knowledgeable people here!

I thought it would be fun to calculate exactly how much gold ASocialSurvival's "half a million dollars worth gold in my pocket" would be. It turns out this equates to a cube about 3.5 inches to a side, which would weigh about 29 pounds! Reasonably pocket-sized, actually, though a cube would make quite a noticeable bulge. And you'd need a good belt to hold up the weight. The extreme density of gold always surprises me.

whiteshadow - 23-4-2015 at 02:09

you guys need to check this link out very badly http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.htm... the concept is very good that' why lockheed people are very serious

neptunium - 23-4-2015 at 05:06

seems like a commercial video professionally made but NO details on the construction, design, how they want to achieve their goals? there is no science on that page ! or did I missed the link that explains how they do it ?

careysub - 23-4-2015 at 05:17

Quote: Originally posted by neptunium

seems like a commercial video professionally made but NO details on the construction, design, how they want to achieve their goals? there is no science on that page ! or did I missed the link that explains how they do it ?

Quite so. Lockheed Martin has not given anyone any reason to believe they have something real here.

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

There is a long history of similar fusion vapor-tech project announcements, and here we are decades later still with nothing but tokamaks as plausible systems 50 years after their invention.

As the Technology Review article points out, L-M isn't even the only current purveyor of press-release fusion systems, it just has a bigger name and better PR.

neptunium - 23-4-2015 at 16:48

my thought exactly