Lockheed's Skunk Works promises fusion power in four years

[BertRoot]

Until someone figures out a way to manufacture antimatter, fusion is by far the cleanest and most abundant source of power we can hope to harvest. We've known this for a long time, but fusion is hard, and it's expensive to build the giant lasers or toroidal plasma containment systems that are needed to get it to work. By most estimates, we're something like 40 years away from an operational fusion power plant.
"Most estimates" do not, apparently, include research being done at Lockheed Martin's secretive advanced development center, Skunk Works. At Google's Solve For X, Charles Chase describes what his team has been working on: a trailer-sized fusion power plant that turns cheap and plentiful hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) into helium plus enough energy to power a small city. It's safe, it's clean, and Lockheed is promising an operational unit by 2017 with assembly line production to follow, enabling everything from unlimited fresh water to engines that take spacecraft to Mars in one month instead of six.
Lockheed's fusion power plant uses radio energy to heat deuterium gas inside tightly controlled magnetic fields, creating a very high temperature plasma that's much more stable and well confined than you'd find in something like a tokamak.
Chase didn't give a whole lot more technical detail, but he seemed confident in predicting a 100mW prototype by 2017, with commercial 100mW systems available by 2022, implying that all global energy demands will be able to be met by fusion power by about 2045. No more oil, no more coal, no more nuclear, and not even any solar or wind or hydro will be necessary (unless you're into that sort of thing): fusion has the potential to produce as much affordable clean power as we'll ever need, for the entire world. That's wild, and we may see it happen in less than a decade. That is, if Lockheed Martin's plans come to fruition, which we certainly hope they do.



http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockh...wer-four-years

Yowzers

[CzarJunkie]

Why isn't this bigger news? It should be on the front page of every news organisation on the planet. I smell something fishy and I'm not talking about my mother's arseless chaps.

[BIG-TED]

lets hope the Arabs don't buy the silence, as per the numerous conspiracies, and keep fingers crossed it works out, should stop some wars too if we believe the hype.

Ted

[Mule]

100 milliwatts, is the city it will power a city for ants?

[CzarJunkie]

100 milliwatts, is the city it will power a city for ants?

I think it should probably be MW instead of mW.

[WotTheFook]

Why isn't this bigger news? It should be on the front page of every news organisation on the planet. I smell something fishy and I'm not talking about my mother's arseless chaps.

It's not bigger news because it completely undermines the whole arguments for meddling with governments in the Middle East, i.e. crude oil. If this technology were already available, there would be no need to invade Iraq, tinker with Syria or to worry about Iranian oil holding us to ransom.

The Qataris and Kuwaitis must be crapping themselves after reading this and all of the hype about fracking / shale oil is a waste of time, if Lockheed Martin manage to pull this off.

Let's see how quickly Goldman Sachs and the Rothschilds start to get involved in fusion.

[baggy13]

Agree with cj this should be headline on every TV and newspaper this really is a game changer

[DJ OD]

"if Lockheed Martin's plans come to fruition, which we certainly hope they do."

Why wouldn't they? Well only reasons they wouldn't are [tinfoilhat] the government hiding or silencing them, arabs hiding or silencing them [/tinfoilhat]

Maybe someone doesn't believe this thoery or maybe it's BS. Does strike me that the last people to know about it would be us, so what to the power at be know about it, to the point they are still chasing oil and war...


DJ OD

[WotTheFook]

Lockheed (Martin) have a habit of doing things first or thought previously impossible, such as the P38 Lightning, P-80 Shooting Star, U-2 spy plane, SR-71 Blackbird, Galaxy, Starlifter and F35 Lightning II. I doubt that they'd screw up the huge legacy left them by Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works, by making a claim that they couldn't back up.

[BertRoot]

My worry with this is as above. A little Arab influence and this will be buried. Lockheed have done some phenomenal things over the years and glad to see them still trailblazing.

[consoles]

dammit, shit will get interesting just as im dodging the coffin lol thats if i live to be 80+ (hopes).

[ss30]

My worry with this is as above. A little Arab influence and this will be buried. Lockheed have done some phenomenal things over the years and glad to see them still trailblazing.

As we are supposedly running out of oil and gas we need an alternative, and the Arabs must know it too.

[WotTheFook]

As we are supposedly running out of oil and gas we need an alternative, and the Arabs must know it too.

This. The Middle East countries must know that if this is successful, then the game's up regarding the black stuff having the monopoly. Their ability to print money will go down the toilet.

It's not just Arabs too; Ahmadinejad's cash cow will be gone as well, so how will Iran fund his projects?

[rmj2663]

Interesting. Fusion is certainly possible, but it’s extremely unprofitable still, which is the only thing holding it back. There aren’t many companies out there willing make that kind of investment for a potential return in 40 years. Combined with the fact that this “40 year” timescale has been the prediction for the past 70 years, it’s easy to see why no-one’s taken a punt on it.

I can’t really comment on the science in the article, but the “cheap and plentiful” hydrogen it talks of would be a viable energy source in itself, without taking into account that the two required isotopes, tritium and deuterium, are even less common.

But it may well be that LM are just making a public statement to potential investors ; whoever does get it working has an energy monopoly for basically eternity

[blacksheep]

I was under the impression that fusion wasn't economically viable - as in you didn't get out (in a usable manner) more than you put in with current tech?

Now maybe scaling up to an industrial scale that might be different but I'm dubious until somewhere like MIT or current nuclear providers like Westinghouse or Areva buy into it.

[WotTheFook]

The relative scarcity of Deuterium and Tritium might make mass-production of this not viable, apart from starting an obvious gold-rush to extract heavy water from wherever they can. There's quite a stash in a Norwegian fjord on board a sunken ferry that's been there quite a while, but bringing that up might attract attention and upset the Norwegians.

Might this be another sub-contract job for Ballard and his submersibles?

[reverend]

I was reading about Andreas Rossi's work with his E-Cat stuff quite a while ago, last I'd heard it passed some tests quite well but just done a quick Google and it looks like people are wanting to now verify the claims that the people who verified it made.

It's all very complicated, and I did read somewhere that he had been paid by the American Government / DoD.

There's a bit more here:

http://ecatreport.com/andrearossi/mo...-for-the-e-cat