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Team Confirms UCLA Tabletop Fusion

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 13, 2006 12:38 PM
from the doc-oc-not-available-for-comment dept.
Science Technology
An anonymous reader writes "A team of New York physicists has confirmed that a tabletop contraption made at UCLA does in fact generate nuclear fusion at room temperatures, using pairs of crystals and a small tank of deuterium. But unlike less reliable reports back in the 1980s, there's no talk this time of producing endless supplies of power. Rather, the technology could lead to ultra-portable x-ray machines and even a wearable device that could provide safe, continuous cancer treatment."
+ -
story

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[+] Hardware: New 'Stellarator' Design for Fusion Reactors 171 comments
eldavojohn writes "The holy grail of fusion reactors has always seemed 'just a few years off' for many decades. But a recent design enhancement termed a 'Stellarator' may change all that. The point at which a fusion reactor crashes is when particles begin escaping due to disruptions in the plasma. A NYU team has discovered that coiling specific wires to form a magnetic field may contain the plasma. This may be a a viable way to create a plasma body with axial symmetry, and a far better chance of remaining stable. Like other forms of containment this does require energy itself, but could bring us closer to a stable fusion reactor. It may not be cold fusion or 'table top' fusion but it certainly is a step forward. The paper is up for peer review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
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  • Key Application Overlooked (Score:5, Informative)

    by TripMaster Monkey (862126) * on Monday February 13 2006, @12:39PM (#14708072)

    From TFA:
    Rather, the most immediate application may come in the form of a battery-operated, portable neutron generator. Such a device could be used to detect explosives or to scan luggage at airports, and it could also be an important tool for a wide range of laboratory experiments.
    I'm surprised that the article didn't go into more depth on the explosives detection angle, as a neutron generator is an excellent method for detecting fissionable material, and I'm sure the folks over at Homeland Security would like a better way to guard against nuclear devices being smuggled into our country.

    For more info on neutron generators and their possible application in fissionable materials detection, please look here (PDF warning) [latech.edu].

    • Re:Key Application Overlooked (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NitsujTPU (19263) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:54PM (#14708270)
      Everyone's overloaded on hearing about people blowing up airplanes. Hunting down terrorists is the depressing fact harped at us constantly in all directions. A two sentence mention in the article is about all that is really warranted, don't you think? Perhaps they should have said "nukes," or "fissionable material." Fissionable material doesn't really hit home for most people though. Nukes sounds outlandish. Explosives is a bit too broad.

      Not being a scientific paper, the details of the procedure aren't germaine to the article.

      Eh, it's close enough, right?
    • guard against nuclear devices being smuggled into our country.

      Ahem... or out of the country. Keeping tabs on one of the worlds largest nuclear stockpiles is a major, fulltime job and not one to be taken lightly.

    • Re:Key Application Overlooked (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Temkin (112574) on Monday February 13 2006, @01:01PM (#14708364)

      You missed the other key application... A cheap ready supply of neutrons is exactly what you need to transmute elements... Sadly, this includes the most common element transmutation carried out by mankind to date... U-238 to Pu-239. Cheap tabletop neutrons means cheap Pu-239 without the cost & mess of having a breeder fission reactor...

      This will make non-proliferation all the harder. :(

      • You missed the other key application... A cheap ready supply of neutrons is exactly what you need to transmute elements... Sadly, this includes the most common element transmutation carried out by mankind to date... U-238 to Pu-239. Cheap tabletop neutrons means cheap Pu-239 without the cost & mess of having a breeder fission reactor...

        This will make non-proliferation all the harder. :(

        Not really. You still have to mine and purify the uranium (a decidely non trivial task), then you have to bombard (literally) tons of U-238, then you have to extract the Pu from the U (extremely non trivial). Or, in short, while you avoid the messy step of a reactor - you still have a large and difficult (and messy) industrial process. (I.E. nation state level, not terrorist groups.)

        • Re:Key Application Overlooked (Score:5, Interesting)

          by aminorex (141494) on Monday February 13 2006, @02:44PM (#14709669) Homepage Journal
          No, it does not require tons of U-238 to produce supercritical masses of Pu-239. Less than a ton will do very nicely. What it does require is a fair amount of Tritium. D-D fusion neutrons are too slow. D-T fusion neutrons are perfect for the production of Pu-239. Separating the Pu from the U is trivial. It is a purely chemical process. I did this with an IEC fusor using surplus DU from a 747 counterweight. Using the fusor it would have taken gigawatts of electric power to produce a critical mass in less than a decade, and the process was impractical for weapon production. I don't know enough about the new process to comment, but if it improved the electrical efficiency by a couple of orders of magnitude, it would result in a viable process.

        • Um don't you need protons for that also? Adding neutrons would just create isotopes...

          No. You have to overcome the charge of the protons to get them to enter the nucleus. If it were easy to get protons to enter a nucleus, we would have had fusion decades ago.... Of course the universe wouldn't exist as we know it, but that's not really germane to the discusison. Neutrons, having no charge at all, fly right in and collide, unimpeded by the electron cloud or the protons.

          If I remember correctly, there's a

      • Re:Key Application Overlooked (Score:5, Informative)

        by lgw (121541) on Monday February 13 2006, @02:19PM (#14709382) Journal
        Modern nuclear weapons are around 1 MT, usually a bit less, as that's the optimal size for a weapon you can target accurately. The larger nukes of old were designed to crack silos with a near miss, were extremely expensive for their mission, and were taken out of service long ago. If a terrorist gets a nuclear weapon, it's either going to be a sub-MT military weapon, or a quite a bit smaller "home made" fission only device (modern nukes are pretty sophisticated fusion-pumped-fission devices).

        Let's do the math [nuclearweaponarchive.org]. A 1 MT nuke detonated at optimal blast height will knock down residential structures at a radius of 10 km, more solid buildings at 7 km, and at 5 km knock down reinfored buildings and kill people outright from the blast (and all other effects, such as high doses of radiation, have smaller radii). A surface blast would have a far smaller effect. The only real point of a surface blast is to generate radioactive fallout (an air blast generates surprisingly little, though it would still hinder clean-up and rebuilding).

        So yes, in theory, a terrorist with a high-quality military nuke (let's imagine a few were sold out of the old USSR armory, and somehow still worked today (the tritium would have to be replaced, which is quite technical, but lets imagine a scientist came with the bomb)) could sit a couple of kilometers off the coast and destroy some structures along the coast. Good for psycological impact, but not much else, and insanely expensive to carry out. A 50 kt fission bomb, a far more likely scenario for a terrorist, would have less than 40% of the blast radius of the high quality military bomb, and would probably need to be within 1 km to be effective.

        A surface blast over *land* is what a terrorist wants, because the radioactive fallout would cause a world of hurt. You'd get very little of that even 1 km off the coast, and even a ship at a dock would produce far less fallout than a bomb 1 km inland. It's *definitely* worth checking for nukes at ports of entry: the threat just goes down very fast as the bomb moves away from land.

  • Tabletop fusion (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bit_Squeezer (824571) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:41PM (#14708099)
    Crystals and holy water?

  • Interesting (Score:4, Informative)

    by hey! (33014) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:42PM (#14708119) Homepage Journal
    It's quite an accomplishment. However, as the article noted, they don't mention even the remote future possibility of creating a self-sustaining reaction. So I'm assuming that there is no way even in principle this technology could be scaled to yield more power than it uses.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)

      by Vellmont (569020) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:54PM (#14708279)

      So I'm assuming that there is no way even in principle this technology could be scaled to yield more power than it uses.


      From the sound of what's going on, I think that's correct. The thing about a confined fusion generator is that it works through having the plasma at enormous temperatures. At these high temperatures the particles are slamming into each other at high speed, occasionally so hard they fuse together. This fusion itself produces more heat, so there's a feedback loop that's sustaining the reaction. This device sounds like it works through just accelerating particles with an electric field to high speeds, and then smashes the particles into one another. I don't see any potential for feedback here, so a sustained reaction seems unlikely.

  • Better than two (Score:5, Funny)

    by DigitlDud (443365) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:42PM (#14708120)
    "Our device uses two crystals instead of one, which doubles the acceleration potential," says Jeffrey Geuther

    Yeah well, now I'm going to use three!

  • Room temperature? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sploxx (622853) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:43PM (#14708126)
    Although the device as a whole may be at room temperature, the region where the fusion reactions occur is at a much higher temperature (10^6K or similar) - as it is needed for fusion.

    Speedy particles smashing into each other have a lot of kinetic energy in the center of mass inertial system. This is nothing different than 'heat'.

      • Re:Room temperature? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sploxx (622853) on Monday February 13 2006, @06:29PM (#14712033)
        [[Speedy particles smashing into each other have a lot of kinetic energy in the center of mass inertial system. This is nothing different than 'heat'.]]

        Wrong. Heat is random motion.

        Well, the 'smashing' part I explicitely stated accounts for the thermalization.

        If simple kinetic energy was all it took to have heat, then any gas cloud out in space with a large velocity relative to us would be extremely "hot." But we all know intuitively that things do not change temperature just because they speed up. The air in a moving car is not hotter than the air in a parked car. Heat is the random motion of particles with respect to each other .
        No, not 'respect to each other', in respect to the center of mass, as I wrote. Heat is the average kinetic energy of particles (in classical statistical mechanics).

        The collision of a few particles doesn't qualify.
        And why not? Care to explain?

        When gas quickly depressurizes, it cools down. Ever wonder why? It's because as the gas escapes, the particles which are near each other tend to all move in the same direction (outward) and thus their random motions with respect to each other are decreased. Thus, the temperature drops.
        Yes, the temperature drops. But the gas still carries the same amount of heat (transportation by photons excluded). Smash two nuclei, they interact, a hot ball of reaction products results and cools down as the particles move away from each other according to a law similar to pV=NRT.
        The temperature drops, the amount of heat in this ensemble of molecules/atoms/particles stays the same.

        Or consider how a rocket nozzle works by focusing the molecular motions in a particular direction (by forcing the gas through a small opening to increase the pressure and then into a cone to suddenly decrease it), thereby converting the high pressure and heat of the exhaust gas into directed kinetic energy.
        What do you want to say with this paragraph?

        Learn more before making these kinds of proclamations.
        Sigh. Bold and derogatory statements like this activate /.'s groupthink and your post gets moderated higher than mine. ("He's louder so he knows better...") I infer from your arrogance that you probably have a PhD in theoretical physics - but you should've learned some communication skills, too :-)

  • What? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Odin_Tiger (585113) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:44PM (#14708134) Journal
    "application may come in the form of a battery-operated, portable neutron generator"

    Wait, what? We finally got cold fusion, but 'batteries not included'?

  • Key chain application overlooked (Score:5, Funny)

    by SEWilco (27983) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:46PM (#14708164) Homepage Journal
    Also overlooked is the forthcoming businesses selling crystal pendants and key chains which "fight" cancer and provide other beneficial effects.

  • Licensing... (Score:5, Funny)

    by lukewarmfusion (726141) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:46PM (#14708167) Homepage Journal
    I will now take bids on licensing my screenname.

  • Incredible (and im not talking about the article) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MrTester (860336) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:52PM (#14708250)
    Its amazingly clear that not only have few of you RTFA, most have not even gotten past the title before you threw out a post.

    Its a whole 4 sentences which make it clear that this is NOT a power source, and half the posts are talking about its potential as a power source.

    Now if I could just find a way to bottle the power of human stupidity...

    • Re:Incredible (and im not talking about the articl (Score:5, Insightful)

      by acacia (101223) on Monday February 13 2006, @01:48PM (#14709004)
      Bottle the power of human stupidity? Sorry, you are too late. Look no further than the Vatican, Al Qaeda, or any other religions institution. Superstition, fear of death, and the promise of eternal life are all their tools, and with proper respect of their un-verifiable claims (faith), lack of reason, and willingness to submit you too can be their servant.
    • "Now if I could just find a way to bottle the power of human stupidity..."

      it's called 'Beer'

  • Darn (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:52PM (#14708255)
    Darn, now I have to go sell my palladium stash that I have put away just in case someone actually made it work the old fashioned way.

  • could provide safe, continuous cancer treatment. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JustNiz (692889) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:54PM (#14708271)
    Yeah beacuse everyone knows being continuously bombarded with X-Rays is safe.

  • 200,000 Electron Volts (Score:5, Funny)

    by sarlos (903082) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:55PM (#14708282)
    But can it crank out 1.21 gigawatts?

  • Jerks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by breckinshire (891764) on Monday February 13 2006, @12:58PM (#14708319) Homepage
    Is it just me, or did this article make the Renselaar folks seem like smug jerks? As in, "Yes, not only did we prove that it works, but we proved that we can do it a lot better than those toking, surfing, hippies!"

  • Get the paper here (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2006, @12:59PM (#14708330)
    The paper [rpi.edu].

  • tabletop fusion (Score:3, Insightful)

    by penguin-collective (932038) on Monday February 13 2006, @01:01PM (#14708356)
    Tabletop fusion has been in use for quite some time. This device looks like it's a little bit simpler than the Farnsworth fusor, but it's an incremental improvement, not a radical breakthrough.

    The breakthrough would come should anybody ever figure out how to break even energetically in a tabletop fusion device, and I think it's quite possible that that will happen sooner or later.

  • Ob. Ghostbusters Quote (Score:3, Funny)

    by GJSchaller (198865) on Monday February 13 2006, @02:25PM (#14709459) Homepage
    Dr Ray Stantz: You know, it just occurred to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment.

    Dr. Egon Spengler: I blame myself.

    Dr. Peter Venkman: So do I.

    Dr Ray Stantz: Well, no sense in worrying about it now.

    Dr. Peter Venkman: Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back.

    • Re:Cool (Score:3, Informative)

      by eobanb (823187)
      I hope this works out as a decent power source

      Sorry to disappoint, but it's just not going to happen. These types of methods of fusion are always going to require more energy input than output. Efficient artificial reactors may be possible in the future, but for now they remain a pipe dream--especially 'cold fusion' ones.
    • IANAP (I am not a physicist), but I do know that nuclear fusion doesn't create fallout like nuclear fission does. Perhaps this is what you are thinking of. I ought to also remind you that radiation plays a huge part in medical treatments of all sorts. So while you might have been sarcastic when you said 'tremendous idea,' I'd have to agree with you there.

      • Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Informative)

        by AKAImBatman (238306) <(akaimbatman) (at) (gmail.com)> on Monday February 13 2006, @12:59PM (#14708337) Homepage Journal
        IANAP (I am not a physicist), but I do know that nuclear fusion doesn't create fallout like nuclear fission does.

        Fallout is caused by one of two events:

        1. Excess nuclear materials not consumed in the reaction are left behind.

        2. The neutron radiation from the event interacted with nearby materials (such as the dirt on the ground) to create new radioactive materials.

        Nuclear fusion is "clean" in that there are no radioactive materials left over from the reaction. However, it does produce an incredibly strong neutron flux which can easily create radioactive fallout in nearby materials.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout [wikipedia.org]

        Given how destructive neutron radiation is, I'm somewhat surprised that they'd be talking about strapping a reasonably strong source to someone's person.
        • Given how destructive neutron radiation is, I'm somewhat surprised that they'd be talking about strapping a reasonably strong source to someone's person.

          I think that's kind of the idea, if you were trying to kill a tumor with it.

          At any rate, I get the feeling that the 'cancer treatment' idea was probably just something that whoever gave the interview to the article's author pulled out of their ass when they were asked about 'possible uses.' It sounds good, and who knows, it might even be true.

        • Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Tim C (15259) on Monday February 13 2006, @02:57PM (#14709801)
          I was a plasma physicist, and did some research on topics related to fusion before quiting to become a programmer.

          Basically, you're right. The nice things about fusion (or some of them at least) are that there's no scope for a Chernobyl-style meltdown and the reaction products and reactants are safe.

          The problem, as you say, is that it's an excellent source of neutrons. The generator and its housing have to be designed to absorb as much of that neutron flux as possible. This inevitably produces radioactive isotopes in these materials, which will eventually break down to the point that they must be replaced.

          The nuclear waste associated with a fusion power plant isn't as bad as that for a fission one, but it still exists and still needs to be dealt with.
      • I never let science get in the way of a snarky comment.

      • Re:Oh great... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Waffle Iron (339739) on Monday February 13 2006, @01:36PM (#14708823)
        Thanks for continuing to propagate irrational fear of nuclear materials. Fallout is associated with the older, "dirtier" fission nukes. We haven't seen one like that in, what... 45 or 50 years? This is also different - not only because the amount of emissions are small - but because it's neutrons.

        And what are neutrons? Oh yeah, just one of the most penetrating and dangerous forms of radiation. Why else do you think that when they had to find a form of radiation that could kill tank crews inside their vehicles, the viable choice was the neutron bomb?

        Pure fusion bombs create huge numbers of neutrons. If the explosion is near the ground, these neutrons can activate the debris that gets sucked into the mushroom cloud and create plenty of fallout. (Not to mention, most bombs use a natural uranium case to get a cheap energy boost when it's fissioned by the extra fusion neutrons. Most of total the energy output is often still fission.)

        And any amount of emissions that's intense enough to kill cancer tumors isn't exactly "small".

        Also: Nowhere in the article does it mention anything about breaking apart massive atoms and leaving behind radioactive isotopes that are chemically reactive in the human body; Which, I assume, is what you're so worried about.

        Instead, you add neutrons to the the elements already inside your body, thereby turning them into dangerous radioactive isotopes where they sit.

    • Re:This sounds oddly familiar (Score:5, Informative)

      by rossifer (581396) on Monday February 13 2006, @01:00PM (#14708341) Journal
      The difficulty with small scale fusion isn't making it happen. That's been done many, many times [fusor.net]. The difficulty with small scale fusion (and all fusion) is making it produce power (more power extracted from the reaction than put into the reaction).

      That's where Pons and Fleishman got hosed. They claimed a 300% power surplus without experimental verification. This announcement is different from that for several reasons.

      1) These guys are specifically not claiming excess power.
      2) They're claiming to have lots of high-energy neutrons.
      3) This is actually the announcement of a second group of scientists repeating the experiment and successfully verifying the results of the first group.

      In short, this announcement is nothing like the cold fusion debacle of the late '80s.

      Regards,
      Ross

      • additionally... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by YesIAmAScript (886271) on Monday February 13 2006, @01:43PM (#14708926)
        Another big difference is this team is announcing their results in a technical journal, not in a press conference.

        It'll be interesting to see what comes of this.

      • Re:This sounds oddly familiar (Score:4, Informative)

        by JourneyExpertApe (906162) on Monday February 13 2006, @02:41PM (#14709646)
        That's where Pons and Fleishman got hosed. They claimed a 300% power surplus without experimental verification.

        I think the more important difference between this and Pons and Fleishman's cold fusion is that this is clearly fusion, and P&F wasn't. The effects P&F observed were probably the result of a chemical reaction and/or bad experimental design. They didn't observe any of the characteristic radiation or products.

        FYI, this isn't the first tabletop deuterium fusion discovered. See bubble fusion [wikipedia.org].
    • That is fusion. Moving neutrons from one atom to another increases the atomic weight of the recipient atom. You don't necessarily need to fuse atoms together to call something "fusion."

    • Re:IS this really FUSION? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kadin2048 (468275) <slashdot@kadin.xoxy@net> on Monday February 13 2006, @01:28PM (#14708692) Homepage Journal
      Erm, producing neutrons implies some sort of nuclear activity. Either fission or fusion of some sort of decay process (spontaneous neutron emission). By ruling out fission and neutron emission via decay, which are possible to do by knowing the inputs, you're pretty much stuck with fusion as an explanation for the output.

      You make it sound like shuffling some neutrons around is easy. It's not. Producing a source of neutrons is a pretty nice feat by itself. However there's a very, very large difference between producing neutrons via fusion, and plonking down a SimCity 2000-esque, pollution-free, "Fusion Power Plant."

    • Re: Use as weapons? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Black Parrot (19622) on Monday February 13 2006, @01:38PM (#14708853)
      > Are we talking x-ray laser sort of technology? Is 200,000 electron volts enough to do significant damage? Surface burns and radiation poisoning?

      That's why we mount them on sharks' heads.

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