WUWT reader Paul Ostergaard tips us to this article from Aviation Week and Space Technology – video follows
Hidden away in the secret depths of the Skunk Works, a Lockheed Martin research team has been working quietly on a nuclear energy concept they believe has the potential to meet, if not eventually decrease, the world’s insatiable demand for power.
Dubbed the compact fusion reactor (CFR), the device is conceptually safer, cleaner and more powerful than much larger, current nuclear systems that rely on fission, the process of splitting atoms to release energy. Crucially, by being “compact,” Lockheed believes its scalable concept will also be small and practical enough for applications ranging from interplanetary spacecraft and commercial ships to city power stations. It may even revive the concept of large, nuclear-powered aircraft that virtually never require refueling—ideas of which were largely abandoned more than 50 years ago because of the dangers and complexities involved with nuclear fission reactors.
Yet the idea of nuclear fusion, in which atoms combine into more stable forms and release excess energy in the process, is not new. Ever since the 1920s, when it was postulated that fusion powers the stars, scientists have struggled to develop a truly practical means of harnessing this form of energy. Other research institutions, laboratories and companies around the world are also pursuing ideas for fusion power, but none have gone beyond the experimental stage. With just such a “Holy Grail” breakthrough seemingly within its grasp, and to help achieve a potentially paradigm-shifting development in global energy, Lockheed has made public its project with the aim of attracting partners, resources and additional researchers.
![Compact%20Fusion%20Reactor%20Diagram_0[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/compact20fusion20reactor20diagram_01.png?quality=75)
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Reblogged this on What Say you and commented:
Amazing!!
This is likely to leave greens in serious confusion.
The Greens will find a way to attack it. If necessary they will lie through their teeth, and decalre any refutation of their lies to be a conspiracy, thus reinforcing their case. In their war against The System, any tactic is justified.
Agree completely. No one should be under the least illusion that Greens will greet this with anything other than more guilt mongering.
Modern environmentalism is an Original Sin Religion: “Mankind is cast out of Eden because in our pride and greed we ate from the tree of knowledge. Only by genuflection and deference to the morally superior environmentalists among us can we be saved.”
People who think that way will have no trouble at all finding reasons to hate fusion power.
CO2 is more properly the elixir of life yet they’ve managed to establish it as a pollutant.
Nuclear power has the best safety record of any source of energy yet they’ve managed to get people to see it as a bomb, waiting to go off.
The NASA moonshots have been condemned as “wasteful Americans leaving their garbage on the moon”.
The keystone pipeline has been refused meaning oil is carried by more dangerously by rail.
Fracking has been around for 50 years with no substantial ill effects, yet is now banned wherever liberals rule.
Er… Ehrlich.
“Giving power and money to Congress is like giving whiskey and car keys to teen-aged boys” – P.J. O’Rourke
CFR, Thorium, these are the only chances we have going forward.
Wish it were next year, not 5 down the road.
Chances for what?
A chance for Advancing civilisation. More abundant inexpensive energy has always been the path to advancing civilisation.
Hyperbole.
Agree with gamecock that this is hyperbole. The advancement of civilization will continue for many decades or even centuries, with or without nuclear power. We have MANY ways to generate energy now, some better then others. I do believe that fusion power will improve our rate of advancement, just as any new transformative technology would.
Shitree
Care to enlighten us physicists by telling us what your many ways of generations are. ?
Btw, How is Thorium coming along?
the chinese won’t say !
I wonder how much the lead time to production could be reduced if the British government (aka tax payer) simply transferred the £8bn a year subsidy currently paid to the renewables energy sector to Lockheed Martin
As a UK tax payer, it would bring a win win
First the money would be going to something useful
Second it might actually have a measurable effect on the planet in 20 years
That is probably what LM is hoping for. While I’m a big fan of the idea, I’d prefer that government not fund it … let the private sector take the financial risk. Same for space flight.
Not one mention in the article of whether any prototype has broken even or generated any energy at all.
I mean, nice concept and all that, but…
There’s no prototype. From the Aviation week article:
Ah, the sound of confidence in a new project. Instead of “commercial [hot] fusion power” in 30 years” like it’s been every year for the last 30 years, perhaps the new mantra will be “commercial [hot] fusion in only 5 years.” 🙂
I concur with Ric Werme’s comment.
I certainly will not be buying Lockhead’s shares based on the ‘potential’ to build a prototype at some future date.
Lockhead have a concept as to a possible design for a fusion reactor. Lockhead do not have a plan that has worked out the basic engineering and physics problems (some of which might be show stoppers)
which is required before constructing a prototype.
We need to check back if and when the prototype is constructed to get an update.
Ric and Eustace, I wrote about this in my forthcoming book, based on last years Solving for X presentation available on YouTube. (Charles Chase of Skunkworks presented).
The significance is not a working prototype. It is that the T4 experiments have now provided working proof of principle of high beta magnetic confinement, and that has resulted in fundamental patent filings.
There are still many engineering issues to be resolved. But much over unity energy in to energy out is not one of them. ITER projects 7.5. High beta is at least 20x better than that ( just based on beta 1 versus beta 0.05). Net energy return is a fundamental problem only for the National Ignition Facility (inertial confinement) which is an $8 billion boondoogle all of whose funding should be redirected immediately to this approach.
I see no reason to believe this is anything other than hype. This not an area that is undeveloped and you can make those initial great developmental leaps. There are people who have spent 30 years of their professional lives and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to bring a known process to commercial fruition – and none of them claim to be anywhere close. Besides Kelly Johnson’s dead.
The people who’ve spent decades working on nuclear fusion know the governments of the world will keep throwing money at them so long as they don’t actually produce a fusion reactor. They have a vested interest in failure, whereas a commercial organisation has a vested interest in success.
So, while I find this a bit dubious, it seems far more likely to succeed than yet another tax-funded non-reactor.
My BS detector pegs at 11 every time the term “Polywell fusion reactor” (used in the article) is mentioned.
The Navy subsidized this (Polywell) for years without discernible rigorous result. I dug into it quite a bit, and the deeper I went the more hand-wavy and shrill the arguments got.
But I can still hope. Skunk-works has done some remarkable feats in the past, but we never hear about their boondoggles.
I agree completely with Ric Werme’s comment. I have read stories going back to 1960 on how fusion is going to be the fuel of the future- that’s at least 54 years of hype and no results.
I have a hypothesis on possible technology- if it can be done, nature has done it already long before humans,
flight- mastered by insects, pterodactyls, birds and bats long before humans,
interplanetary trips- done by natural collisions- rocks from Mars have been found on earth,
fission reactors- naturally occurring in Gabon between 1.8 and 1.5 billion years ago.
The universe HAS produced fusion reactors, but to produce it, nature requires a mass at least 1/8 our sun’s mass- I don’t see it happening on anything as small as a planet
Yeh, I agree. They have no idea how far from nuclear fusion they are and, incidently, neither do I or anyone else. Containing a very high plasma is extremely difficult even the sun has a problem.
Lockheed: Long on marketing. Short on product delivery.
The struggling F-35 is their current example, to those who have been paying attention.
I’ve seen this ‘movie’ several times before, from the same production company.
The F-35 problems are not Lockheed’s fault. The primary problem of the F35 is that the Marines insisted on vertical take off. That resulted in heavy vertical fans in the center of the plane which resulted in reduced fuel capacity, and degraded aerodynamics. The plane can’t fly as fast, as far, or turn as quickly as the prospective opponents. It is truly a weapon designed to fight ISIS, which has no air force.
JamesM October 16, 2014 at 1:29 am
No. The F-35 problems are endemic, across the different variants intended for Air Force, Navy, and Marines. They are not unique to just the VTOL variant for the Marines.
See: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-f-35-is-a-disaster-2014-7?op=1 for a synopsis.
We are unlikely to get detailed descriptions of the specific issues, as most if not all will be ‘classified’. But it is clear from the descriptions provided by the Air Force spokesman that the problems are not restricted to ‘just the Marine VTOL variant’. If they were, the Air Force would have been quick to clarify that their fighter variant was not impacted.
The problems areLockheed’s fault. They knew the specification requirements, bid the job at $69 Million per copy, and haven’t delivered a credible aircraft after lengthy delays and cost increases to $160 Million per copy and climbing.
Mac
Oh Lord. F-35 derangement syndrome in the one place I go one the web to get away from it. The only intractable ‘problem’ with the F-35 is that it is the target of a ‘dezinformatsia’ campaign the likes of which I have not seen since the end days of the Cold War. The same techniques being used to promote climate alarm are being used to create a twisted view of the F-35’s development history, cost, and capabilities. I would have thought the regulars here, of all people, would be immune to low-brow Shopenhauer Information cascades.
I’ve been watching these claims for 40 years now. I think we should make this clear: FUSION POWER IS THE ENERGY SOURCE WHICH NEVER WAS (see: http://www.proton21.com.ua, and read Walter Grienier’s works on Super Heavy Nucleii and nuclear islands of stability…what he proposes for collapsing stars is REALLY what happens in all stars..we see only results filtered through the vast “outer layers”) and the energy source which is NOT and the ENERGY SOURCE WHICH NEVER WILL BE!
Alas the discovery of energy producing fusion reactions (Rutheford, Li + Alpha, 1914) and certain mis-interpreted spectral (Xray and Visual) from the sun…and Eddington’s proclaimation in 1932, have
“fixed” the concept that the Sun is a “fusion” reaction.
I will swim against the tide here: The sun has at it’s center, a core of super heavy nucleii, which are continuously converting matter to antimatter via deep potential wells..and causing pure E=mc^2 reactions releasing their energy. YES, it is pure GAMMA at about 1 GeV, but the sun’s overall mass shields that, and we never see it.
Hope Lockheed Martin have more success with this than the F35
I hope it’s not just greenwashing. The guy in the video seems to think it’s a long shot. Magnetic bottle fusion has been researched to death. I hope they succeed.
It can’t be “greenwashing”. A usable cold fusion reactor would be the greens worst nightmare!
Not a nightmare for genuine Greens. You mean for the authoritarian collectivists
A standard joke among those in the industry: “Fusion is the energy of the future, and it always will be”.
Obvioulsy a conspiracy by Big Sea Water….
Fusion power has always been 50 years in future. Now it is 5 years. Let’s hope it won’t revert to 50 years.
I read about this earlier comment on WUWT. They seem to want experts and their contributions from now on. I hope this works so we can end this co2 fixation once and for all. I am certain some greens will still be opposed due to the negligible amounts of radioactive ‘waste’ (100 years lifespan – shallow sand burial).
Nuclear fusion is always 30 or 40 years away, but we will get there in the end. Landing a man on the moon seemed difficult 100 years ago. Supersonic aircraft? Smartphones? TV!!!
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
–
Skunk Works
That makes it legit but not necessarily successful.
Patience is required, not exuberance.
If Lockheed Martin’s nuclear fusion reactor project pans out as hoped (and I am not saying that it will), it will underscore what I have been saying for some time now: It will be advances in energy generation technologies that will take us forward into a post-fossil fuel world someday. It won’t happen with taxes on CO2 emissions, nor cap-and-trade schemes, nor scientifically faulty climate scare stories and propaganda campaigns. Nor will it happen with solar panels and wind turbines.
Among other things, it is technological advances and breakthroughs that has ushered in new eras in human history. Witness the rocket engine that ushered in the space age, digital technology that ushered in the information technology and computer era, etc., etc.
Hopefully someday we will come to understand this better and stop wasting our time, money and efforts on the other means to a post-fossil fuels era.
That is absolutely correct. Besides, fusion will not eliminate the need for oil or gas. Their use will be required for the chemical industry and advanced plastics. The hydrocarbon molecule is very versatile and many more uses for it will be found – if anything, it will ultimately produce even more profit than the fuel market.
Pyeatte, not only. Airplanes, ag equipment, forestry, mining,… All require liquid fossil fuels. Fusion generated electricity would be great, but not a solution to all problems.
+100
The co2 scare is like the horse manure problem of the late 19th century. They could not imagine cars.
The money worse than wasted on Green Energy projects would have been better spent on fusion, even if we still didn’t have any more progress than at present.
“at the time the private automobile was widely hailed as an environmental saviour”…… People also forget that Kerosene also “Saved the Whale”…..An irony being, that at this earlier period before Automobiles, that Gasoline/Petrol was a relatively useless by product.
It’s amazing were technology takes us. One thing leads to another. 🙂
Yah, wake me up when they achieve ignition. NIF finally has had some good fusion research going on now that they improved the target containment issues, but still hasn’t got positive ignition.
There is a recently tested system that is ready now.
http://www.sifferkoll.se/sifferkoll/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/LuganoReportSubmit.pdf
No, the tested device is nowhere near ready, at least for anything beyond producing a lot of heat in a lab setting. I think the device they tested last time was closer to ready – it was in a metal container with flanges and bolt holes ready to go into a boiler. The new device had no mounting surfaces, inconel wiring in the open where it was sure to get hotter than that molded into the alumina, and a time consuming method for inserting and replacing the charge. It was, however, a decent unit for the sort or testing done on it.
My guess is that Industrial Heat redesigned Rossi’s design, and has a completely different design in mind for something can be used in a boiler. Apparently a Hot-Cat has not yet heated water – so quite a ways to go before they have a contraption that can boil water, let alone produce high pressure steam.
Thats not correct the earlier models were water cooled.
A long ‘burn’ high impulse xenon (or other gas) propulsion is easily configurable.
stuartlarge – the earlier modules were good only for boiling water, they couldn’t handle the temperatures required for high pressure steam. Rossi set those aside while wheels ground on their safety certification and he wound up getting distracted by his “Hot-Cat” which could produce high pressure steam but they haven’t built a boiler for it yet. The “independent” team has studied two models of Hot-Cat tech.
2014 Oct 14:
If there was fusion then radiation would be expected, likely neutrons. Rossi has done an interesting song-and-dance routine to keep the nuclear regulators away. If there were energetic nuclear reactions then he’s making nuclear reactors and deserves 1000x more scrutiny and regulation. That there is not says he’s told the authorities his devices do not cause nuclear reactions.
Now it’s revealed Rossi doesn’t know what the heck is happening, it’s not what he said it was. Here in the comments Roger Knights reports Rossi says that 1MW commercial installation, which now suddenly isn’t ready, won’t have visitors for about a year.
How long does it take for a “hot” irradiated zone to “cool off” a bit, with somewhat-radioactive components surreptitiously replaced with “clean” versions by unknowing workers who dispose of them somewhere forgettable? Perhaps about a year?
Don’t perpetuate scams to unsuspecting readers. Rossi is a well known scam artist and his current investment money scam has now been running for several years.
He could have run a clear comparison, but chose to run an unclear and inaccurate method. Defini8te scam.
Where did that 8 come from?
Stand back! (At least 20 km) We’re going to use Science!
5 years? Well, Skunk Works has a reputation for fast delivery of near impossible projects. Remember project Azorian? Retreaving a Russian sub from 3 miles deep….
This is curious timing, especially for the skunk works, which generally keeps things very quiet because of the nature of their business. The press release at http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2014/october/141015ae_lockheed-martin-pursuing-compact-nucelar-fusion.html says “As they gain confidence and progress technically with each experiment, they will also be searching for partners to help further the technology.”
Perhaps the announcement and glitzy video was to let potential partners get in very early.
It’s also curious it’s out about the same time as the new report about Rossi’s & Industrial Heat’s E-Cat. I wouldn’t be surprised if they feel they need to distract energy watchers from the E-Cat and thorium reactor work.
Ah well, another damn thing to keep one’s eye on. 🙂
At this point, it is ALL ABOUT MONEY. There is no risk of patent spoiling — they have no PROCESS to keep secret. Lockheed has only announced their “project” and “revealed” what is common knowledge in the field.
Perhaps, they are trying to beat out Livermore’s National Ignition Facility for investors…
See this February 22, 2014, “Sci Show” vid (published on YouTube)
“Net fuel gain” (and that was NOT net from the entire production process; still super-doooper negative ROI — the tiny “gain” was only within the fusion reaction itself): 17 kilojewels.
Woo-hoo! (NOT).
They, as Mr. Werme astutely pointed out above, have got the applied science money cart way ahead of the basic science horse.
Keep on funding the real scientists.
When they solve COST-EFFECTIVE fusion, THEN, start to build the full-blown, expensive, prototypes.
Science just isn’t there…. yet.
HANG IN THERE, YOU GUYS! All you real scientists who just do science because you love it for itself; what you are doing IS adding value. Finding out what does NOT work is essential!
Enjoy the journey!
#(:))
[And those are 12 karat, gold-plated kilojewels too! .mod]
Oh, Mod — thanks for the funny correction (blush) — “kiloJOULES”
… I prefer the other kind myself….
My dad told me many times many years ago not to believe the doomsdayers. They have always been around and probably will be. He strongly believed that technology will come to save us. Maybe he was right. He was told in his small school in the 1930s that in 50 years there would be standing room only in the US.
Your dad was right, and will be right.
• The end is nigh.
• Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.
• Malthus et al
• Green revolution 1960s – India to starve, UK to be no more.
Yet there are 7 billion of us. How the heck did we manage to do this? Our hands and fossil fuels. What if they run out? Methane hydrates and unknown unknowns. :>)
Climate change meant we came down from the trees and onto the savanna. Climate change made us.
Grrr,, again the no need to hurry. We have plenty of coal and gas for quite a while.
And its not as if CO2 is actually bad for the environment, being as it is the major building block of all plant life.
We must NEVER allow the atmospheric CO2 level to drop down to the dangerously low levels of the past few hundred thousand years. It needs to be pushed to at least 500ppm and held there.
I agree, nature was very, very naughty holding in all that CO2. Mind you I expect on geological time scales all of the sequestered CO2 in fossil fuels will be returned to the atmosphere by natural means. In the meantime we should help things along by helping ourselves to a tiny bit of that stored energy. By tiny bit I am talking only relatively.
We need energy, the biosphere needs the CO2. Sounds like a classical win-win to me.
Certainly makes more sense than the utterly absurd ITER project.
Hat’s off if they have actually devised a practical fusion reactor, athough I still am convinced Transatomic Power’s molten salt reactor has achieved a breakthru design of an old concept and can at least do something a fusion reactor cannot do : burn nuclear wastes. It also has unlimited near-zero cost fuels available, so the fusion reactor has no advantage there. It also can load follow, so the fusion reactor has no
advantage there, either. In fact, it’s not clear about this at all. Another claim I saw for the 100MW fusion reactor was that it is one tenth the size of a conventional reactor. Well, big deal – it produces less than a tenth of the power of a conventional reactor and would therefore, in fact, apparently be considerably larger than a molten salt reactor. The molten salt reactor would be of greater value to reduce and control the nuclear wastes that are out there and which are being produced and will continue to be produced for quite some time. Their description of the road ahead leads me to doubt that they would have anything commerically available anywhere near as soon as Transatomic Power’s molten salt reactors, which have zero technological obstaces to overcome – their reactors have been both designed and costed. They could be built tomorrow. No mention of cost of the fusion reactors and their general arguments are quite misleading, in that they are comparing their reactor to conventional nuclear fission reactors, rather than the molten salt reactors which I am convinced will make all other fission reactors obsolete and which will be their main competition. Therefore I reject most of Lockheed’s arguments, especially their claims about nuclear wastes from fission reactors and dangers of meltdowns, which simply do not exist in molten salt reactors. Lockheed is clearly selling their idea hoping to stir up investments and misleads prospective invesors in doing so. Hopefully their fusion technology contains more logic than their misleading claims do.
What a load of old bollocks!
Maybe in ten years I can plug a Lockheed reactor into the flux capacitor of my DeLorean & get some good thermometer readings during the Maunder Minimum.
… and find out who’s going to win the next ten World Series.
it goes into the “Mr. Fusion” containment box, mounted over the engine.
Mr. Peabody and his pet boy Sherman are now available on Dish Network if you want to use the Wayback to check out any of your prehistoric data.
Lost me at “climate change” being the motivation.
They must drop the “C.C” bomb, just as it’s pro forma to emphasize benefiting all mankind rather than making a profit, which, of course, is Lockheed Martin’s mandate from their shareholders. If they had figured out how to finance this without outside investment, they wouldn’t be revealing this, as they have pretty much stated. But since they do need the investment, they are bound to recite the usual mantras. Perfectly normal. Doesn’t mean they really buy into the AGW narrative, they are bound (for now) to pay lip service to it just like Exxon Mobil, BP, and everyone else.
How about sharks with friggin lazer beams?
The good old industrial research complex. Where most of the truly great inventions of the last century were developed. Government based research???? Bahhh! Bring back the Bell Labs’ of the world and we would be much better off than we already are.
this is the example of scientists working toward a practical, commercial goal – in a situation in which their continued employments depends on their performance. What a concept!!!
Peculiar story, the US, Japan, Russia and Europe are working on the (futuristic)fusion project in southern France. It sounds more that there is a lack of research projects on the Lockheed shelf.
JJM Gommers: If you mean ITER, it’s a political and bureaucratic boondoggle of Cyclopean proportions. Their projected construction timeline is on the order of decades, and most of the engineering challenges they know they’ll face are still entirely unsolved. ITER has all of the hallmarks of being a functioning fusion reactor second, and a colossal taxpayer-funded make-work project for second-rate scientists first.
That is a very apt description of ITER. First bruted by Reagan and Gorbachev. Says all you need to know.
Science and Industry, not Government, will provide the clean power that replaces the “hated” fossil fuels. Now if Gore and Mann and all of their wild minded, agenda driven, Government funded followers would just relax everything will work our just fine. My goal in life is to stay alive long enough to enjoy the end of the global warming/climate change scare frenzy and the dawn of the new nuclear age.
And I don’t care if it fusion or molten salt, i.e. thorium, that leads the way.
Right on! If the government had any common sense, it would be putting its funds into this project rather than the ridiculous solar and wind projects it has pissed away so many billions on so far.
No Dave…
If the government had any sense, it wouldn’t be taking our money for any similar purposes in the first place. It would be constraining itself to ensuring equitable rules for all (no favoritism), ensuring property rights by equal and just application of the law, and securing our borders/protecting us from enemies. This is the way that capital finds the most efficient use and enables civilization to progress most rapidly to the benefit of all (especially including the poorest amongst us).
Until we rid ourselves of the thought that “if only government would direct X rather than Y…” we will be stuck in first gear, or worse, in reverse. Private interests drive progress. Government just gets in the way because there will always be politicians bent on making us all behave a certain way and telling us of all the bogeymen against whom he/she will protect us.
Bruce
What about this version? http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/10/08/uw-fusion-reactor-concept-could-be-cheaper-than-coal/
Beware the contradictions like this…
Directly contradicts this…
Regardless of design costs, the “unlimited fuel supply” will soon offset them.
Yeah, what Roy said. To wit:
“Other designs, such as the experimental fusion reactor project that’s currently being built in France – called Iter – have to be much larger than the UW’s because they rely on superconducting coils that circle around the outside of the device to provide a similar magnetic field. When compared with the fusion reactor concept in France, the UW’s is much less expensive – roughly one-tenth the cost of Iter – while producing five times the amount of energy.”
One-tenth of infinity is still infinity.