Lockheed Martin Develops Compact Fusion Reactor

[jordan179]

According to Reuters, "Lockheed says makes breakthrough on fusion energy project," by Andrea Shalai,

Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire

Comments

[prester_scott]

I agree, this is tremendously good news.

The angle that warms the cockles of my heart and which you did not really develop in your post, is that these reactors being small and modular with high density output and high fuel economy, will in time render the power grid obsolete. Transmission and distribution of electric power is a tremendous cost, maintenance problem, and vulnerability to assault by both natural and human forces.

Another point: the costs and logistics of transporting coal will fade away, and for oil, will be vastly reduced.

[jordan179]

That's a good point -- every small city could own one or two of these reactors and supply their power needs locally. This would greatly reduce the vulnerability of our grid to attack and accident.

And yeah -- you could transport the whole fuel requirements of one of these reactors for years in a single (lead shielded) box easily within the capability of an ordinary car to carry. Say farewell to trainloads of fuel.

[prester_scott]

Some years ago I visited the power plant closest to where I live. It's a coal plant. I was allowed onto a high enough floor of the main building to be able to see the whole property out the windows. Acres of coal piled up. Conveyance systems. Sprinkler systems (the piles will catch fire if left to themselves). Train tracks leading off in all directions. And what I saw represented, oh, maybe two weeks' worth of fuel. Two weeks? So if the trains stop rolling for even a few days, they're at risk of having to shut down

[jordan179]

And nuclear fusion is an inherently safe technology -- if the reaction runs hot and breaches magnetic containment, it dies out almost instantly. You'd at worst get a flare of plasma which might destroy the reactor chamber and start conventional fires. Tritium is seriously radioactive, but it's a light gas, and one which would either escape into space or combine with oxygen to make tritiated water -- the tiny amounts of tritiated water which could be released into the ecosystem would be rather rapidly diluted to harmlessness. A simple double-layered containment shell around the reactor vessel, designed to be far enough away that the plasma torch would cool before touching it, would provide enough safety for commercial purposes. There are no heavy metals involved to get stuck in the local soil

[the_mcp]

The beta particles emitted by tritium's decay are also fairly low-energy, as such things go; they can only propagate about 6mm in air, and can't penetrate past the outermost later (the stratum corneum) of the skin, which consists of dead cells anyway. So even if the stuff did escape, it's several orders of magnitude less dangerous than anything a fission reactor puts out.

[gothelittle]

That was the same initial thought that I had. But then again, my ideal power grid with current technology would have a main backbone of thorium reactors, a secondary sprinkling of uranium reactors, and a black box reactor of the sort that they're building in Japan in every hospital and public highschool, at the least.

My thought, of course, is more of distribution of power sources than simply generating a bunch of power.