Atmospheric Fusion Reactions

My friend chrismb at Talk Polywell alerted me to this Russian paper on atmospheric fusion reactions caused by Deuterium - Deuterium (heavy hydrogen) reactions in lightning.

To produce thermonuclear reaction it is necessary, firstly, to have nuclei with a large quantity of neutrons available, for example, deuterium nuclei, and secondly, these nuclei should possess sufficiently high velocity and merge together upon collision, having overcome the Coulomb barrier. It turns out that all these conditions are observed in the course of a stroke of lightning - such a conslusion is evident from calculations by B.M. Kuzhevsky, Ph.D. (Physics&Mathematics), head of the neutron research laboratory, Skobeltsin Scientific Research Institute of Nuclear Physics (Moscow State University).

Deuterium is always present in water: on average, a molecule of DHO (water, where one of hydrogen atoms is replaced by deuterium) falls to 6,800 molecules of H2O. That means - taking into account the quantity of water vapour available in the atmosphere (i.e. 5õ10^-4 g/cubic centimeter) - there will be 10^15 deuterium atoms per cubic centimeter. In lightning, these atoms turn into ions and are capable of gathering speed up to considerable energy. With the lightning canal diameter varying from 2 millimeters to 5 centimeters, and discharge duration making the ten-thousandth of a second, it proves that billions of deuterium atoms will have time to start reacting with each other and to generate precisely two times less atoms of helium-3 and neutrons. These neutrons already possess enormous energy - 2.45 MeV. However, in the atmosphere of our planet they are capable of living at most for 0.2 seconds, during which they will inevitably meet with nitrogen atoms and be absorbed by them. This time period is sufficient for neutrons to fly a distance of one or two kilometers.

The calculation has been also confirmed by experimental data. The DYAIZA facility developed at the Institute and installed in Moscow at the Vorobyevy Hills repeatedly recorded neutron emission peaks during thunderstorms, their magnitude exceeding that of the background by hundreds of times.

Several important conclusions can be drawn from the above effort. Firstly, this helps to solve a long-standing puzzle: why cosmonauts on board the MIR space station observed high neutron background in the area of the equator. Keeping in mind that thunderstorms permanently burst out in this region, it is easy to guess where high neutron background comes from. Secondly, the same mechanism should also work in the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter where thunderstorms are also frequent and sporadic neutron streams should arise there.

In effect the atmosphere has been running its own fusor experiments for billions of years.

Shake Up On The Way

For those of you not familiar with Latin "iter" means "the way". And the ITER Fusion program now headquartered in France is undergoing a top management shake up.

In an effort to put the world's largest scientific experiment back on track after delays and cost overruns, Europe is shaking up the agency overseeing its portion of the multinational ITER reactor.

On 16 February, Frank Briscoe, a British fusion scientist, will take the reins as interim director of Fusion for Energy (F4E), the agency in Barcelona, Spain, that manages Europe's ITER contribution — the largest of any partner's. Briscoe replaces Didier Gambier, a French physicist who joined the F4E as director when it formed in 2007. Gambier was originally appointed for a five-year term.

The European Union (EU) is also formulating a plan to complete construction on the multibillion-dollar machine in 2019, a year after currently scheduled, Nature has learned.

ITER aims to prove the viability of fusion power by using superconducting magnets to squeeze a plasma of heavy hydrogen isotopes to temperatures above 150 million °C. When full-scale experiments begin in 2026, the machine should produce ten times the power it consumes.

It seems the shake up is due in part to unhappy customers. You know - the people putting up the money.

Europe has faced increasing criticism from ITER's six other international partners: Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, China and the United States. A budget proposed last week by US president Barack Obama would slash America's funding for ITER in 2011 by 40%, to US$80 million; it cited "the slow rate of progress by the [ITER Organization] and some Members' Domestic Agencies". And on 2 February, Evgeny Velikhov, a Russian fusion researcher and head of ITER's council, called Europe a "weak link". "Unfortunately, their organizational structure is very poor," he told Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview that appeared on a Russian government website.

Finishing ITER in 2019, a goal that the F4E is now working towards with industrial contractors, would involve risks such as producing components in parallel, but scientists think that those risks can be managed. "There should be no doubt that Europe is trying hard to get ITER ready in the shortest time that is realistic," says one senior European scientist. The new schedule will be presented to other ITER partners at a meeting on 23–24 February in Paris.

In a recent post, Spiraling Out Of Control, I discussed some of the financial problems at ITER. And for those of you interested in the technical problems may I suggest (actually highly recommend) the Talk Polywell link at the end of that article.

And let me leave you with a few words from a Polywell Fusion fan who is no fan of Tokamak designs (ITER and similar devices): Plasma Physicist and author of Principles of Plasma Physics Dr. Nicholas Krall said, "We spent $15 billion dollars studying tokamaks and what we learned about them is that they are no damn good."

And the best thing about Polywell is what Physicist Rick Nebel, who is now herding the project, has to say about it: We Will Know In Two Years or less.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Small Fission Reactors

There has been a rather interesting discussion in the comment section of a recent post here about the advent of small fission reactors for local power generation.

Lets start with this link to Next Energy News. First thing let me say that Next Energy news has had false reports from time to time and it is also heavily involved in fringe science such as zero point energy. Here is what they have to say:

Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs.

The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.

Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009.

No control rods OK. Good from a safety standpoint to avoid control rods in nukes. They can be a hazard as I will discuss below. However the question you have to ask is: how do they keep the reactor from running during shipment? There must be some method. What it is Next Energy doesn't say. Another important question is about the liquid lithium. It is highly reactive and corrosion will be a problem. The US Navy quit using liquid metal cooled reactors for that very reason. A third question is: is this just a heat producer or is electrical generation also part of the package? If there is electrical generation there is no mention of how it is done. If it is just a heat generator then it is most likely that water is used as the coolant. This is where the liquid lithium causes real problems. If the water is heated above the boiling point it will have to be pressurized. That means a heat exchanger. If the lithium comes in contact with the water in the heat exchanger (or any where else) there will be at minimum corrosion and possibly a chemical explosion. Not good.

So let us see if we can find out more. Instapundit is also covering this story and provides some links.

Discarded Lies has some stuff on it and a link to a story from 2005. 2005? Yep. It must be a hot story. Latest news. etc. Well, what do they have to say?

The small town of Galena, Alaska, is tired to pay 28 cents/kwh for its electricity, three times the national average. Today, Galena "is powered by generators burning diesel that is barged in during the Yukon River's ice-free months," according to Reuters. But Toshiba, which designs a small nuclear reactor named 4S (for "Super Safe, Small, & Simple"), is offering a free reactor to the 700-person village, reports the New York Times (no reg. needed). Galena will only pay for operating costs, driving down the price of electricity to less than 10 cents/kwh. The 4S is a sodium-cooled fast spectrum reactor -- a low-pressure, self-cooling reactor. It will generate power for 30 years before refueling and should be installed before 2010 providing an approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Well there is some very interesting stuff there. Like sodium cooling. As I said. Next Energy is not very reliable when it comes to news stories. That fast spectrum stuff is a point against it as well. It means no moderator in the reactor. Which is good. It also means that it is harder to control due to the fact that a fast spectrum reactor produces fewer delayed neutrons. Delayed neutrons are what make a reactor controllable. Maybe I can find more about this with further effort.

Here is another link from Instapundit Alaska Village Moves from Diesel to 'Micro-Nuke'. Note this story is from 2005.

The design is described as inherently safe, but it does have one riskier feature: It uses liquid sodium, not water, to draw heat away from the core, so the heat can be used to make steam and then electricity.

Designers chose sodium so they could run the reactor about 200 degrees hotter than most power reactors, but still keep the coolant depressurized. (Water at that temperature would make steam at thousands of pounds of pressure a square inch.) The problem is that if sodium leaks, it burns.

So it does have a steam generator and a steam powered electrical plant. And they are going to keep all this sealed for 30 years with no maintenance? I don't believe it.

Toshiba calls its design the 4S reactor, for "super-safe, small and simple." It would be installed underground, and in case of cooling system failure, heat would be dissipated through the earth. There are no complicated control rods to move through the core to control the flow of neutrons that sustain the chain reaction; instead, the reactor uses reflector panels around the edge of the core. If the panels are removed, the density of neutrons becomes too low to sustain the chain reaction.

Ah. So they do have to control the sucker. What do you use to reflect fast spectrum neutrons? Uranium is traditional. Peachy. Neutrons absorbed in the uranium will tend to produce Plutonium. This is a feature not a bug. However, the use of Uranium as a reflector is just speculation. Maybe we can find out how it is really done. BTW this reactor seems to have a lot in common with an early American reactor (don't you just love the finish on the wood?) called Clementine which dropped a reflector to shut down the reactor in an emergency.

The Alaska Journal from Dec. 2004 has a few words.

The analysis showed that, presuming the nuclear battery went into operation in 2010, by 2020 it could supply electricity to Galena for 5 to 14 cents a kilowatt hour (kWh), assuming the reactor is a gift from Toshiba and the community pays only operating costs.

In comparison, improved diesel generation could provide Galena power for 25 cents to 35 cents per kWh. Coal-fired power comes in as a serious alternative in the study, at 21 cents to 26 cents per kWh, Chaney told the mining group. A small coal-powered plant could use coal extracted from a thick coal seam about 12 miles from the community.

The nuclear option looks good even if Galena were to pay for the reactor. In that case the power costs were estimated at 15 cents to 25 cents per kWh in the study, Chaney said. Toshiba has estimated the cost of the 4S reactor at $25 million. Galena's power is now 28 cents per kWh.

However, the nuclear costs vary so much because of uncertainty over the number of security guards the federal NRC may require at the site, Chaney said. Toshiba told SAIC that if the NRC's current regulations are followed, 34 security guards would be needed at the Galena site.

Chaney said a terrorist attack in a small, isolated rural community like Galena is unlikely because an unknown outsider would quickly be recognized. The 4S unit would be encased under several feet of concrete, "and if people show up with jackhammers, everyone in town will be aware of it."

A more appropriate staffing for security might be 4 guards, augmented by a state trooper and Galena city police who are nearby, Chaney said. If the NRC accepts that, the operating costs will be low enough to deliver electricity for 5 cents, according to the study.

They must be getting those guards for minimum wage. i.e. 5¢ a KWh for a 200 KW reactor is $10 an hour fully burdened. A real confidence builder that. I wonder if they get vacation pay?

I looked around and couldn't find a thing on this from Toshiba. None of the sites have a link to the Toshiba so I can get actual detailed technical explanations. I wonder why?

So let us go back in history and look at one of the first small nukes. It was a different design from the Toshiba nuke, but its history is very interesting. The small Army nukes didn't work out so well. The rods were manually operated. Which led to America's first nuclear accident with fatalities. There were three guys in the reactor bldg. One of them was banging one of the other guy's wife. The guy whose wife was getting it from his "friend" yanked a rod from the SL-1 reactor and caused a melt down. Murder/suicide. The rod itself was propelled by the steam explosion through the yanker's stomach and pinned him to the ceiling. I saw the pictures. Ugly. The other guys were killed as well. Clean up was a real mess. I was in Idaho in winter of '65/'66 at Naval Nuke Power School when the story was still fresh. None of the sites I have visited mentions the social situation. Except for the suicide explanation without details. Well any way, an object lesson to be careful around nukes.

You can look up the SL-1 accident. A site called Brain Candy casts doubt on the social situation theory.

Now a days we have terrorists. How do you protect 10,000 of these suckers from terrorism?

The proliferation of small nukes is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. I want big nukes with lots of armed guards and heavy material barriers.

The Navy quit using sodium cooled reactors because they were prone to corrosion leaks in the steam generator. The gas cooled ML-1 didn't work out well either.

The problem with nukes is that they have many years worth of energy stored in them. Not so with fusion plants. Let us hope we get working fusion before too many of these jobs get built and distributed. Like this possibility: Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion.

I could see such nukes used in a guarded industrial processes. Sitting unguarded in your local neighborhood? Too risky. Once you add guards the cost of electricity goes way up because of the low capacity. Not enough KWhs to spread the cost sufficiently. You are back in the price range of oil plus you have all the problems of nukes. Plus the Alaskans are getting the reactor for the cost of the fuel. Suppose they had to pay for everything? Not much left over advantage.

It makes no sense.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Electron Circulation in Cubic Polywell

Indrek has put up a full page version of electron circulation in the Polywell Fusion Reactor. A very pretty video with nice music.

What is this all about you ask, other than some pretty pictures and nice music?

Here are some answers:

Bussard Fusion Reactor
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
Polywell - Making The Well
Nuclear Fusion - wiki

Polywell - Making The Well

I have come across some interesting research by Kiyoshi Yoshikawaa,of the Institute of Advanced Energy, Kyoto University, and others proving the formation of the Polywell.

For those of you who have not been following along here is how my understanding has been evolving.

Polywell As I Currently Understand It

Polywell - Adding Details

A schematic of the evolution of the Polywell design can be found in slides 8 and 11 in this Power Point slide show (link at bottom of page).

In the Hirsh/Farnsworth machine in slide 8 the reacting positive ions (like charged Deuterium particles for one kind of operation) are attracted to the center to collide and produce fusions.

In the Elmore/Tuck/Watson machine in slide 11 electrons are accelerated to the center of the machine where they form a grid sort of like what happens in a beam power tube. In the beam power tube the virtual grid is called a space charge. These negative electrons attract the positive fuel ions and fusion reactions take place. The advantage is that there is no grid near the reaction space so losses are reduced.

That is the theory any way. However, in any person's mind who has a little understanding of the physics involved the question is: is that really happening? Are we fooling ourselves? Which brings us back to the Yoshikawa paper. What is the evidence?

Yoshikawaa correctly states the central issue:

...it is essential to clarify the mechanism of potential well formation (see Fig. 5) predicted to develop in the central plasma core within the cathode, since potential well formation due to space charge associated with spherically converging ion beams plays a key and essential role in the beam-beam colliding fusion, i.e., the major mechanism of the IECF devices. Actually, this has been the central key issue for IECF researchers for the past 30 years, until the first successful direct measurement of the double-well potential profile in the IECF device through the laser- induced fluorescence (LIF) method at Kyoto University [6] in 1999 with an approximately 200 V dip at the center in the helium plasma core as will be described below.

So they have proved the formation of the Polywell. Outstanding!

Many theoretical results so far predicted strongly localized potential well formation, and actually for the past 30 years, many experiments were dedicated to clarify this mechanism using, such as, electron beam reflection method [7], spatially collimated neutron [4] or proton [8,9] profile measurements, or an emissive probe [10], as is seen in Table 2, but, neither seems to be perfectly conclusive in convincing that well does form.

He again hits the nail on the head. Lots of results that could have more than one interpretation. He then gives a list of past attempts at verification of the Polywell. Now let us get to how what he claims was the definitive experiment was done.

...we have adopted optical diagnostics by using the Stark effects, sensitive to the local electric fields, to the IECF device with a hollow cathode. Also to enhance S/N (signal to noise) ratio as well as to specify radial potential profile, we introduced the LIF method. Consequently, we could have finally measured the double-well potential profile (see Fig. 11) with an approximately 200 V dip at the center for the first time in the helium plasma core (Fig. 7) in the IECF device.

He goes on in even more technical detail. The end result? The dual (cathode and anode) potential well forms.

In any future experimental regimes such a measuring system should be used to verify machine operation and to provide machine diagnostics.

Latest Fusion News

Tom Ligon, an engineer who worked with Dr. Robert Bussard, is giving a talk on fusion powered rockets at the International Space Development Conference in Dallas. Here is a link to Tom's Power Point Presentation at ISDC. Scroll down the page and click on the button in the lower right.

In other news Tri Alpha Energy has just raised $40 million in venture capital for nuclear fusion.

Tri Alpha Energy, which hopes to commercialize nuclear fusion technology, has raised $40 million from Venrock Associates and others, according to VentureWire.

The company, which grew out of the University of California at Irvine, says its advanced plasma fusion technologies could be used to generate electricity as well as eliminate waste from nuclear power plants. A plant based on its technology would cost less than a conventional nuclear plant. Tri Alpha was founded in 1998 and has raised funds in the past.

Tri Alpha is working on a generator in which hydrogen chases boron, according to literature from UC Irvine. These atoms then form a helium atom, which is placed in a particle accelerator. Slowing down the helium generates electricity.

I have some links to their proposed design at Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion. Scroll down and look for the Hendrik J. Monkhorst information.

Here are some more details on the venture capital deal from UC Irvine.

Norman Rostoker, research professor of physics and astronomy, received $5.2 million from Tri Alpha Energy Inc. to research a plasma electric generator that will use as fuel a mixture of hydrogen and boron. In this generator, hydrogen will chase boron in a cylinder, eventually resulting in helium nuclei that will be made to escape into a particle accelerator. The backwards-running accelerator will slow down the nuclei, turning the energy released into electricity.

Here is the patent for the Monkhorst/Rostoker design.

Cross Posted at Classical Values and at The Astute Bloggers

Polywell - Adding Details

Tom Ligon, a researcher who worked witth Dr. Bussard on the Polywell machines has added a few points to Polywell - As I Currently Understand It. Let me note to start that he thinks the basic description is excellent (with minor corrections). You can read what Tom has to say at General Fusion Theory. I'm going to put it here in my own words to make sure my understanding is correct. If I make a mistake I'm sure Tom will correct it when he gets back from vacation in a couple of weeks or so. Keep your eye on this space.

First point of minor correction. The magnets can be all North poles facing in or all South poles facing in. I picked one just to make the explanation simpler.

The next part is trickier. Here is where the electromagnets come in. We replace the ordinary magnets with coils of wire. You put a current through them and you have an electromagnet. The coils will be shaped to match the face of the solid it conforms to. If the solid is a cube the coils will be square. If the solid is an octahedron the coils would be triangular.

Now here is a part that wasn't clear to me earlier. Once you have the coils all wrapped up nice and tidy like you cover them with a metal sheath which then becomes the + grid.

Here is a nice picture of what it looks like in the WB-6 experimental version:

Note that the coils do not conform to the shape of the solid picked. That is definitely an experimental error and will be corrected in the next version. This is what the Bussard folks call the MaGrid which stands of course for Magnetic Grid. Cooling is definitely going to be a problem because the cooling properties of a high vacuum are not very good. It is why we use vacuum bottles to keep things hot.

Tom points out that the Deuterium should be injected inside the grid so that the atoms are quickly ionized. That gives you a number of engineering problems I'm not going to go into here. Let us get the theory down first. You can't engineer what you don't understand.

Tom says that the plasma physics is probably the hardest thing to understand in the machine. I'd agree with that. You have electric fields, magnetic fields, coils, and charged particles. This is probably one of the toughest areas of physics because of the interactions. Every thing affects everything all at once.

Let's start this next stage with the magnetic field. Here is a nice drawing of what it would look like before any particles are circulating:

Used by permission of Tom Ligon, copyright 2007

Next lets look at it with electrons in the mix:

Used by permission of Tom Ligon, copyright 2007

So the electrons are injected into the center of the machine and last a long time. Any electrons that leak out are attracted back in by the grid. As long as the magnetic fields keep the electrons from hitting the grid they can just keep cycling along inside the machine. Long electron life time is one of the keys to net energy production.

Tom claims that in operation the circulating currents inside the machine are very high. Maybe millions of amps. This current of course, like any current, generates a magnetic field. This new magnetic field pushes back on the field around the coils making the field stronger near the coils. Now I'm having trouble visualizing a spherical current that creates north poles on all sides of a shere. Of course if the circulating currents were mirrors of the currents in the coils that could happen. However, I don't see how that happens naturally without creating forces that drive the electrons out of the center of the machine. We will put this down to details to be explained later.

OK some how you have electrons madly circulating around the center of the machine. When I get a better explanation of how this happens I will give it to you. These electrons form a potential well between the electrons in the center and the grid. The potential difference is about 80% of the grid to shell voltage. This is good because it means the electrons are less likely to have enough energy to reach the grounded outer shell where they are lost.

Now you start injecting fuel into the machine.The fuel either comes in as ions from an ion gun or it comes in without a charge and some of it is ionized by collisions with the madly spinning electrons. The fuel is affected by the same forces as the electrons but a little differently because it is going much slower. About 64 times slower in the cae of Deuterium fuel (a hydrogen with one neutron). Now these positively charged Deuterium ions are attracted to the virtual elctrode (the electron cloud) in the center of the machine. So they come rushing in. If they come rushing in fast enough and hit each other just about dead on they join together and make a He3 nucleus (two protons and a neutron) and give off a high energy neutron.

Ions that miss will go rushing through the center and then head for one of the grids. When the voltage field they traveled through equals the energy they had at the center of the machine the ions have given up their energy to the grids (which repel the ions), they then go heading back to the center of the machine where they have another chance at hitting another ion at high enough speed and close enough to cause a fusion.

Hopefully this happens often enough so that there is more energy coming out than going in by a lot.

As you can see there are a lot of loose ends to be tied down on this. There is lots more to understand what is actually happening. Fortunately there are a lot of amateurs working on this and progress is being made with electrostatic machines.

More details on these experiments are going to have to come out before any serious engineering could start.

There is more than enough information here for a serious experimenter to build a test machine to see if this path to fusion holds promise. You might not even need to try fusing Deuterium to do diagnostics on virtual cathode formation and other details on what is going on in the plasma.

Since diagnostics, and not power, are the object, the electron guns could be made oversize to compensate for electron losses. If you could cool the grid with something like Flourinert or liquid nitrogen and crank up the electron injection really high despite the losses a lot of useful information could be found.

So I see two steps at the very beginning:

1. Verify virtual cathode production in a magneto/electric field of minimum size.

2. Scale it up to a test reactor capable of operating the grid at around 30KV (max) at useful currents with Dueterium fuel. It should be possible to test how reaction rates scale with voltage on the grid and current through the coils. You can also monitor electron gun currents vs reaction rates (neutron production) to get some idea of the losses.

The next step after you have some good data (you might need 4 or 5 proto types) is to scale it up to a machine with 1 KW energy production, follow that with 100 KW, then 10 MW. Start the scale up when you are at least 70% confident of the next design. For experimental purposes lots of things can be fixed along the way. In fact depend on the fact that problems that are insignificant at 1 KW will be serious obstacles at 10 MW. That is the key to development. Fixing problems as they come up so as to meet targets for cost, development time, specifications, etc. Solvitur Ambulando.

WB-6 coils were .15 meter across and looked like this under construction:



They were run at around .1 Tesla for .25 milliseconds.

The final article in this series is:

Polywell - Making The Well