"We are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century," says the director of an Australian company that claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected.
HB11 Energy is a spin-out company that originated at the University of New South Wales, and it announced today a swag of patents through Japan, China and the USA protecting its unique approach to fusion energy generation.
Fusion, of course, is the long-awaited clean, safe theoretical solution to humanity's energy needs. It's how the Sun itself makes the vast amounts of energy that have powered life on our planet up until now. Where nuclear fission – the splitting of atoms to release energy – has proven incredibly powerful but insanely destructive when things go wrong, fusion promises reliable, safe, low cost, green energy generation with no chance of radioactive meltdown.
It's just always been 20 years away from being 20 years away. A number of multi-billion dollar projects are pushing slowly forward, from the Max Planck Institute's insanely complex Wendelstein 7-X stellerator to the 35-nation ITER Tokamak project, and most rely on a deuterium-tritium thermonuclear fusion approach that requires the creation of ludicrously hot temperatures, much hotter than the surface of the Sun, at up to 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit). This is where HB11's tech takes a sharp left turn.
[...] This is big-time stuff. Should cheap, clean, safe fusion energy really be achieved, it would be an extraordinary leap forward for humanity and a huge part of the answer for our future energy needs. And should it be achieved without insanely hot temperatures being involved, people would be even more comfortable having it close to their homes. We'll be keeping an eye on these guys.
Radical hydrogen-boron reactor
[Source]: Laser-boron fusion
Snake Oil or the Real Deal ? What do you think ?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Sunday February 23 2020, @08:19PM (2 children)
It's not a new concept, but requires an order of magnitude higher energies. Hopefully the 'swag of patents' is on something innovative rather than trying to lock down what may just be the natural progression of fast pulsed laser energies bringing this into realistic range.
Here's a 2009 article on it https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228628966_Nonlinear_force_driven_plasma_blocks_igniting_solid_density_hydrogen_boron_Laser_fusion_energy_without_radioactivity. [researchgate.net]
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23 2020, @10:24PM (1 child)
"Hopefully the 'swag of patents' is on something innovative rather than trying to lock down what may just be the natural progression of fast pulsed laser energies bringing this into realistic range."
This is an annoying thing about the patent system. The company should have a demonstrable product BEFORE receiving any patents. They shouldn't get the patent first and if their product fails sue someone else that may succeed. That deters others from creating anything.
and it should be a use it or lose it thing as well, you can't just do nothing and sue others for infringement. Perhaps their product can be patent pending until they have a demonstrable product but the company that first creates the product itself, not the one that thinks of a broad concept to lock out others, should get the patent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @06:21AM
You register your inventions to be eligible for the awards and so people can more easily figure out who is the first one to come up with the idea.
Have some categories for each area (medical, aerospace, computing, electronics, overall, Best of the Decade, etc), then have awards by experts in the field and awards by random selected members of the public.
(Score: 4, Informative) by FatPhil on Sunday February 23 2020, @08:29PM (3 children)
> [Business]
> [Background]
> [Not us]
> [Speculation]
Hmmm, noticeably lacking in all that is "Results".
From the press release (i.e. straight out of a marketting department):
'"I think this puts our approach ahead of all other fusion energy technologies," said Hora, who predicted in the 1970s that fusing hydrogen and boron might be possible without the need for thermal equilibrium.'
OK boomer!
'an ‘avalanche’ fusion reaction could be triggered in the trillionth-of-a-second blast from a petawatt-scale laser pulse, whose fleeting bursts pack a quadrillion watts of power.'
I would hope that your petawatt-scale laser pulses pack at least sizeable fractions of a petawatt in power!
Aaaaaaaaand no mention of the amount of power they get out of the process. Presumably as it's vanishingly low. If unity is getting 1.0x the power in back out again, then what do you call getting 0.0x the power back out? Noughtity?
'they have also measured the laser-initiated chain reaction to create one billion-fold higher energy output than predicted under thermal equilibrium conditions.”'
It's also a billion-fold higher energy output than what you'd predict to get out of TheMightyBuzzard when he's out catfishing. What's that got to do with anything. Better at generating energy than something that nobody's ever used to generate energy - congratulations on setting the bar so low even a micrometer can't measure it.
Still 20 years from being 20 years away is my bet. I'm old enough to remember when JET was being built in Abingdon, that was indeed 20+20 years ago, I've heard all the claims multiple times from multiple directions.
But bring it on - science progresses through a process including way more failures than successes. (Apparently so does software!)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23 2020, @09:11PM
having a device where x 0.0 guaranteed comes out would be pretty "cool" too.
nature and science is difficult because most stuff is "blunt". finding "the cutting edges" is when science takes a leap.
having something where you put in Y and getting x (times) 0.0 out every time would definitly be a "edge" ^_^
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 24 2020, @12:26AM (1 child)
Around 2003, I was first exposed to the concept of trans-cranial magnetic neuro stimulation (TMS). The press releases and company PR did a very poor job of differentiating their technology from woo woo snake oil magic energy crystals. I was looking for work at the time, maybe if the company had been in Palm Beach instead of Pennsylvania I would have looked closer at TMS, as it was I dismissed them after about 15 minutes of consideration. (there was a cryopreservation company in Palm Beach, hiring at the time, I did take a long hard look at them - sadly that enterprise did not seem worth interviewing, but it is kind of an interesting body of lore...) Back nearer to the point: around 2000, TMS pioneers fired off a whole slew of patents centered around the technology required to generate transient magnetic pulses strong enough to actually effect neurostimulation at a range of a few centimeters - at the time, without that tech, effective TMS wasn't really possible. Within a few years, they got their PR straightened out and lots of respectable people were getting fired up about the potential applications of TMS - it was real, and the patented tech made it possible.
One would hope that this slew of patents for what seems to amount to inertial containment fusion are coming at a time where commercialization is attainable before the patents expire. As compared with TMS, the potential for disruption of lucrative industry is several orders of magnitude larger, so they may be much more speculative here.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2020, @03:46AM
What's your point? One nutty sounding thing out of 10,000 nutty sounding things turned out to be legit so this random nutty sounding thing is also legit?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Hartree on Sunday February 23 2020, @08:45PM (5 children)
Though notably absent in the glowing Wikipedia entry on him, Hora has a series of papers over the years on low energy nuclear reactions, AKA cold fusion. He also has an entry in The Worldwide List of Alternative Theories and Critics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23 2020, @10:04PM
They laughed at Einstein too. His hair, its a joke.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday February 23 2020, @10:42PM (3 children)
What is in the Wikipedia entry:
I tend to see a person with non-conventional thinking but whose ideas have a tendency towards being confirmed - at least some of those ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday February 24 2020, @02:05AM (2 children)
That's why I said it's "probably" snake oil. I'm not slamming the door, but surprisingly positive results even from the best often turn out more surprising than positive. He's been investigating relatively fringe areas and though sometimes those work out, more often than not they don't.
I hope he's right. But I suspect it's not going to work out, much like many ideas haven't worked out. That, by the way, is not a reason to do good quality science on topics that are kind of on the fringe. Sometimes you have people with weird ideas about fogged photographic plates or the preposterous idea that magnetism and electricity interact in funny ways when they're giving lectures.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday February 24 2020, @02:08AM
That should read: "That, by the way, is not a reason to never do good quality science on topics that are kind of on the fringe."
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 24 2020, @07:15AM
National Ignition Facility [wikipedia.org] showed some initial promises, but then the politiheads thought they knew better and cut the funding [wikipedia.org].
And then, the European Extreme Light Infrastructure [wikipedia.org] started to come online - with powers in the PW scale (yeap, 1015) and electric field intensities in the order of 1015V/m. That is to say, those European lunatics don't believe the matter is just dead, and even if the ignition is not there, there are other good things™ that show promise.
More recently, the same politiheads slightly increased budgets [aip.org] for NIF + Sandia's Z machine [wikipedia.org]. Coincidence? Guess what was one of the reason?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 23 2020, @08:46PM (1 child)
How much do you trust what a salesman promises about a product that hasn't been built yet?
He's got some interesting claims, but I can't verify them. The parts that I can verify seem reasonable, but...
The question is "Did the new laser design do what he claimed?". No way I can tell, but that the new laser exists can be verified.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2020, @09:43PM
Depends on how much money I've got, how much they need, and how interested I am in their success. Oh, also their personal reputations factor in.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23 2020, @09:24PM (2 children)
See subject: Enter Mr. Salvatore Pais (whose name oddly means "Savior of the nation") & his ANTI-GRAVITY INERTIALESS tech patents (& no doubt already MADE invention by now) per https://patents.justia.com/inventor/salvatore-cezar-pais [justia.com] his patents! Things like High frequency gravitational wave generator & Craft using an inertial mass reduction device as well as TONS of high-end SUPERCONDUCTOR work too!
* Still think UFO's are BS? I wouldn't... not after taking a peek @ that! It looks like we make them - "We HAVE the technology" (see my ps for more of THAT, lol).
So, VIMANA?
No longer the province of Vishnu & India's legends (OR "aliens') & yes, as a boy, my Uncle (now deceased), My still living cousin Frank & I saw 2 of them in 1975 hovering in the sky when I was only ~9-10 yrs. of age (blew my mind & I ran home to tell my parents who did NOT believe me until my Uncle said "Psa Kref' (means "SOB" more-or-less but NOT literally, more like "Dog's blood" or "dog's descendant") while I pointed it out & HE corroborated my story to my parents with my cousin too (still living witness to them).
APK
P.S.=> Then there's also Ben Rich (accomplished scientist himself @ Lockheed) who said YEARS ago "We now have the technology to take ET home" per https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9ZZekWMiUQ [youtube.com] & if THAT doesn't "do it" for you? Just search Ben Rich Lockheed Martin "take ET home" in any search engine for more - aren't we amazing, we human beings? I do think so. Too bad we pervert stuff to WAR 1st though MOST of the time. LMAO - Boy, we're REALLY GOOD @ 2 things: Feeding ourselves AND oddly, KILLING one another too (the "duality of man')... apk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23 2020, @10:00PM (1 child)
And the great thing about this is it will all happen in OUR lifetimes thanks to The Singularity, coming any day now. Any day.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 24 2020, @12:30AM
In investor presentations there's a huge difference between "have the tech" and "have worked out all the kinks to make the tech viable in working prototypes" for instance: E. Holmes and Theranos.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Monday February 24 2020, @12:31AM (2 children)
Well, let's assume any of the current fusion experiments would yield sustainable energy output. A few magnets for plasma confinement, maybe a laser here or there for ignition. Now build a power plant from it, say in the 3000 MWt, 1000 MWe region, big enough for some economies of scale. That's going to be a massive blob of ultra-high-tech somewhere in the landscape. What would it cost? Would it be cheaper than a fission plant that's practically just a big water kettle? I don't think so, and the only economically viable fission plant now is the WWER-1000 with privatized profits, socialized teardown and waste storage cost, and no accident.
Could it ever be cheaper than stored renewables? The naive solution within the existing framework is building a Gas+Steam CC Plant ($1B), buying three huge hydrogen tankers ($300M), plastering 30 square km of desert with cheap solar (4500 MWp, $4.5B). Assume 1/3 sun availability in the desert, 60% efficiency of the CCPP, and there's your schedulable Gigawatt (roughly, or factoring in a bit of process heat). Total bill is $5.8B. Already cheaper than western EPR-style fission plants, especially factoring in the follow-up cost of the nuclear stuff. The two reasons why this doesn't happen is that as long as natural gas can be had, they'd rather burn that than the silly expensive self-made hydrogen - and even natural gas is too expensive for baseline supply.
But that's your baseline. Or alternatively use battery storage of electricity, which probably will end up in a similar ballpark. Anything above those crude approaches is a non-starter. Smarter solutions involving residential CHP units would be an even harder competition to beat.
So if someone suggests a fusion plant, ask them whether they will ever be able to deliver the GW at under $5B.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday February 24 2020, @11:41AM (1 child)
You complain about people relying on tech that doesn't exist, for large-scale production. Then you ask "Could it ever be cheaper than stored renewables?"
Which also doesn't exist.
There is no current path to large scale energy storage. You talk about 1GW-3GW range, so you need to store at least 10GWh. That would require a lithium-ion battery one-third of a kilometer on a side. Nuts, and let's not even get into the required raw materials. That's only a single installation. What else is there? Pumped hydro? Existing GW-range hydroelectric dams are required to let water flow - they certainly aren't allowed to stop the river and pump it back up. So you need a couple of new, rather large valleys that you can put underwater. Let me know when you find them, and do remember to add in the environmental impact of flooding those valleys.
Like it or not, nuclear power is the safest, most efficient, most environmentally friendly large-scale power generation technology in existence. More people die every year installing solar than have ever died in all of the nuclear accidents in history. Another point worth considering: there is actually no reason to go through the pain of disassembling a deactivated nuclear reactor. The reactor building itself isn't all that large. Take out the fuel, and anything useful. Then close it up and lock it. Build the successor plant next to it, and you automatically have security to prevent tampering. Nothing is going to happen, except that the old reactor will get safer - all by itself - over the coming decades.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by jurov on Tuesday February 25 2020, @02:24PM
10GWh battery at 100$/kWh is just a ~ mere billion dollars and ~ monthly production of one Gigafactory.
This makes me pretty sure such storage plants already are under serious consideration.
(Score: 1) by petecox on Monday February 24 2020, @02:05AM (2 children)
[citation-needed]
I'm not dismissing the concept but how much energy will it generate relative to the emissions due to mining the boron?
Pardon my cynicism but the loudest advocacy for nuclear power in eastern Australia comes from the climate change denialist cult within the federal government, who happen to be anti-renewable pro-mining, fudge the figures at the Paris submit, and bugger the environment.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2020, @09:30AM
Even a broken clock is right 2x a day!
Nuclear power is basically the only serious way we can get rid off the fossil fuel addiction in the timeframe where we can actually avert the +5C temperature rises. If you don't believe me, look at the actual COAL and OIL and GAS amounts that were sold (ie. burnt) in 2000 vs. today?? Notice the 50% increases despite all the renewables??
If you are serious about cutting CO2 emissions and being carbon neutral, you can't ignore nuclear power.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday February 24 2020, @12:45PM
At least in the US, borax [wikipedia.org](sodium borate) is right on the surface, ready for the taking. [desertusa.com] The mining is the easy part - isotopic separation is hard. Naturally-occurring boron comes in two isotopes; 10B (about 20%) and 11B (about 80%).