Fusion Power Still Years Away

Years Away most followers agree ... 

Fusion power is 'approaching' reality thanks to a magnetic field breakthrough

A boost from magnetism is nearly enough to achieve fusion ignition.

By Jon Fingas|@jonfingas|November 30, 2022 2:52 PM

Fusion power may be a more realistic prospect than you think. As Motherboard reports, researchers at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that a new magnetic field setup more than tripled the energy output of the fusion reaction hotspot in experiments, "approaching" the level required for self-sustaining ignition in plasmas. The field was particularly effective at trapping heat within the hotspot, boosting the energy yield.

The hotspot's creation involved blasting 200 lasers at a fusion fuel pellet made from hydrogen isotopes like deuterium and tritium. The resulting X-rays made the pellet implode and thus produce the extremely high pressures and heat needed for fusion. The team achieved their feat by wrapping a coil around a pellet made using special metals.

The notion of using magnets to heat the fuel isn't new. University of Rochester scientists found they could use magnetism to their advantage in 2012. The Lawrence Livermore study was far more effective, however, producing 40 percent heat and more than three times the energy.

Practical fusion reactors are still many years away. The output is still far less than the energy required to create self-sustaining reactions. The finding makes ignition considerably more achievable, though, and that in turn improves the chances of an energy-positive fusion system. This also isn't the end of the magnetism experiments. A future test will use an ice-laden cryogenic capsule to help understand fusion physics. Even if ignition is still distant, the learnings from this study could provide a clearer path to that breakthrough moment.  ... ' 

Fusion Reactor Funding

 Next Steps?

US Dept of Energy injects more particles of cash into tokamak fusion reactors

The funding will continue, until the atoms fuse

Brandon Vigliarolo  in TheRegister

Mon 17 Oct 2022 // 18:45 UTC

The US Department of Energy is handing out more fusion power funding, this time doling out $47 million to 38 projects that are exploring the feasibility of tokamak reactors. 

Tokamaks use powerful magnetic fields to force plasma into either a torus or a more spherical shape, depending on the type of design used. The ultimate goal being to fuse together atoms and generate more power from this reaction than is put into the thing to sustain it, so that the excess energy can be harnessed to, say, produce electricity.

Tokamaks have been seen as a promising path to useful fusion, though one of several.

In this case, the Dept of Energy is awarding cash to researchers working to "close gaps in the science and technology basis for the tokamak approach to fusion energy." 

Uncle Sam won't have to wait too long for results, the department's acting associate director of science for fusion energy sciences Harriet Kung says. "These activities [PDF] will make optimal use of existing tokamak facilities and provide productive engagements with leading fusion institutes, moving us closer to fusion energy as a clean and abundant energy source."

2022: The year of fusion funding

This $47 million is just a small sprinkling of public cash compared to the larger bucket of money allocated to the DoE for fusion research by the 2022 Consolidated Appropriations Act.

The initial earmarking included a $713 million reserve for the DoE's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, part of which funded a different $50 million award given last month to companies trying to develop workable fusion power plants by the end of the 2030s.   .... ' 

China wants to build the world's first nuclear reactor with fusion ignition

 How close? 

China wants to build the world's first nuclear reactor with fusion ignition

By: Maksim Panasovskyi    in Gadget

China's Sichuan province could host the world's first nuclear reactor with fusion ignition.

Here's What We Know

Construction of a pulsed hybrid fusion-nuclear power station will begin in 2025. Apparently, China plans to complete all the work in a short time, as the reactor is scheduled to start up in 2028.

The station is called the Z-FFR. It will be able to create a current of 50 million A, which should be enough for fusion. The released energy will not be withdrawn. Instead, it will be redirected to start the fission reaction in the fuel. After that, the energy will go to the turbines in the form of heat, as it happens in traditional nuclear reactors.

Despite the fact that Chinese scientists are already calling the future hybrid unit the world's first nuclear reactor with thermonuclear ignition, specialists will have to solve a number of issues to implement the conceived project. In particular, to create conductors that can withstand the prohibitive current, and laser switches to quickly change the channels of energy flow.

Source: scmp: 

China Discovers Fusion Fuel on Moon

How real are the claims here?  This could lead to considerable Space mining efforts as fusion capabilities progress. 

China Discovers Stunning Crystal on the Moon,  Nuclear Fusion Fuel for Limitless Energy

The find makes China the third country to discover a new mineral on the Moon, and the country says it's analyzed the soil for rare helium-3.  By Becky Ferreira

China has discovered a crystal from the Moon made of a previously unknown mineral, while also confirming that the lunar surface contains a key ingredient for nuclear fusion, a potential form of effectively limitless power that harnesses the same forces that fuel the Sun and other stars.

The crystal is part of a batch of lunar samples collected by China’s Chang’e-5 mission, which landed on the Moon in 2020, loaded up with about four pounds of rocks, and delivered them to Earth days later. After carefully sifting through the samples—which are the first Moon rocks returned to Earth since 1976—scientists at the Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology spotted a single crystal particle, with a diameter smaller than the width of a human hair.

The crystal is made of the novel mineral Changesite—(Y), named after the Chinese Moon goddess, Chang’e, that also inspired China’s series of lunar missions. It was confirmed as a new mineral on Friday by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC) of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA), according to the Chinese state-run publication Global Times.

Changesite—(Y) is the sixth new mineral to be identified in Moon samples, and the first to be discovered by China. Before China, only the U.S. and Russia could claim to have discovered a new Moon mineral. It is a transparent crystal that formed in a region of the northern lunar near-face that was volcanically active about 1.2 billion years ago. ... ' 

Reinforcement Learning Aids Fusion Control

Linking AI Methods to  Nuclear fusion energy. 

Exploring Reinforcement Learning to Control Nuclear Fusion Reactions

Carnegie Mellon University News

Aaron Aupperlee, September 8, 2022

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) doctoral candidate Ian Char, the first CMU researcher to run an experiment on the DIII-D National Fusion Facility's tokamak machine, demonstrated that reinforcement learning algorithms can control the rotation of the machine's hydrogen plasma. Char developed two algorithms: one was trained using data from the tokamak on how the plasma reacts, while the other calculates the rate and direction at which to add hydrogen particles to affect the speed of the plasma's rotation. Said CMU's Jeff Schneider, "This work shows a path to using reinforcement learning to control other parts of the plasma state and ultimately achieve the temperatures and pressures long enough to have a power plant. That would mean limitless, clean energy for everyone."

More on Tokamak Fusion

Continue to follow.  Though have been warned recently about net energy produced measures that need to be considered.  

A nuclear fusion device pushes plasma to a record-breaking 100 million degrees

We're edging closer to commercially viable nuclear fusion.

By  Chris Young. Mar 11, 2022, in Interesting Engineering

A nuclear fusion device pushes plasma to a record-breaking 100 million degrees

Tokamak Energy ST40.Tokamak Energy

U.K.-based nuclear fusion firm Tokamak Energy says it broke a world record in nuclear fusion by achieving a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius (180,000,032 degrees Fahrenheit).

This, the company says in a press statement, is "the threshold required for commercial fusion energy."

The company's privately-funded ST40 spherical tokamak was built to test nuclear fusion, the reaction the Sun and stars use to produce energy. Fusion occurs when two atoms smash into one another to form a heavier nucleus, releasing enormous amounts of energy.

The promise of limitless, sustainable energy 

For years, companies have been trying to harness this process to provide practically limitless sustainable energy here on Earth. Now, Tokamak Energy says it has brought us one crucial step closer to achieving this goal.

The company explains that it achieved by far the highest temperature ever achieved in any spherical tokamak — the type of reactor required for nuclear fusion. Several government-backed laboratories throughout the world have already reported 100 million degrees in conventional tokamaks, including South Korea's KSTAR reactor and China's "artificial sun" EAST tokamak reactor. However, Tokamak Energy points out that its achievement was carried out with a "much more compact fusion device." The company also highlights the fact that its milestone was achieved in only five years, at a cost of less than £50 million ($70m).

India fires a deadly missile into Pakistan. By accident?

"This achievement further substantiates spherical tokamaks as the optimal route to the delivery of clean, secure, low cost, scalable, and globally deployable commercial fusion energy," Tokamak Energy explains in its statement.

A.I. could help to harness the power of the stars

Tokamak Energy says it carried out the new plasma measurements using over 25 advanced diagnostic tools incorporated into its ST40 spherical tokamak. It also says the results were verified by an independent advisory board made up of international experts.

The company explains that it will now upgrade the ST40 to test other new nuclear fusion technologies. The ST-HTS, it says, will be the world's first spherical tokamak built to demonstrate the full potential of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets, and it will be commissioned at some point in the mid-2020s. All of this will inform the design of a world-first fusion pilot plant estimated to start operation in the early 2030s.

Another U.K.-based firm, the Google-owned DeepMind, recently announced it was using machine learning A.I. algorithm to help control superheated plasma in collaboration with the Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL. If all goes to plan, we may actually tap into the potential of these artificial suns within the next decade, allowing the world a new crucial tool to help mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis.  .... ' 

Better Fusion Power with AI

More moves towards fusion.

Can AI Make a Better Fusion Reactor? Nuclear physics may be one of machine learning's newest frontiers  Rebecca Sohn

Since the 1940s, physicists have tried, but no one has yet created an efficient nuclear fusion reaction. Meanwhile, AI and machine learning (ML) have, across many industries and applications, proved themselves quite capable at detecting subtle patterns in data that humans can't recognize. So could neural nets and the GPUs that power them help in nuclear fusion? The challenge, and it's a big one, would be to accelerate the worldwide quest to tame instabilities in hot plasmas and ultimately provide a source of sustainable, and carbon-free power.

"Physicists, they develop theoretical models, they write equations, they manipulate things mathematically," said Diogo Ferreira, a professor of information systems at the University of Lisbon's Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal. "But there is a limit to that." AI, he says, can help.

Ferreira recently collaborated with colleagues working on the Joint European Torus (JET) in the UK in a study that detailed three different uses for AI, machine learning, and deep learning models for fusion research. Ferreira trained his models using diagnostic data from 48 sensors connected to the JET reactor, called bolometers, which collect power and radiation data.

One of Ferreira's models predicts disruptions in a super-hot plasma. In the study, he explains that depending on how it is trained, the model can either predict the likelihood of disruption—which can result in a plasma escaping confinement, jolting equipment, drastically reducing the plasma's temperature, and ending the reaction— or estimate the time at which that disruption will occur.

A second model detects anomalies in the plasma. Trained only on reactions where disruptions did not occur, the model can reproduce these "good" experiments. If the data originates in an experiment that ended in a disruption, the model can identify when and how the data diverges from that of a successful reaction. Scientists could use this process to better understand what ultimately leads to disruptions and eventually to run reactions in which disruptions are less likely.  ... 

Fusions Plants Rolling

Like to see this getting started, and the experience requires to run the built.  What is the comparative cost for power?

Nuclear energy: Fusion plant backed by Jeff Bezos to be built in UK   By Matt McGrath

A company backed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos is set to build a large-scale nuclear fusion demonstration plant in Oxfordshire.

Canada's General Fusion is one of the leading private firms aiming to turn the promise of fusion into a commercially viable energy source. The new facility will be built at Culham, home to the UK's national fusion research programme.  It won't generate power, but will be 70% the size of a commercial reactor. General Fusion will enter into a long-term commercial lease with the UK Atomic Energy Authority following the construction of the facility at the Culham campus.

While commercial details have not been disclosed, the development is said to cost around $400m. ... ' 

Update on Fusion Power

Following this for years.  Another decade needed?   In IEEE Spectrum, an update on progress.

ITER Celebrates Milestone, Still at Least a Decade Away From Fusing Atoms
Machine assembly has commenced, but this gigantic nuclear fusion experiment costing tens of billions of dollars is nowhere near starting up    By Payal Dhar

TerraPower’s Nuclear Reactor Could Power the 21st Century
It was a twinkle in U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s eye, an enthusiasm he shared with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union: boundless stores of clean energy from nuclear fusion.

That was 35 years ago. 

On July 28, 2020, the product of these Cold Warriors’ mutual infatuation with fusion, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, France inaugurated the start of the machine assembly phase of this industrial-scale tokamak nuclear fusion reactor. 

An experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a virtually inexhaustible, waste-free and non-polluting source of energy, ITER has already been 30-plus years in planning, with tens of billions invested. And if there are new fusion reactors designed based on research conducted here, they won’t be powering anything until the latter half of this century.

Speaking from Elysée Palace in Paris via an internet link during last month’s launch ceremony, President Emmanuel Macron said, “[ITER] is proof that what brings together people and nations is stronger than what pulls them apart. [It is] a promise of progress, and of confidence in science.” Indeed, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to baffle modern science around the world, ITER is a welcome beacon of hope.  ... "

Towards a Reality of Fusion Power

Quite a number of advances in recent years. Excellent overview.  With some technology explanation.

5 Big Ideas for Making Fusion Power a Reality In IEEE Spectrum

Startups, universities, and major companies are vying to commercialize a nuclear fusion reactor
By Tom Clynes

Fusion Vortex: General Fusion’s magnetized target reactor injects pulses of plasma into a sphere filled with swirling molten lead and lithium.

The joke has been around almost as long as the dream: Nuclear fusion energy is 30 years away...and always will be. But now, more than 80 years after Australian physicist Mark Oliphant first observed deuterium atoms fusing and releasing dollops of energy, it may finally be time to update the punch line.

Over the past several years, more than two dozen research groups—impressively staffed and well-funded startups, university programs, and corporate projects—have achieved eye-opening advances in controlled nuclear fusion. They’re building fusion reactors based on radically different designs that challenge the two mainstream approaches, which use either a huge, doughnut-shaped magnetic vessel called a tokamak or enormously powerful lasers.

What’s more, some of these groups are predicting significant fusion milestones within the next five years, including reaching the breakeven point at which the energy produced surpasses the energy used to spark the reaction. That’s shockingly soon, considering that the mainstream projects pursuing the conventional tokamak and laser-based approaches have been laboring for decades and spent billions of dollars without achieving breakeven. .... "