Posted on 03/24/2010 7:25:25 PM PDT by neverdem
Radiation-free nuclear fusion could be possible in the future claim a team of international scientists. This could lead to development of clean and sustainable electricity production.
Despite the myriad of solutions to the energy crisis being developed, nuclear fusion remains the ultimate goal as it has the potential to provide vast quantities of sustainable and clean electricity. But nuclear energy currently comes with a serious environmental and health hazard side effect - radiation. For fusion to gain widespread acceptance, it must be able to produce radiation-free energy but the key to this has so far remained elusive, explains Heinrich Hora at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Conventionally, the fusion process occurs with deuterium and tritium as fuel. The fuel is spherically compressed - meaning compression occurs from all directions - with laser irradiation to 1000 times its solid state density. This ignites the fuel, producing helium atoms, energy and neutrons which cause radiation. Fusion is also possible with hydrogen and boron-11, and this could produce cleaner energy as it does not release neutrons, explains Hora. But this fuel requires much greater amounts of energy to initiate and so has remained unpopular.
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The power of nuclear fusion has yet to be tamed
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Now, a team led by Hora has carried out computational studies to demonstrate that new laser technology capable of producing short but high energy pulses could be used to ignite hydrogen/boron-11 fuel using side-on ignition. The high energy laser pulses can be used to create a plasma block that generates a high density ion beam, which ignites the fuel without it needing to be compressed, explains Hora. Without compression, much lower energy demands than previously thought are needed. 'It was a surprise when we used hydrogen-boron instead of deuterium-tritium. It was not 100 000 times more difficult, it was only ten times,' says Hora.
'This has the potential to be the best route to fusion energy,' says Steve Haan, an expert in nuclear fusion at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. However, he also points out that it is still only potential at this point, 'there's a fair amount of work to do before this technology is at hand.'
Hora agrees that much more work is needed to fully understand this radical new approach. Its achievement will depend on continued advances in laser optics, target physics and power conversion technology, he concludes.
Fusion energy without radioactivity: laser ignition of solid hydrogen–boron (11) fuel
Heinrich Hora, George H. Miley, M. Ghoranneviss, B. Malekynia, N. Azizi and Xian-Tu. He, Energy Environ. Sci., 2010
DOI: 10.1039/b904609g
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Probably only 10 or 20 years away...
Cool. Or hot.
I guess this means we can expect the environazis and demonrats to despise it.
“Probably only 10 or 20 years away...”
Yep.
I still hope to be pleasantly surprised some day.
Of course, Liberals and enviros won't like for some silly reason.
Neutrons don't "cause radiation". Neutrons are elementary particles that can interact with the nuclei of atoms in any numbers of ways. For some reactions, a radioactive nucleus may result. Not in all cases, but where it does you have to manage the reaction products, as you do for most things, be they nuclear reactions, chemical reactions, industrial processes, whatever.
More difficult than what? the deuterium-tritium? If it's even 10 times more difficult, why do it? What's the advantage. Poorly written article.
In fact, neutrons control reactor energy from going critical. Neutrons can absorb energy (electrons).
Exciting, but I think now more than ever before it is clear to libs that for survival they realllllllly need a widepsread public perception of hunger, scarcity, or impending disaster.
Sorry to be dark about it, but I think the closer they get to something wonderful like this, powerful forces will rush to the fore. When they do, they will certainly not be so stupid as to say, “Throw away this miracle”.
Instead, they’ll say that the system needs validation —of the ENDLESS variety. And they’ll use some other fancy words, something about needing to foster in a period of Orderly Adjustment, or something like that.
And then after they consent, the experts will be helicoptered out into the middle of the ocean for some exciting meeting, and then pushed out the door, sort of like in Chile.
Problem solved.
***But nuclear energy currently comes with a serious environmental and health hazard side effect - radiation***
Sounds like the plot from the movie MIRAGE from 1965.
The problem is, that fusion power has always been 10 or 20 years away.
I guess I don't see what you're saying. All the reactor theory courses I've had teach that for thermal reactors, control is maintained by keeping the prompt neutron population just below critical, and maintaining criticality or changing it slightly by control of the delayed neutron populations. Fast reactor control systems manipulate the fast (epithermal) neutron population directly, but LWR technology has always relied on the delayed component for effective control. The delayed neutron fraction is a crucial term in accident transient analysis.
Neutrons can absorb energy (electrons).
Again, it isn't clear what you're saying here. Neutrons can certainly gain (or lose) energy depending on the particular reaction they are involved in (elastic scattering, inelastic scattering, capture and re-emission, spallation, whatever). A neutron-electron interaction can have a variety of outcomes. In scattering processes, it typically involves the interaction of the magnetic moment of the neutron with the magnetic field generated by the moving electron. But there can be other results as well.
This could be hugh and series!!!!
Nuclear power without radioactivity is an oxymoron, what he means is “less radioactivity” as compared to some other options.
I thought neutrons were the source of the heat...which generates the steam for the turbines. How is the heat generated in this new discovery?
From the original article linked in the first comment:
From the beginning of fusion energy research, a long term goal has been to use the unique H–11B reaction:
| H + 11B = 3 4He + 8.664 MeV | (4) |
since it results in the production of MeV alpha particles and no neutrons by bombarding boron targets with protons of energies up to 150 keV.29,30 The energetic alpha particle products are ideal for highly efficient direct conversion into electricity to achieve a reduction in waste heat pollution.2 The produced alpha particles can also be collimated with magnetic fields for space propulsion.2,30 Secondary reactions lead to some H–11B radioactivity but this is less per unit of energy produced than burning coal,31 which naturally contains 2 ppm uranium.
Ah, so I see, using H-B results in less radiation So even though it’s a little more difficult, it’s worth doing. Thanks.
Eventually the government will have the power to ration energy, just like they now have the power to ration health-care.
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