Back to the Fusion!

Great Scott Marty, Nuclear Fusion has finally broken the even exchange barrier!  

Back 20+ years ago, Fusion gained attention after reports in 1989 by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, then one of the world's leading electrochemists, that their apparatus had produced anomalous heat ("excess heat"), of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes.  

The Utah and Southampton researchers reported that they had obtained more energy from a simple fusion cell than they had put in and that the excess energy was produced by fusion. Their cell involved simple palladium and platinum electrodes immersed in deuterium oxide--so-called heavy water--in which each hydrogen atom is replaced by a deuterium atom, which has an extra neutron.

The disputed results ultimately were later resolved as conventional reactions seen in metal manufacturing.  However, the excitement they stirred remains prevalent today, for 40 years later, a new technique has risen from the fusion ashes. 

(Scientists at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif., recently announced that they are very close to nuclear fusion's break-even point, and that the barriers to achieving it are engineering-related, rather than physics-related.)

New technique

"This is really the Holy Grail," said study co-author Christine Labaune, a physicist for the École Polytechnique in France.

Dr. Christine Labaune is the 30th winner of the Edward Teller, a prestigious medal distinguishing career oriented with the entire international community on the subject of energy laser inertial confinement.

Labaune and her colleagues have chosen to focus instead on completely different fusion reactions. Taking advantage of the fact that lasers have gotten ever more powerful over the years, the team briefly pulsed a focused laser beam with incredibly high energy at a plasma of boron-11, an isotope of boron with an extra neutron. Meanwhile, another intense proton beam bombarded the boron plasma from another direction.

The boron isotopes fused with the laser-driven protons to produce beryllium and alpha particles, which are made up of two protons and two neutrons bound together — a key signature of the fusion reaction. The new experiment has already produced orders of magnitude more energy than a past experiment with boron fusion. And unlike high-energy neutrons, the alpha particle energy can be contained easily and converted into electrical current that could then be used in other processes, Labaune said.

The experiment is an exciting step, but it's still a proof of principle, Thirolf said. Even on a small scale,

however, it could eventually prove useful to study the fusion processes churning at the hearts of stars, he added.

Given the new method's early stage of development, there are also many opportunities for improvements, Thirolf said.

But large-scale nuclear fusion is still a distant reality.

"When I started as a student, people said, 'We will get the fusion reactor in 30 years,'" Thirolf told LiveScience. "What I'm telling my students now is, 'We will get the fusion reactor in 30 years.'" 

The technique was described Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Source(s):

• http://www.polytechnique.edu/accueil/l-ecole-polytechnique/prix-et-distinctions/christine-labaune-recoit-la-medaille-teller-81700.kjsp
• http://www.livescience.com/40246-new-boron-method-nuclear-fusion.html

So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

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