Maybe I misunderstand everything, but why couldn't such a system be use on Earth as fusion power plant? (it seems to produce more energy than is consumed to produce the fuel, right?)
> Maybe I misunderstand everything, but why couldn't such a system be use on Earth as fusion power plant?
That was my question also (see my other post in this thread) -- if they really achieve fusion break-even (i.e. produce more power than they require to start the reaction) then they have done something that many decades of fusion research have so far failed to achieve. If their device can really do what they claim, it has implications far beyond the described project.
I am not validating these sources but suggest that there is a known approach that collapses aluminium over a core deuterium tritium. It is not self sustaining, but it generates some net positive energy, thus enough I guess to throw a pellet out the door
If this method actually worked, I think we would all know by now. Achieving break-even in a controlled laboratory fusion reaction is the "holy grail" of fusion research and would produce instant worldwide headlines, not unlike the (ultimately false) claims made by Pons & Fleischmann, who thought they had achieved room-temperature fusion some time ago:
So I don't think so. It's a matter of how much a positive result would completely change the fusion research landscape. It's something that people would know about right away.
Sorry, this site really doesn't like pinch to zoom. I'm having a little trouble - the post wasn't even supposed to be posted, but oh well.
I was doing research and apparently I was wrong too, depending on a definition of fusion breakeven (which I was unable to find)
Care to explain what is yours?
If you achieve even smallest amount of fusion, technically you have more energy than you started with.
Electrical break even would be the holy grail of fusion research, but even then you have to reach economic feasibility (produce enough power to pay back the cost of a plant)
> I was doing research and apparently I was wrong too, depending on a definition of fusion breakeven (which I was unable to find) Care to explain what is yours?
Fusion break-even means the reaction produces more than or equal to the power required to initiate it. Apart from stars and weapons, it has never been achieved.
Quote: "The fusion energy gain factor, usually expressed with the symbol Q, is the ratio of fusion power produced in a nuclear fusion reactor to the power required to maintain the plasma in steady state. The condition of Q = 1 is referred to as breakeven."
> If you achieve even smallest amount of fusion, technically you have more energy than you started with.
Yes, but with serious problems. One of them is that you have to continue providing more power than the reaction creates, in order to keep the reaction going. This means the overall available power is less than the input power. The reaction is using up much of the power to sustain itself, and that power can't be applied to another purpose. So even though technically there is a lot of power present, it cannot be applied to any purpose other than energizing the plasma. This means the net available power is less than the input power.
This is a bit hard to visualize, so let's say that we have 1000 watts available to apply to some ordinary purpose, or to sustain a fusion reaction.
We discover that the fusion reactor requires all 1000 watts to keep its plasma activated and fusing, but the fusion reaction only produces 250 watts. So, even though there is 1,250 watts of power in the system, 1000 watts of that is required to sustain the plasma in its fusing state and is therefore unavailable. That means only 250 watts is available for any other purpose.
Because a powerplant has one extra required component that a rocket doesn't- convert the reaction energy into electricity. Every known, engineered method doing that that we currently have is sufficiently inefficient that more energy is lost in conversion than the fusion reaction produces, which is why you get less usable energy out that you put in. It's easy to make energy from fusion, it's hard to get that energy in a usable form, which is what we mean by "break even". A rocket is not subject to that constraint, because the raw reaction products themselves, without conversion to any other form, are exactly what a rocket wants anyway.
