Posted on 10/16/2014 8:16:18 AM PDT by goldstategop
MOSCOW, October 16. /TASS/. Russian physicists dismissed as a promotional action on Thursday the statement by the US company Lockheed Martin about its technological breakthrough in the thermonuclear fusion field.
Skunk Works (a subsidiary of the Lockheed Martinweapons producer) on Wednesday reported a breakthrough in the field of practical use of controlled thermonuclear fusion. The company claims that in the next decade it would present a commercial sample of a compact thermonuclear reactor.
President of the National Research Center Kurchatov Institute, Academician Yevgeny Velikhov told TASS in an interview that first it was necessary to develop such a project and present it. He added he knew nothing about this kind of research by the company.
“I don’t know anything about this, I think it’s fantasy. I know nothing of Lockheed Martin’s projects in this sphere,” he said. “Let them state what they please. If they worked it out, they should show.”
Skunk Works has promised that the new reactor will be 90% smaller in size than similar units. The developers claim it will be possible to place their unit in an ordinary truck. The reactor’s thermal output will be equivalent to 100 megawatts, they say. The first trial sample of the unit is to appear in a year.
According to head of the ITER Russia office, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Anatoly Krasilnikov, the statements by the American corporation is “a promotional action” that has nothing to do with science. According to Krasilnikov, Lockheed Martin is not disclosing the details of its discovery, fearing that the professional community will at once expose it.
Krasilnikov said Russia also develops a pilot thermonuclear reactor project. According to previous reports, its construction may begin no earlier than 2030.
Russia/China already working on stealing it even if it’s no good
The Rooskie has always been an envious, suspicious breed.
I read the Lockheed-Martin statement.
It was a marketing scheme to get investors.
The general design principle was publicly disclosed (by Lockheed) in February 2013. Not saying the design principle is technologically viable, but there isn’t much that is fairly characterized as “hiding the ball”.
Translation: Their spies haven't found the plans, yet.
If it becomes widely accepted that the announced breakthrough in fusion energy is real the price of oil will tank as the world’s oil producers increase production to try and sell as much as they can, while they can.
Sell it now while it’s worth something.
The idea that in 10 years it might be possible to create power without fission or fossil fuel scares the crap out of countries that depend on oil to survive.
I for one will dance on the graves of the ME oil producing countries.... eff em’
Secret U.S. technological breakthroughs are never real until an official denial of existence by Russia.
Comrade, not allowing folks like you to know what is going on in the Skunk Works until they’re ready to produce (and usually fly) a working prototype is an old company tradition.
And they would have to sell local - it wouldn't pay to ship it.
We are still going to need oil for cars, unless battery tech improves at the same time.
Russia is running scared because this will destroy their control of current Natural Gas dependent countries.
(and further ruin Russia’s economy)
There is no obligation for the Skunk Works to divulge anything for the world to assess and undermine.
Why would anyone give away a proprietary recipe which would only aid the competition?
As in ? When the Russkies denied they were stealing our nuclear technology ( eventhough they had spies actively working at Oak Ridge labs in Tennessee during WWII ) and low and behold they had their own atomic bomb in 1949 .
Yes, just because someone is in denial does not nessearly make it not so.
“The idea that in 10 years it might be possible to create power without fission or fossil fuel scares the crap out of countries that depend on oil to survive.”
In spite of Obama, we are country with an economy helped enormously by the sale of fossil fuels. We might even become largest producer very soon, if not already. If the price of oil and gas plummets due to a viable improvement in fusion technology (which I welcome) some in our neck of the woods will be negatively impacted, too. Fusion technology if and when it arrives will significantly and unprecedentedly upend the world economy.
What’s left to use oil for? Plastics and lubricants?
Carbon could take the place of both of those.
Carbon fiber and graphite.
As we speak, the Russians have put a hit out on the guys working on this program. Fusion would wreck Russia - full stop. It would make the Middle East irrelevant.
Meanwhile, the US could cut the price of oil and keep selling to the economies still on the back of the wave.
“I don’t know anything about this, I think it’s fantasy. I know nothing of Lockheed Martin’s projects in this sphere,” he said. “Let them state what they please. If they worked it out, they should show.”
Doesn’t work that way with this group, Ivan, otherwise you would have had your own SR-71 Blackbird 45 years ago.
Hell, I thought the same thing myself!
Seriously though, I am surprised nobody has posted a picture of Mr. Fusion from the back of the DeLorean in “Back to The Future”
Maybe. The problem is that a lot of the boom in US production is made possible because higher oil prices have made more expensive extraction methods profitable.
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