Posted on 03/02/2002 4:54:40 PM PST by aculeus
NUCLEAR scientists will this week announce they may have achieved a controlled form of cold fusion, a technology that potentially offers humanity a limitless source of clean energy.
The researchers are to publish evidence suggesting they have successfully fused the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, so recreating the processes that take place within the sun.
Until now the only way to achieve fusion has been through nuclear weapons or in vast experimental machines that cost billions of pounds. Both depend on generating extremely high temperatures.
However, the latest research, by scientists at the American government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Michigan, was done on a laboratory bench using relatively simple and cheap equipment at room temperature.
The study echoes the work of Professor Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons who, in 1989, announced they had achieved cold fusion at Southampton University but were ridiculed when no one could repeat their work.
Fleischmann and Pons made what many now see as a fatal mistake when they released their results at a press conference rather than having them scrutinised by other scientists before publication in an academic journal.
It is understood that Rusi Taleyarkhan from Oak Ridge, Fred Becchetti from the University of Michigan and their collaborator, Robert Nigmatulin, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have repeated their work and subjected it to extensive peer review.
If confirmed, the discovery could rank among the most important since the dawn of the nuclear age. The scientists are, however, extremely cautious at this stage, saying only that they have detected all the signs of fusion rather than categorically confirming it.
Their technique uses pressure waves to generate tiny bubbles in a solution of acetone that has been infused with deuterium, a “heavy” form of hydrogen extracted from sea water.
At the heart of most hydrogen atoms is a nucleus comprising a single proton. Deuterium atoms, however, have an additional particle, a neutron. This makes them roughly twice as heavy and slightly unstable.
Physicists have long known that smashing two deuterium atoms together can fuse them into tritium, a third form of hydrogen with a proton and two neutrons. This fusion releases vast amounts of energy. This was the principle used to create the hydrogen bomb in 1945, but ever since then scientists have been struggling to find a way to control the process.
In the latest technique, the sound waves create bubbles that expand with explosive force. As the wave passes, the bubbles implode, generating extremely high temperatures. This process is known as sono-luminescence after the flashes of light emitted.
Until recently scientists could generate only temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees, far short of the sun’s 10m Celsius. This appears to have been solved by “hitting” the bubbles with another sound wave that compresses them so rapidly that temperatures soar and the deuterium fuses.
An insider said the researchers had detected “promising signs of fusion” including the creation of tritium and, crucially, the emission of neutrons. The researchers believe the neutrons have energy levels consistent with those that would be emitted by deuterium fusion.
This would enable them to escape the fate of Fleischmann and Pons, whose readings of neutrons enabled them to claim they had achieved fusion. It later emerged that these neutrons could have been the results of contamination.
Neil Turok, professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge University, said the results, if confirmed, were extremely exciting: “Cold fusion has a bad history but these laboratories are among the best in the world and they will have taken every precaution to get it right.”
The research has major implications for other fusion projects. Britain already hosts the Jet project at Culham in Oxford, where a machine has been built to research sustainable nuclear fusion reactions.
This weekend it emerged that Culham had scrapped its own research into sono-luminescence and other low-tech forms of fusion after a report from Thornton Greenland, a former senior scientist, suggesting it was unlikely ever to work.
Greenland said: “I thought there was too little evidence to show it would work, but this suggests I was wrong.”
Recently, Lord Sainsbury, the science minister, committed Britain to joining an international project to build a £2 billion fusion machine called Iter, Latin for “the Way”.
Even this, however, will be able to sustain fusion reactions for only 16 minutes. A proper fusion reactor capable of producing power is thought to be 30-50 years away.
Fleischmann, who now lives near Salisbury, still believes his results were correct although he regrets allowing colleagues to press him into publicising them before he was ready.
He said: “I hope they have achieved it. If they have, I hope people are ready for it this time.”
While not everyone does that, some physicists look at it that way.
Not that I have heard, but I have been away from the business for a while. I think the basic rule still applies. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. But you can transmute it. We could create all the gold we wanted if we are willing to pay the price in energy to do that.
As to cold fusion, it will take more than an article in a newspaper to get me excited. My intuition is that it will never be that easy.
It was the press and an idiot Army general who coined the term "too cheep to meter" back in the fifties. Within the industry at that time, all the focus was not how to produce power, they already knew they could, but how to do it competitively. The efforts were focused on nitty-gritty engineering in materials sciences and fluid mechanics. They pretty much figured that all out with the Nautilus and then Shippingport.
Today, nuclear is cheaper than coal, but back in the 50s, they laughed at the BS out of the “popular science” media of nuclear powered everything. They knew that would never happen and never made claims that it could, but as is the case today, the media look from dramatic quotes to spice their product. What reporter would want a story on why a nuclear turbine would need to be low pressure as opposed to high pressure or the relative advantages of Inconel, Zercoly or SS305? That stuff is dull? Too cheep to meter is cool!
Just like a fusion plant, 90% of the development and infrastructure of any theoretical fusion plant would be virtually identical to the infrastructure of a fossil fired plant. There is not a free ride regardless of your fuel source.
Newton is still relevant.
Thanks. I've been doing a Google search on the Web to refresh my memory and found tons of stuff. It seems that nuclear fuel recycling or reprocessing research was quite active until Jimmy Carter killed it due to "fears" over proliferation. Then, even though Reagan lifted the ban, the industry hasn't pursued it since the virgin-fuel itself is so cheap. So it seems that all the high-level "waste" (spent fuel) to be eventually buried at Yucca mountain could actually be recycled NOW if we want! (Please correct me if this rings a bell and you know different.)
Also came across what looks like another promising technology: The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR)
Needless to say, its another one that the dunderhead Congress killed when it was on the verge of demonstrating successful operation.
There are no technoligical peoblems. France, Japan and the UK are doing it. For power reactors, it is really a matter of economics. Uranium prices are so low now that it is cheaper to make new than to recycle the old. That could change, but that is the market now.
That does not address the issue of weapons grade stuff which never comes from or is used in a power reactor. Some sort of recycle is necessary to make it 'non weapons grade' but the Luddites won't listen to logic. Nunn -Luger was supposed buy a lot of the Russian weapons grade stuff that bin Laden & Co. have been trying to get and use a recylicing process to turn it into a power reactor fuel to eliminate it. I don't where the issue stands now, but the last I heard, the Luddites didn't want any part of it. I guess they just want it laying around so Osama or Saddam can have their chance at greatness.
Question about the "spent" fuel rods:
I know they still remain "hot" for many months when they're removed from the reactor and placed in 'temporary' holding tanks.
Is the heat that's given off in those holding tanks used for anything?
Can a reactor be designed to use the "spent" fuel-rods as-is?
(Yeah, I know it would be far less efficient than a "real" reactor.
But what the heck, heat is still heat!)
Not really. It is called residual or decay heat from the short-lived fission products. It is not hot enough to produce usefull energy.
I just thought that maybe they could bunch the "spent" rods a little closer together to squeeze whatever excess, residual heat they could out of 'em, then run the liquid through some kind of heat exchanger / heat pump and use it for something.
Oh well, I'm sure that's already been looked at thoroughly.
Damn I hope the report is true!
I should have known.....
Yes, I know that darn well.
I also read the darn article:
The scientists are, however, extremely cautious at this stage, saying only that they have detected all the signs of fusion rather than categorically confirming it.
When the darn scientists have the darn gonads to actually call it fusion, and boil enough darn water to make me a darn cup of coffee, then I'll be darn impressed!
Amen to that! It's not only my drean, it's the subject of prayers.
Something that's 30-50 years away (maybe) doesn't thrill me much.
Odds are I'll never see it.
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