Cold Confusion

Tests conducted at NASA Glenn Research Center in 1989 and elsewhere consistently showed evidence of anomalous heat during loading and unloading deuterium into bulk palladium. At one time called “cold fusion,” now called “low-energy nuclear reactions” (LENR), such effects are now published in peer-reviewed journals and are gaining attention and mainstream respectability. The instrumentation expertise of NASA GRC is applied to improve the diagnostics for investigating the anomalous heat in LENR.

Relevant Presentation:
+ Download presentation given at a LENR Workshop at NASA GRC in 2011 [available soon].

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/research.htm

1 MW E-Cat Cold Fusion Device Test Successful

On October 28, 2011, Andrea Rossi demonstrated his 1 megawatt E-Cat system to his first customer, who had engineers/scientists on hand to test/validate its performance. Due to a glitch, it provided 479 kW of continuous power for 5.5 hours during the self-sustained mode.

Well, the big day has come and gone. Andrea Rossi's one-megawatt-capable E-Cat cold fusion device has been tested in Bologna, Italy; and the unknown customer, who ran the test, is apparently happy.

There were some issues, so it couldn't be run at full power in self-looped mode, but what it did do was plenty impressive.

It ran for 5.5 hours producing 479 kW, while in self-looped mode. That means no substantial external energy was required to make it run, because it kept itself running, even while producing an excess of nearly half a megawatt.

http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/

Results of independent testing revealed.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2013/05/20/finally-independent-tes...

Fusion!

Fuel gain exceeding unity in an inertially confined fusion implosion
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13008.html

EM Drive Alternatives

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nasa-latest-tests-show-physics-230112770.html

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/emdrive-news-rumors/

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13493
http://www.sciencealert.com/german-has-just-successfully-fired-up-a-revo...
http://www.sciencealert.com/first-of-its-kind-german-stellarator-could-r...

An international project to generate energy from nuclear fusion has reached a key milestone, with half of the infrastructure required now built.

Bernard Bigot, the director-general of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter), the main facility of which is based in southern France, said the completion of half of the project meant the effort was back on track, after a series of difficulties. This would mean that power could be produced from the experimental site from 2025.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/06/iter-nuclear-fusion-...

Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists

The dream of nuclear fusion is on the brink of being realised, according to a major new US initiative that says it will put fusion power on the grid within 15 years.

The project, a collaboration between scientists at MIT and a private company, will take a radically different approach to other efforts to transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a viable commercial energy source. The team intend to use a new class of high-temperature superconductors they predict will allow them to create the world’s first fusion reactor that produces more energy than needs to be put in to get the fusion reaction going.

Bob Mumgaard, CEO of the private company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has attracted $50 million in support of this effort from the Italian energy company Eni, said: “The aspiration is to have a working power plant in time to combat climate change. We think we have the science, speed and scale to put carbon-free fusion power on the grid in 15 years.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/09/nuclear-fusion-on-br...

China's 'artificial sun' reaches 100 million degrees Celsius marking milestone for nuclear fusion

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-15/china-attempts-to-create-an-artif...

Chinese nuclear scientists have reached an important milestone in the global quest to harness energy from nuclear fusion, a process that occurs naturally in the sun.

Key points:
The "artificial sun" is designed to replicate the fusion process that occurs in the sun
Dr Matthew Hole said the achievement is significant for fusion science around the world
Fusion is seen as a solution for energy issues as it is clean, sustainable and powerful
The team of scientists from China's Institute of Plasma Physics announced this week that plasma in their Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) — dubbed the "artificial sun" — reached a whopping 100 million degrees Celsius, temperature required to maintain a fusion reaction that produces more power than it takes to run.

To put that in perspective, the temperature at the core of the sun is said to be about 15 million degrees Celsius, making the plasma in China's "artificial sun" more than six times hotter than the original.

Researchers have reportedly made a breakthrough in the quest to unlock a “near-limitless, safe, clean” source of energy: they have got more energy out of a nuclear fusion reaction than they put in.

Nuclear fusion involves smashing together light elements such as hydrogen to form heavier elements, releasing a huge burst of energy in the process. The approach, which gives rise to the heat and light of the sun and other stars, has been hailed as having huge potential as a sustainable, low-carbon energy source.

However, since nuclear fusion research began in the 1950s, researchers have been unable to a demonstrate a positive energy gain, a condition known as ignition.

That was, it seems, until now.

According to a report in the Financial Times, which has yet to be confirmed by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California that is behind the work, researchers have managed to release 2.5 MJ of energy after using just 2.1 MJ to heat the fuel with lasers.

Dr Robbie Scott, of the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Central Laser Facility (CLF) Plasma Physics Group, who contributed to this research, described the results as a “momentous achievement”.

“Fusion has the potential to provide a near-limitless, safe, clean, source of carbon-free baseload energy,” he said. “This seminal result from the National Ignition Facility is the first laboratory demonstration of fusion ‘energy-gain’ – where more fusion energy is output than input by the laser beams. The scale of the breakthrough for laser fusion research cannot be overstated.

“The experiment demonstrates unambiguously that the physics of Laser Fusion works,” he added. “In order to transform NIF’s result into power production a lot of work remains, but this is a key step along the path.”

Prof Jeremy Chittenden, professor of plasma physics at Imperial College London, agreed. “If what has been reported is true and more energy has been released than was used to produce the plasma, that is a true breakthrough moment which is tremendously exciting,” he said.

“It proves that the long sought-after goal, the ‘holy grail’ of fusion, can indeed be achieved.”

But experts have stressed that while the results would be an important proof of principle, the technology is a long way from being a mainstay of the energy landscape. To start with, 0.4MJ is about 0.1kWh – about enough energy to boil a kettle.

“To turn fusion into a power source we’ll need to boost the energy gain still further,” said Chittenden. “We’ll also need to find a way to reproduce the same effect much more frequently and much more cheaply before we can realistically turn this into a power plant.”

Prof Justin Wark, professor of physics at the University of Oxford, added that while, in principle, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could produce such a result about once a day, a fusion power plant would need to do it 10 times a second.

Prof Jeremy Chittenden, professor of plasma physics at Imperial College London, agreed. “If what has been reported is true and more energy has been released than was used to produce the plasma, that is a true breakthrough moment which is tremendously exciting,” he said.

“It proves that the long sought-after goal, the ‘holy grail’ of fusion, can indeed be achieved.”

But experts have stressed that while the results would be an important proof of principle, the technology is a long way from being a mainstay of the energy landscape. To start with, 0.4MJ is about 0.1kWh – about enough energy to boil a kettle.

“To turn fusion into a power source we’ll need to boost the energy gain still further,” said Chittenden. “We’ll also need to find a way to reproduce the same effect much more frequently and much more cheaply before we can realistically turn this into a power plant.”

Prof Justin Wark, professor of physics at the University of Oxford, added that while, in principle, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could produce such a result about once a day, a fusion power plant would need to do it 10 times a second.

“The experiments on NIF demonstrate the scientific process of ignition and how this leads to high fusion energy gain, but to turn this into a power station we need to develop simpler methods to reach these conditions, which will need to be more efficient and above all cheaper in order for inertial fusion to be realised as a fusion power source.”

The latest results, if true, top the last big breakthrough by the facility which came just last year when it was announced that the team had hit 70% of the laser energy put in to the experiment released as nuclear energy.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/12/breakthrough-in-nucl...

From: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2386288-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough...

Nuclear fusion breakthrough: Have US scientists finally produced cheap, clean energy? | New Scientist

A report in the Financial Times suggests that the US National Ignition Facility has produced a fusion reaction with a net gain in energy, but what does that mean?
By Matthew Sparkes 7 August 2023

A breakthrough fusion experiment has produced a net gain in energy for only the second time ever and with improved performance over the first successful attempt. But before you get excited about the coming era of unlimited clean energy, there are some important
caveats to keep in mind.

What’s so good about fusion power?

Today’s nuclear power plants rely on fission reactions, where atoms are smashed apart to release energy and smaller particles. Fusion works differently, by squeezing smaller particles together into larger atoms the and same process that operates within our sun. Fusion can create more energy, with no radioactive waste, but containing and controlling such a reaction has proven to be a monumental problem for both physicists and engineers.

In December 2022, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California reached a historic milestone: they got more energy out of a fusion reaction than they put in . The lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) fusion reactor used lasers to create enough heat and pressure to turn deuterium and tritium – isotopes of hydrogen – into a plasma in which fusion could occur. These lasers output 2.1 megajoules of energy, but the reactor produced about 2.5 megajoules, roughly a 20 per cent increase. While those numbers are nowhere near the sort of ratio you would need to run a commercial reactor, it offered a vital glimmer of hope that fusion reactors were a viable goal.

Now the lab has reportedly created a second ignition – the term for a reaction that surpasses break-even – and improved on those
numbers with the reactor producing around 3.5 megajoules. The experiment occurred on 30 July, according to a report in the Financial
Times .

“Since demonstrating fusion ignition for the first time at the National Ignition Facility in December 2022, we have continued to
perform experiments to study this exciting new scientific regime. In an experiment conducted on July 30, we repeated ignition at NIF. Analysis of those results is underway. As is our standard practice, we plan on reporting those results at upcoming scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed publications,” a LLNL spokesperson told New Scientist.

Does this mean fusion power has been solved?

In short, no.

One problem is that while the reactor’s output is higher than the laser’s output, the lasers themselves are very inefficient. To create 2.1 megajoules of energy they draw 500 trillion watts , which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So a significant challenge for the future is to create a reaction that breaks even with its total energy requirements, and not just the final laser stage.

Another issue is that the NIF reactor can fire only once, for a few billionths of a second, before it has to spend several hours cooling its components in order to be switched on once more. A commercial reactor would have to run nearly continuously with multiple ignitions a second.

And, of course, even once a reactor can run for long periods and offset its true energy requirements by the lasers, it would still only be breaking even. For fusion to become a viable alternative to existing power sources, we to must
be able on to a large amount net energy – enough to make the enormous cost of building it worthwhile.

What are people saying?

Jeremy Chittenden at Imperial College London says that most physicists see a 2021 experiment from LLNL, where this type of reactor was proven to be able to work at all, regardless of output, as the real milestone.

“The result from December last year was the first time we got more energy out than we delivered in, and so that was was taken as the bigger news story. But actually – scientifically – that was just a consequence of what they’d demonstrated the year before. And this is essentially you know, further amplification of that record yield,” he says.

Nuclear fusion researchers have achieved historic energy milestone Chittenden says the latest advances have come from controlling the reaction for longer periods, increasing the amount of energy that is extracted. Currently only a few percent of the fuel is burned in LLNL’s experiments.

“This is basically a successful demonstration that they’re now understanding how to control and hold the plasma there for longer and get more energy out,” he says. “You have to light the head of the match, get the burn process working, and then you just basically have to hold the match for as long as you can before you burn your fingers.”

Will fusion be solved in the future?

While it is still impossible to tell for sure, as there could be insurmountable problems ahead, there is more cause for optimism
than ever before. The ignition milestone effectively proves that the science is sound, and makes the problem one of engineering rather than physics.

There are two main research approaches aiming to achieve viable nuclear fusion. One uses magnetic fields to contain a plasma, while
the other uses lasers. NIF uses the second approach, known as inertial confinement fusion, where a tiny capsule containing hydrogen fuel is blasted with lasers, causing it to heat up and rapidly expand. But there are a host of startups working on unusual designs
that all have the potential to break through. All these experiments are helping us to better understand the problem, and the best way forward.

Although we’re likely to see further efficiency improvements from the LLNL reactor, there will need to be fundamental changes to make such a design commercial, says Chittenden. ” It’s intrinsically inefficient because of this indirect approach, which is this conversion of lasers into X rays, means we have to heat a lot more material up than we would, for example, if we just used the lasers to heat the fuel directly.”

But one thing is clear: with a working fusion reactor still many years away at the very least, we cannot rely on the technology to solve the climate change crisis. Fusion reactors will be perhaps the greatest pay-off ever received from a coordinated research effort stretching back more than a century , but clean and abundant energy will have to come from renewable sources for the short and medium term.

Achieving nuclear fusion would be building on the shoulders of giants