Circa 2017
“We’re likely to find hydrogen pretty much anywhere we go in the Solar System,” he said.
Continue reading “VASIMR plasma engine: Earth to Mars in 39 days?” »
A Tennessee teen has become the youngest person in America—and possibly the world—to build a working nuclear reactor and achieve fusion.
Jackson Oswalt, now 14, set out on the ambitious project when he was just 12, according to USA Today, and achieved nuclear fusion in his Memphis home just hours before he turned 13 on Jan. 19, 2018.
“A couple of years back, all I did was play video games,” he told the news outlet. “And I decided I didn’t want to spend all my life doing video games.”
Continue reading “Tennessee Teen Builds Working Nuclear Fusion Reactor at Home” »
The United States should devote substantially more resources to nuclear fusion research and build an ambitious prototype fusion power plant, according to a new report.
The report is the work of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Its conclusion: it’s more important than ever for the U.S. and the world to explore roads to practical fusion power.
Imagine if we could replace fossil fuels with our very own stars. And no, we’re not talking about solar power: We’re talking nuclear fusion. And recent research is helping us get there. Meet the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, or EAST.
EAST is a fusion reactor based in Hefei, China. And it can now reach temperatures more than six times as hot as the sun. Let’s take a look at what’s happening inside. Fusion occurs when two lightweight atoms combine into a single, larger one, releasing energy in the process. It sounds simple enough, but it’s not easy to pull off. Because those two atoms share a positive charge. And just like two opposing magnets, those positive atoms repel each other.
Stars, like our sun, have a great way of overcoming this repulsion … their massive size, which creates a tremendous amount of pressure in their cores … So the atoms are forced closer together making them more likely to collide. There’s just one problem: We don’t have the technology to recreate that kind of pressure on Earth.
TAE Technologies has also looked at building a nuclear fusion rocket. Nextbigfuture had covered TAE Technologies recent announcement that they will have a commercial nuclear fusion rocket by 2023.
The AIP Conference Proceedings 2004 – Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor Space Propulsion System
The Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor (CBFR( requires approximately 50 MW of injected power for steady-state operation. The H-B11 CBFR would generate approximately 77 MW of nuclear (particle) power, half of which is recovered in the direct-energy converter with 90% efficiency. An additional 11.5 MW are needed to sustain the reactor which is provided by the thermo-electric converter and Brayton-heat engine. The principal source of heat in the CBFR-SPS is due to Bremstrahlung radiation. The thermo-electric converter recovers approximately 20% of the radiation, or 4.6 MW, transferring approximately 18.2 MW to the closed-cycle, Brayton-heat engine.
