HELIUM-3! Is cold fusion just around the corner?

Supposedly, the US navy is studying cold fusion, as well as an interesting version of "Hot" fusion. The stuff they're looking at has some serious promise, and is MUCH cheaper than both ITER, or the National Ignition facility. The version of hot fusion uses what's called a "polywell" fusion reactor which is a reactor that uses a special array of electromagnets to contain the plasma. It's supposed to be much cheaper than a tokamak, and much more robust and reliable.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

Also some info on the US navy experiments. They don't use helium 3 as it's pretty much unavailable on earth.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7168

What's ironic, is the set up the US Navy is studying is fairly similar to the original one that set off national headlines in 1989. A thought that's crossed my mind, is perhaps the scientists in 1989 DID succeed in producing a fusion reaction(although one with net energy loss), but it was a fluke and they were unable to properly note how they did it. Thus when they went public the method they had was flawed, and they then got bounced out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

The US navy has more or less carried the torch for the last 20 years. They obviously have seen something interesting, and have been funding it ever since. The implications of both of these fusion methods is enormous. Given that they both use Deuterium, any ship that was at sea would essentially be floating in a giant stockpile of fuel for their fusion reactors. The strategic implications for the USA would be enormous.

Not only would every ship in the US navy now be of unlimited range, the US would be completely energy independent. I think we're close especially with the Polywell reactor. If that project gets about a 100 million dollars, I think we'll actually see the first fusion reactor that produces energy.

I'm inclined to believe it only when I see it.

That's because nuclear fusion has the VERY serious difficulty of getting the nuclei close enough to each other to react with each other. In particular, they have to get within about 10[sup]-15[/sup] - 10[sup]-14[/sup] m of each other, which requires a LOT of kinetic energy to overcome their electrostatic repulsion. That's why hot-fusion schemes have required temperatures like 5 - 40 * 10[sup]7[/sup] K.

And existing cold-fusion techniques don't come close to achieving the necessary compression.

Ok I don't think I quite followed Ipetrich's explanation of the likely "monkey wrench" thrown into this scheme (through no fault of yours, Ipe, I'm just braindead), but this sounds really awesome. Mining the moon and the seas for limitless energy! What a very different world we'd be living in... Thanks very much, Plot and Dommo, for these links.

I've heard of "Moon mining for Helium 3 (aka tritium)" in recent years so tritium could be used for controlled fusion for power generation, but economically viable fusion power has not been demonstrated as far as I know, and it's only been worked on for about 50 years or so. Using fusion for power is possible, but the temperatures needed are so high that it's much more difficult to do than was anticipated when it was first proposed so many decades ago.

I didn't even look, in the OP Plot Device seems to be saying that Helium 3 will be used in cold fusion. It definitely works in "hot fusion" in hydrogen bombs, but that gives out too much energy in much too small a time frame to be useful for power generation.

Here's Robert Bussard giving a talk on his recent ("hot fusion") work two years ago at Google (he died about one year ago) [warning, this video is an hour and a half long]:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606
More about Bussard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard

Cold fusion is a whole nother thing. It appears to still be not well demonstrated to exist, and that presumes it DOES exist. There was a lot of work around the world in the months and years after the "Pons and Fleishman" press conference/annnouncement, with no noteworthy results.

While I'm at it, here's Wikipedia's article on cold fusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

And for the "limitless free energy", I remember a display in the '60's (I was about 10 years old) on fusion power, saying electricity from it will be "too cheap to meter." Plain old economics says that won't be true. Just maintaining the electric power trasmission lines will continue to cost something, regardless of how much or little it costs to generate the electricity.

ETA:
I watched the video and went to the website. The text at this page appears to be pretty much the same as what he said in the video:

http://www.explainingthefuture.com/helium3.html

But there's (IMHO) virtually no detail, other than the fact that this does NOT mention cold fusion (which, in my view, is probably a Good Thing, but still inconclusive as far as whether it means anything for the future of humankind's use of energy).

I think there's more to the whole fusion thing than you guys are saying. As I've said the US navy has been funding these projects for years, and historically speaking the US military only funds things for that long, IF they're showing promise. Take stealth for an example. They started working on that back in the late 50's, and by the late 70's early 80's, figured it out.

I think cold fusion is a long ways off, if it is possible to make a system with a net positive energy gain, but I know hot fusion is definitely possible. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the theory is sound, and now it's more a matter of engineering.

That's why I'm actually interested in the Polywell system, because it greatly reduces the complexity of a fusion reactor. My professor of thermodynamics at my university, actually was involved in the design work for the national ignition facility, and stated that the main thing holding fusion back was economics. Essentially the problem is that current schemes of both inertial confinement(lasers), and magnetic confinement(using tokamaks) are both extremely complicated, and ridiculously expensive. Fusion WILL work, as the universe has proven that already, it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it economically.

I think the polywell is probably the way it will happen. As it stands there are too many PhD's and stuff who've got their reputations staked on either ITER or the national ignition facility being the first to produce a successful net positive energy fusion reaction. These people who're entrenched will do what's necessary to discredit people who might actually have some good ideas. Once again, look at stealth. The mathematics of it was discovered by a russian, and published in russia. The paper was ignored over there, but picked up by scientists and engineers here in the USA. As we say the rest is history.

Dommo said:

I think there's more to the whole fusion thing than you guys are saying. As I've said the US navy has been funding these projects for years, and historically speaking the US military only funds things for that long, IF they're showing promise. Take stealth for an example. They started working on that back in the late 50's, and by the late 70's early 80's, figured it out.

Click to expand...

Actually, the military has a history of funding projects that don't work out - "remote viewing," mind control, etc. There's a book called Imaginary Weapons that's pretty interesting.

Sometimes the funding is based more on the "cool factor" of the technology than on the possibility of its success.

Helium 3 doesn't help us get any closer to fusion. Here's why:

From a cross-section sense, the fusion cross-section of helium-3 is much lower than that of deuterium or even tritium. This means that helium-3 + hydrogen may fuse at a lower temperature and density, but there is still no way to do it on an industrial scale. Currently no device exists that can fuse helium-3 or any other element efficiently other than a thermonuclear warhead. Tokamak designs all suffer from virtually insurmountable impurity problems, while inertial containment offers no hope of running on a continuous industrial scale. Adsoption schemes have all turned out to be nothing but confusion. Contrasting this with nuclear power, Fermi knew a nuclear reactor would work ten years before he built his first one under the stands at Stagg Field, and three years prior to the first nuclear test. And the first one he ever built worked exactly like he thought it would. Look at it this way. It is impossible to jump 100 feet high. It's just as impossible to jump 10 feet high. Just because 10 is a lot less than 100 doesn't make it any more realizable in a practical sense.

Doesn't mean it couldn't make an interesting premise though.

there is also a nice article in Popular Science about a couple of shade tree scientists that think they're close to creating a nuclear fusion reactor.

The creepy thing is that, according to CIA guys, remote viewing DID work sometimes. Just not frequently/reliably enough for them to rely upon it.

The fact that it worked at all boggles my mind.

I won't comment on the remote viewing stuff.

However I did recently read an article where they were talking about research towards making steel that maintains its strength at high temperatures. Basically, its an irregularity in the crystal formation of steel that causes it to weaken before melting. They are testing means to form the steel without such irregularities. If successful, they could make steel that remains strong at several times the temperature that it weakens now. Its a practical step forward on the path to workable fusion power.