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This Nuclear Reactor Just Made Fusion Viable by 2030. Seriously.
Popular Mechanics ^ | April 8 2021 | Carolyn Delbert

Posted on 04/09/2021 2:49:53 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog

TAE Technologies, the world’s largest private fusion company, has announced it will have a commercially viable nuclear fusion power plant by 2030, which puts it years—or even decades—ahead of other fusion technology companies.

The California-based company has raised $880 million in funding for its hydrogen-boron reactor. This reactor isn’t a traditional tokamak or stellarator; instead, it uses a confined particle acceleration mechanism that produces and confines plasma.

All fusion technology has plasma, which mimics the extreme reactions that power all the stars—it’s what we’re emulating when we make fusion energy experiments. “Plasma is an oozy substance; the challenge of containing it is akin to holding Jell-O together using rubber bands,” TAE says on its website.

TAE TECHNOLOGIES What is TAE doing differently than the industry’s perhaps higher-profile projects, like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)? TAE’s tech, which is called advanced beam-driven field-reversed configuration (FRC), uses non-radioactive hydrogen-boron to generate plasma in a carefully contained area. The tech can also work for hydrogen isotope fuels like deuterium-tritium, TAE says. The particle-accelerating beam heats the molecules to plasma status, then the field-reversed configuration keeps it all together.

The entire system has a totally different shape and form factor than tokamaks and stellarators. In fact, it’s closer to medical applications, like cancer-zapping proton beams you may have seen pop up at places like Cancer Treatment Centers of America and other hospitals. That’s because the targeted beam can work in the body the same way it works to heat and disrupt the particulate inside TAE’s reactor.

TAE TECHNOLOGIES TAE’s current working reactor is nicknamed Norman, after the scientist who cofounded TAE in 1998. The reactor is 80 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 60,000 pounds. This still makes it far smaller than almost any existing nuclear power plant reactor, on par with something like a small modular reactor.

Today, TAE has announced that Norman has consistently reached the 50 million degrees Celsius required to become a sustaining plasma reactor.

There are two colloquial terms for what fusion net energy requires: “hot enough” and “long enough” to end up fruitfully producing energy. TAE says Norman has been running over 600 experiments each month, which is 20 tests each day or about 30 each weekday—reaching the plasma “ignition,” or self sustaining for energy, temperature each time.

This means 6 years after TAE began to reach “long enough,” Norman has finally reached “hot enough” frequently enough that it can begin to scale up for commercial power plants. And this is why the company says it feels it can build that kind of power plant by the end of the decade in 2030.

With the central fusion technology well in hand, there’s still a lot of work to get a fusion plant off (and on) the ground in reality. Everything about the whole structure must be designed, studied, tested, and regulated by the government. Still, TAE is confident about the 2030 time frame because of the proliferation of tools and knowledge in recent years.


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Miscellaneous; Science
KEYWORDS: california; coldfusion; fusion; hydrogenboron; nuclear; nuclearenergy; physics; pieinthesky; science; stringtheory; taetechnologies
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NOT "cold fusion", but interesting
1 posted on 04/09/2021 2:49:53 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog
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To: Kevmo

Cold fusion ping list, please


2 posted on 04/09/2021 2:51:44 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (Not Responding to Seagull Snark)
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To: Wonder Warthog; Kaslin; SunkenCiv; Ernest_at_the_Beach

Hmmmmn.

A private company doing something the government labs have been working since the 1940-50-60-70-80-90 ....


3 posted on 04/09/2021 3:03:30 PM PDT by Robert A Cook PE (Method, motive, and opportunity: No morals, shear madness and hatred by those who cheat.)
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To: Wonder Warthog
One of the first nuclear weapons, the Little Boy Bomb used a projectile/tube explosion mechanism. The Fat Man atomic bomb used spherical implosion design.

The Little Man bomb

The Fat Man Man Bomb

There is more than one way to skin a cat and I think the little boy was a much more elegant design. here is a diagram of the fusion reactor that I did not see on Popular Mechanics:

4 posted on 04/09/2021 3:14:49 PM PDT by wildcard_redneck ( COVID lockdowns are the Establishment's attack on the middle class and our Republic )
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To: Wonder Warthog

We’ll know it’s close when the enviros mobilize against it.


5 posted on 04/09/2021 3:15:39 PM PDT by sphinx
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To: Wonder Warthog
"The California-based company has raised $880 million in funding"

That is not even a BILLION, and the politicians are blowing through TRILLIONS every year.

We could fund cold fusion for a tiny fraction of what the politicians are spending on fake crises and payoffs to friends.

6 posted on 04/09/2021 3:17:04 PM PDT by UnwashedPeasant (Trump is the last legally elected U.S. President.)
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To: Wonder Warthog

7 posted on 04/09/2021 3:22:43 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change with out notice.)
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To: Wonder Warthog

They are looking for funding, so take it with a grain of salt.


8 posted on 04/09/2021 3:26:11 PM PDT by rbg81 (Truth is stranger than fiction)
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To: UnwashedPeasant

the problem for politicians is that if they spend a Trillion on Fusion there is still no guarantee it would work.


9 posted on 04/09/2021 3:29:02 PM PDT by algore
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To: algore

They could offer a $10 Billion prize to the first US company to develop working cold fusion.

People like Elon Musk would rise to the occasion.

I think there have been contests like this in the past, but I cannot remember any specifics.


10 posted on 04/09/2021 3:37:16 PM PDT by UnwashedPeasant (Trump is the last legally elected U.S. President.)
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To: algore
"the problem for politicians is that if they spend a Trillion on Fusion there is still no guarantee it would work."

THAT is true of anything and everything government does.

11 posted on 04/09/2021 3:41:41 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (Not Responding to Seagull Snark)
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To: UnwashedPeasant
"We could fund cold fusion for a tiny fraction of what the politicians are spending on fake crises and payoffs to friends."

I agree. IMO, one or another flavor of "LENR" will beat this design to market. I include SAFIRE in the "LENR" category.

12 posted on 04/09/2021 3:44:17 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (Not Responding to Seagull Snark)
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To: Robert A Cook PE

Sounds like the same technology they have been working on at Livermore. Nothing really all that new.


13 posted on 04/09/2021 3:48:25 PM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear (This is not a tagline.)
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To: who_would_fardels_bear
"Sounds like the same technology they have been working on at Livermore."

Livermore uses laser pulses to heat a solid target. Way different from this.

14 posted on 04/09/2021 3:52:15 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (Not Responding to Seagull Snark)
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To: Wonder Warthog

I’d hazard a guess that most of us here are old enough to know commercial fusion-generated electricity has been 20 years away for the last 50 or more years . . .

That said, I wish these guys good luck and good fortune.


15 posted on 04/09/2021 3:54:57 PM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: wildcard_redneck
There is more than one way to skin a cat and I think the little boy was a much more elegant design

You may think that but you’re wrong. Little Boy was crude and inefficient - and the design was never used again after an implosion style device was shown to work.

16 posted on 04/09/2021 4:06:12 PM PDT by Alter Kaker (Gravitation is a theory, not a fact. It should be approached with an open mind...)
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To: UnwashedPeasant

One trillion even. Tax free.


17 posted on 04/09/2021 4:07:36 PM PDT by Robert A Cook PE (Method, motive, and opportunity: No morals, shear madness and hatred by those who cheat.)
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To: Robert A Cook PE

18 posted on 04/09/2021 4:11:34 PM PDT by algore
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To: FreedomPoster
"I’d hazard a guess that most of us here are old enough to know commercial fusion-generated electricity has been 20 years away for the last 50 or more years . . ."

Well, "I" certainly am.........

19 posted on 04/09/2021 4:28:49 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (Not Responding to Seagull Snark)
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To: FreedomPoster

I am still waiting on the miracle carburetor.


20 posted on 04/09/2021 5:14:14 PM PDT by alternatives? (If our borders are not secure, why fund an army?)
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