This Machine Might* Save the World

I do agree. The s*** will hit the fan. And we will all have ourselves to blame for not thinking we needed this wonderful technology sooner. We aren't speaking to our government to push technologies like this to save ourselves FROM ourselves. We humans are too busy with our own lives. We don't care how it works, as long as it works.

I also put partial blame on the Big oil companies. Keep in mind this is my own personal opinion. But think about it. Who do you think pays the lobbyists to tap the Bill makers on the shoulder to say no to and to cut the funding to, such technologies as Fusion reactors.
As long as the Big oil companies continue to get rich off of the current and future markets. They can still have a say in an avenues that could possibly hurt their wallets by any means necessary.

But that's just my opinion.
What's not opinion and is, indeed fact is, we do need this technology, and soon.

Now, everyone knows that people can never be presented with a path that leads to portable, free, and independent energy. They would no longer be under anybody's control. Can you imagine, let's say Gaza, with their own source of energy?

Well, this is the wrong place to do it, but arrrghhh, did you ever consider the idea of putting all the pages into one when one clicks 'Print'? Not 4 pages for the 1/7th of an article. That and pop-up ads, this website sucks.

Wow, now THAt is some pretty cool stuff dude. I like it!

www.online-privacy.cz.tc

Hi,

There is also another cold fusion project, from Pierre Corbeil, another French-Canadian guy.

I saw a prototype a few years ago (2004) and it was really simple to build. The "generator" produces more energy than he needs to work (in a ratio of 4 for 1)

They are actually working with "public raised funds" and have chosen, since the beginning, to give the results of their research to the "public domain". No company patent. No secret. Just put on the Net. The initial objective was to create an appliance that could be built by anyone, with easy-to-find materials and simple technology. (This is important for the 2 final comments I will post.) The first prototype really responded to this objective. Now it is more complicated to build with electronic regulator and starter but keeps doing the job.

Just search for "hydro-plasmol" in Google.

These people don't care about marketing and buzzing around their idea. They certainly do not target Nobel prize... They just do applied research as they get money from the public. Consequently their web sites are not very "sexy" and most of the information is in French.
But once again: they started researching long time before cold fusion was "seriously" considered as an alternative to fossil energy.

====== 2 final comments now: =======

1- To "dontbother" : In order to not waste 7 pages with ads and bad page setup... Simply don't print such articles! Just save them or email them! ;-)

2- About "portable energy", in response to "visiblepulse".
2-a) Until now, "Who owns energy owns control over people" ==> energy = power.
Civilizations have used energy to build more, harvest more, transform more and be more powerful to win more wars and get more countries... with more resources.
This was a question of survival and a response to raising populations: need for more space & more food ==> need for control over other populations and their country.
With this paradigm broken down (energy = power over people), there is no more reason to continue having such control... And only if rich countries start by giving such energy to the poorest ones...
Most conflicts are actually because countries want to rule others, because of their reserves of fossil energy...
Being able to give individual portable energy to any people, just for him to have a decent way of life (eat and access to clean water) would remove a lot of problems (jealousy, diseases...) But this could be sufficient to eradicate conflicts for power-trips...

Well... May be I'm a little bit idealistic... This is because I'm a humanist. :-)
And it seems that human being needs to grow a little bit more. Let’s say human being is at the beginning of the “school age” stage of development…

2-b) The last comment but not least… a) is also true for the a government willing to keep control of its population : Having the control of the energy = controlling the population...
Actual energy is produced in one localized point and distributed across the country. This ensures control of the energy, in the way that its distribution is controlled… Not to mean that government can decide to turn off power, but in the way that it is taxable… No tax paid ? . No energy : In that way, people depends on government.
Imagine one moment that each home is completely self-sufficient with cold fusion, wind mill, solar panels, or any mean … No more need to be connected to an electric network and pay for it…

Now imagine that water is not polluted, you can have your own local water well. No need to be connected to a water network, where only gov. & industry provides drinkable water and are remunerated for this…
May be you’ll understand why some industries don’t put too much effort to not pollute water, and some others invest in pumping and selling water…

(North American) capitalism has a huge step to do before accepting this and give back people their true liberty…

Hope this will make you think a step further.

Sorry for poor English …

SB

One thing Ive been wondering, they have built fusion bombs havnt they, These bombs release a hell of a lot more energy then is put in them to make them go off so we know it can work. How hard could it be to create little mini fusion bombs and set them off in a controlled explosion kinda like how a car engine is powered.

Who knows they just might be the Wright brothers of fusion.
The Wright brother did make a working aircraft while Samuel P. Langley's much more expensive and complex Aerodome did not work at full scale.
The 1903 Wright flyer had a crude 12hp engine while the far better funded Aerodrome had a 52hp engine.
We all know which one worked.

Wait until the big government, nanny-state NIMBY's in the Peoples' Republic of Canada find out that a private enterprise is doing something that may be slightly risky, but could have a significant pay-off. They'll stop it in a heartbeat. The socialists would never tolerate a successful free-market enterprise. Especially one that would take away their perennial election issue boogeyman of global warming.

riff_raff I'm from Canada and that's offencive comment The Canadian Government works for it's people and if most people in Canada like it and they should since it doesn't provide a risk... This article is interesting keep up, now let's not make this an article on Canadian government

If maintaining high pressures is the concept here.... couldnt we save energy by using free pressure from the deepest parts of the ocean. The intense pressures would decrease the net amount of energy required to maintain a constant Fusion rate. In real world applications power can be transmitted from offshore facilities. The oil industry does it, the infrastructure is already present.

riff-raff, these guys are building a NUCLEAR FUSION reactor, do yo really think the government doesn't know about it yet? Why would they stop it? Do you really think a government of any country would not want to be the one to usher in a golden age of limitless energy and potential for mankind? Don't you think that might secure a reelection? And on another note, we Canadian socialists do appreciate enterprises that make money, like our banks.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but doesn’t lithium in a neutron flux have an isotope that is very unstable and is responsible for the bigger than expected yields of the hydrogen bomb tests of the 1950’s?

Is everybody forgetting that what was described is little more than a 3D internal combustion chamber for an exotic fuel? That's my reading of of what this company is trying to produce. Instead of a piston providing direct pressure, they are using a shock wave to compress the plasma. The heat produced creates steam somewhere in the system that is used to drive a standard turbine, thus producing the electricity of which, hopefully, more will be produced than was used to generate the reaction.

Think of the engine in your car to which you add a couple of one-way check valves, and a generator turbine mounted in front of the radiator. The major differences are the source of heat and the cycle rate, not to mention the possible pressures used and produced.

riff_raff: Like pendragon_25, I am Canadian, and our zoning laws are much the same as those in most U.S. municipalities. Until the risk of explosion ranks greater than that found on most high-pressure production processes employed by maufacturers in municipal commercial facilities, it is unlikely that any government body is likely to intercede. Furthermore, the type of radiation produced and the given half-life of the byproducts is so short that it is unlikely if any major regulations are being impinged upon. At most it will be only after a successful test of the larger reactor that a move to a more remote facility might be considered or required.

If you spin a liquid mass of lead and lithium, wouldn't the lead get flung to the outside and the lithium go to the center of the blob? I am not sure if this stratification of metals is what you want. Are you going to inductively spin the mass though a steel reactor vessel? Wouldn't it be great if you could inductively pulse shrink hydrogen plasma like you can shrink coins on you-tube? Some of the coins appear to have a symmetrical shrink.

I know a lot of people don't like big oil, being a part of big oil myself I can say this:

I personally would love to see technology like this succeed as soon as possible. I would love to see funding from the Canadian government on this project. Unfortunately being a close follower of the ITER project I understand that Canada doesn't really fund fusion research.

Looks great though, and to have a proof of concept model is great.

To Micheal Laberge: I do not know if your system will work as configured, but just so you know, my wife asked me what the hubbub was with fusion, cold or otherwise. I explained in basics what it has been up till now. As I read the article, I could`nt believe my eyes. What I had just got done telling her what I thought would be the methods employed in the early years of this new tech was written almost word for word about your efforts. This is nowhere near the first time this has happened to me, and I`ve come to enjoy the early developments of an idea that was only concept so recently. Best of luck to us all. P.S. Whatever you are channeled into regarding containment and stripping/collection, STICK with the pressure inducement as well as the plasma. Maybe we will have to bind the core magnetically as I anticipate to produce significant power, but to prove concept vacuum may suffice, although not for long. Too passive to generate a good friction/heat induced sustained chain reaction, in my view. The obvious benefit being isolation of the core material, right? I suppose then that the problem becomes removing, containing and utilizing those purified, freshly bonded H3 molecules while still in their highly agitated state, should this premise prove valid.

Seems to me that we might also be well served by paying close attention to the by product. We would consider clean what? Iridium? At least we have use for it. Palladium? We wish. More likely still something we have to dispose of, like tritium, or maybe full circle back to deuterium, ready to strip electrons at your neighborhood nuclear reactor.

One point of clarification on my earlier stated opinion. When I spoke of using magnetics to bind the plasma core, I was not thinking that the plasma be the magnet. I consider the nature of the matrix, by which the plasma is being contained, and through which any useful material must therefore be extracted. I would suppose forcefields to be the more efficient matrix, as they can easily be shaped to suit particle extraction, or even monitored to force and regulate flow once a stable reaction is sustainable. BUT. Has anyone figured the specific gravity of H3? Can anyone say how, other than by forcefields, we can hope to contain even 1 H3 atom? Then it follows that something more is called for. Can a field be generated inside another?

Quote: "michael taylor
Article Rating:
0
12/24/08 at 1:10 pm

One thing Ive been wondering, they have built fusion bombs havnt they, These bombs release a hell of a lot more energy then is put in them to make them go off so we know it can work. How hard could it be to create little mini fusion bombs and set them off in a controlled explosion kinda like how a car engine is powered."

In the Hydrogen Bombs created and tested by the US and Russia (and assumedly in all H-bombs) the fusion stage is detonated using a fission reaction. That is, a fission bomb is used to compress and heat the hydrogen sufficiently for fusion. Though more energy is liberated by the fusion reaction than is input by the fission reaction (in the tests that were successful), it would obviously not be acceptable to use fission reactions (especially extremely high power chain reactions such as those in an atomic bomb) to produce fusion in a power plant.

While a 12 year half life is vastly improved, there is still a storage concern.

12 years of half life just means the stuff is 50% as toxic in 12 years. After 24 years it is down to 25%. 36 = 12.5% 48 = 6.25% etc.

Since you can't just dump out half-life depleted fuel, you can expect to sit on it for decades. Assuming that 3.125% is acceptable to reintroduce material to the environment, you would need room to store 60 years worth of spent fuel. Of course, this is much better than traditional nuclear power which must, for most purposes, store spent fuel forever, it is likely to be a good deal of stored waste (not in my back yard).

i dont under stand much about nuclear fusion if they ever do succeed in sustaining a fusion reaction what would the risk of it eventually going supernava be????

To occfan001:
None whatsoever. There's not enough mass present to reach critical density of 2 x 109 g/cm3. Or at least, that's the density required in stars.

that maybe the mass required for stars but this is smaller so are you sure there isnt a risk for like a "mininova" or something????

p.s what about the risk of nuclear fallout or something of that sort????

Before I ask another question im just gonna say that im a 10th grade student in high school which is why i dont understand the process completely.

now for the question: what is the point of the liquid lithium lead mixture?

Readers might be interested in an independent review of the US fusion program that might help put the work of General Fusion in context. Click
http://www.physicsessays.com/doc/s2005/REPORT_FROM_THE_REVIEW_PANEL_OF_SCIENTISTS_AND_ENGINEERS.pdf

occfan001:
First, good question overall, and especially for a 10th grader.

The lithium-lead fluid does at least five things for you. First, it's rotating fast enough for the vortex to make a hole down the middle (like in your bathtub). The plasma is shot down both sides of this tube to collide & stop in the middle, so the lithium-lead fluid acts as a wall to guide the plasma. Second, when the pneumatic drivers are fired, the pressure wave collapses that vortex onto the plasma to compress it, so the lithium-lead fluid couples the driver energy to the plasma. Third, when the fusion burn happens, a lot of energy is released that would tear a solid wall to tiny bits, but it amounts to a splash in the fluid. Fourth, the lead takes the high-energy neutrons from the fusion reaction and slows them down to make heat in the fluid (rather than hitting more neutron-sensitive solid wall materials). Finally, the lithium in the fluid captures some of those neutrons and then decays to tritium, which is one of the two plasma fuel components (the expensive one).

It seems that by combining motion with the premise of a spherical design, one might augment the force at which the field is distributed and posibly even control or acelerate the rate of fusion. One should consider the aplication of motion in the creation of this design. For example, would not both magnetic hemispheres (which already produce a substantial field) have the ability to move againts one another? Consider that in the mechanics of it, both hemispheres have the ability to operate seperate from each other. So why not use the premise of an alternator to enhance your field? Certainly, with the right "ground" in place it should not collapes. I envision this ground to be something that surrounds and stablizes the field. Any physisist out there to do the math on this one?

Could you use sound waves to compress the plasma like use some sort of tuned waveguide or something? Just a thought.

Nkreeger:

That's essentially what's going on here. The pneumatic drivers create a sound wave that travels inward to collapse the central vortex onto the plasma. You could look at the whole gadget as a waveguide I suppose, but you don't set up a standing wave as in a normal waveguide so that analysis wouldn't be too enlightening.

Quote:

occfan001
Article Rating:
0
01/06/09 at 11:03 am

that maybe the mass required for stars but this is smaller so are you sure there isnt a risk for like a "mininova" or something????

p.s what about the risk of nuclear fallout or something of that sort????

End of Quote

In a sense, a mini-nova is precisely what is wanted. Unlike a supernova, a nova usually involves the detonation of a layer of mostly hydrogen that has been acquired by a white dwarf from a companion star. Since, as far as I know, the method these guys are experimenting with does not involve a continuous fusion reaction, they intend on detonating a small amount of hydrogen (like a hydrogen bomb) every time they need more energy.

The US and Russia both tested Hydrogen Bombs that fused more hydrogen than this process will (per cycle.) Thus, there is no reasonable chance of a gigantic explosion.

As for nuclear fallout, I don't know the specific radioactive isotopes (radioisotopes) that would be formed in the process, but Tritium and most Lead radioisotopes have a shorter half-life than many of the ones produced in fission (thus they are more dangerous immediately after they are produced, but go away faster.) In order to function, the vessel containing the Lead-Lithium liquid would have to be able to contain the energy released by the detonation of the hydrogen. With reasonable safety measures, the process would be extremely safe (a chain reaction, such as the controlled one in a fission reactor, cannot occur using this process, since hydrogen only fuses at extremely high temperatures and/or pressures (in the process reported in the article above) and both temperature and, more importantly, pressure would decrease exponentially if something were to happen to the vessel containing the reaction.)

This process reminds me a little of bubble fusion. There's a company in Grass Valley California that tries to do it with sound waves and cavitating liquid called Impulse Devices.

There's pobably some paper on self-similar inwardly propagating shockwaves locked in an old filing cabinet in Los Alamos that would really boost the yeild and save the world.

I hope general fusion gets more neutrons from their pistons. I am playing megamillions lotto just so I can venture capitalize them when I win.

This process sounds quite interesting. It would be nice if this energy source could change the world! I have been tracking some new developments in Cold Fusion. I recently discovered a company called Energetics Technologies. They have a process called SuperWaveFusion, which could be a possible breakthrough in Cold Fusion. Using an interaction between palladium and deuterium they have reported an excess heat reaction. I am trying to learn more about this process and would like to hear from others about what they think.
Their website is SuperWaveFusion.com, let me know your thoughts.

im not sure i get the thing about the acoustic waves being used to compress the plasma. is it kinda like how at a concert i went to recently it was hard to breath through my nose because every time i tried the bass was so strong that it was either compressing the air or closing my nostrils? (it may sound weird but im just trying to find something i can relate it to so that i can actually understand it)

occfan001:

You're on the right track, although I don't think the bass at the concert is actually compressing your nostrils as it's too fast for that, so there's probably some anatomical or acoustic effects that are further off-topic.

The acoustics in the device mentioned in the original article aren't really all that important to understanding its principle of operation. Just think of the pistons as squirting in more of the liquid metal. Adding more liquid makes the hole in the middle close up, compressing whatever's inside.

Some differences between this concept and "bubble fusion" are:
1. This device creates the plasma by electric discharge and moves it into place for compression, whereas "bubble fusion" uses the collapse of the bubble as the only energy source.
2. This device relies on the magnetic field to keep the plasma particles and thermal energy confined to the plasma. Bubble fusion doesn't have that.
Both these features make the compression requirement less stringent, in terms of compression ratio and speed.

And since oldgeek64 asked, I'll give my opinion of "SuperWaveFusion", with the disclaimer that I'm much less studied in that area than I am with magnetized plasmas. It seems to me if one has a platform whose behavior can only be described by extensions to quantum theory that aren't broadly accepted, then one could better serve the greater good by using the experiment to refine our understanding of the quantum world rather than pitching it as a reactor concept ready for commercial investment. In that case government grant money might also flow faster than the venture capital.

I hope they are better at physics then making cheap printers that always break.

- Jenna Beth Noveau

single sheet of white paper and affixed with tape to a dusty slab of office drywal http://www.crazypurchase.com

On the scale, mad-scientist appearance Laberge is maybe a 4 out of 10; he's a little out-of-style wire-rimmed rumpled and wears eyeglasses. This technique is used in glasses is very advanced, shortly before a glasses up similar explained that interested can go to see http://www.firmoo.com/

this definitely looks like an amazing machine. I hope they get it off the ground. www.whitenightstands.net

Nuclear fusion concept involving electrostatic acceleration is able to use the energy more efficiently. Electrostatic acceleration consumes much less energy and can reach very high temperatures. www.crossfirefusor.com

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The amount of money already sunk into this is huge, compared to the fusion initiative that is actually going to work. Check out focusfusion.org . It uses a tiny reactor (about the size of your palm with fingers pointing up) in a vacuum chamber with decaborane gas at 1/10 atmospheric pressure. A tiny "plasmoid" of hydrogen and boron is generated in a central tube, and it magnetically collapses, producing 3 He4 atoms. No radioactivity or neutrons, just a high-power alpha and beta beam. The alpha beam is directed through a solenoid which generates electricity directly. Some X-rays are also generated, and they are "caught" in surrounding foil layers, and the photo-electric process generates more electricity.

It is currently in testing with Deuterium fuel, and will graduate to the hydrogen-boron fuel late this year or shortly thereafter. It should attain unity ("net gain") within a year after that, or sooner. Total cost by that point, about $3 million.

The prospective generator design produce 5MW continuously, at a capital and output cost about 1/20 of best current conventional sources. No waste or radioactivity.

General Fusion, ITER and the rest will be economic roadkill.

never should not be used...Good business informatin, online shopping very good! www.aseks.com

@tauntaun_rider

fusion is more or less the holy grail...so there is a ton of money to be made. if there is a viable product, VCs will be jumping all over each other trying to invest.

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With this concept you don't have heavy elements that cool down the plasma.