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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the mr.-fusion dept.

Lockheed Martin has quietly obtained a patent associated with its design for a potentially revolutionary compact fusion reactor, or CFR. If this project has been progressing on schedule, the company could debut a prototype system that size of shipping container, but capable of powering a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier or 80,000 homes, sometime in the next year or so.

The patent, for a portion of the confinement system, or embodiment, is dated Feb. 15, 2018. The Maryland-headquartered defense contractor had filed a provisional claim on April 3, 2013 and a formal application nearly a year later. Our good friend Stephen Trimble, chief of Flightglobal's Americas Bureau, subsequently spotted it and Tweeted out its basic details.

In 2014, the company also made a splash by announcing they were working on the device at all and that it was the responsibility of its Skunk Works advanced projects office in Palmdale, California. At the time, Dr. Thomas McGuire, head of the Skunk Works’ Compact Fusion Project, said the goal was to have a working reactor in five years and production worthy design within 10.

[...] Considering the five year timeline Dr. McGuire put out in 2014 for achieving a workable prototype, maybe we’re due for another big announcement from Lockheed Martin in the near future.


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:01AM (6 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:01AM (#659349) Journal

    High [nationalgeographic.com] school [wired.com] students [theguardian.com] have made fusion work.

    What you meant to say is that nobody has made fusion power commercially viable yet. And before you can do that, you have to demonstrate it. Which is exactly what Lockheed Martin is doing. But it has nothing to do with a patent for a confinement system, of which there have been many working examples.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by istartedi on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:55AM (4 children)

    by istartedi (123) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:55AM (#659366) Journal

    Semantics. Without even following your links, I'm going to
    assume that you've linked to some students building a Farnsworth Fusor
    or similar device. It does create neutrons via fusion. Low energy
    neutrons, and at rates so low AFAIK they aren't even a regulatory
    concern. This is not what people mean when they say "make fusion work".

    What they mean is "get more energy out of the fuel than you put
    in to start the reaction, and do so in a controlled manor".

    We have made H-bombs which are over-unity. We have made fusion
    reactors which are under-unity. We haven't made any kind of over-unity
    fusion reactor that you would want to share a city with while it's operating.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @07:21AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @07:21AM (#659386)

      That would be a commercially viable fusion reactor. And yes, that's probably what most people mean when they say "working", but when it comes to patents, there is no requirements that the prototype be commercially viable.

      Just like there was no requirements that the first car be faster than a horse. A car slower than a horse was pretty useless, but it still demonstrated that building a car was possible. Gradual improvements over time took the car from something interesting only to enthusiasts to being what it is today.

      • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:02PM (2 children)

        by fyngyrz (6567) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:02PM (#659466) Journal

        That would be a commercially viable fusion reactor.

        That's going too far. It's entirely reasonable for an over-unity fusion reactor instance to be non-viable commercially. It could have a very limited lifetime; it could use means to initiate the reaction that are not reliable; it could suffer from containment problems such as erosion or deterioration of the containment chamber(s); it might work fine, but simply produce so little power compared to its cost that it isn't commercially viable.

        A commercially viable fusion reactor has to meet the same kind of metrics any other power source does. It has to be maintainable; it has to have a positive ROA, which in turn implies a decent operating lifetime as combined with a reasonably priced billable power output and low enough maintenance costs that the maintenance doesn't raise operating costs unacceptably; it has to be both safe and easy to operate; it has to be reliable; and it has to fail safely. There are probably many other metrics I've missed, and very few of these apply to an R&D level fusion design at all.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:29PM (1 child)

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:29PM (#659521)

          And there's the fuzzy in between of military power sources. Surely the cheapest source of watts today is a nuclear reactor, but the Army delivered lots of $50/gallon diesel to the middle of nowhere in the middle east because you can't really build a PWR in the desert for a FOB. Or the cheapest way to propel a large boat is a diesel engine but for military task purposes nukes are very popular even if oil burning would be cheaper. Even if in theory if might be cheaper to burn oil, the idea of a shipping container sized nuke must be enticing to shipping container transport boats, ship one non-profit container in exchange for ripping out all that diesel engine and tankage and paying those fuel bills all around the world etc, just one little container and a huge extension cord is all the boat needs...

          • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:01PM

            by fyngyrz (6567) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:01PM (#659539) Journal

            Or the cheapest way to propel a large boat is a diesel engine but for military task purposes nukes are very popular even if oil burning would be cheaper.

            There's that whole cruising range issue, and there's also a peak power issue – nukes can make a lot steam, and very quickly. Subs in particular benefit from being able to go wherever, whenever, without having to refuel. For carriers, since the aircraft need lots of petro-fuels, the advantage is somewhat muted, although still they have the ability to keep the carrier itself on station without refueling, which in turn means fewer tankers going back and forth overall.

            No matter what the vessel, unless it is 100% automated, the sailors need to be fed, so resupply eventually becomes an issue no matter what the power source. Carriers have a lot of room for storage, but they also have very large crews...

            Essentially unlimited power availability also means that energy weapons are more practical, so lasers, particle beams, railguns, that sort of thing will be better accommodated on vessels with nuclear power sources, fission or otherwise.

            Anyway, I agree that dependable, high-output fusion reactor implementations would be of immense value to the navy, even if quite costly. Also to remote science installations, etc.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday March 28 2018, @06:02AM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 28 2018, @06:02AM (#659368) Journal

    It may not have to do with the patent, but it does have to do with a workable confinement system. One that can work for seconds has been demonstrate, one that can work in various special circumstances has been demonstrated, but nobody has yet demonstrated one that can maintain a high enough pressure for long enough to be useful for more than a demonstration.

    IIUC, LPP is doing something significantly different, boron-hydrogen fusion isn't something I've heard people talking about before, and apparently they need to use a particular isotope of boron to avoid producing radioactive beryllium. That sound weird and interesting, and certainly different. Perhaps Lockheed is doing something equally different, and just being more secretive about it.

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