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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Indian government has just given a major boost to domestic nuclear fusion research, by sanctioning the expenditure of Rs 2,500 crore (around $400 million by my calculation) as seed money, to spur interest in fusion research.
According to The Times of India;
India is presently one of the seven partner countries in world’s biggest energy research project – the ITER – that is coming up in Cadarche, France.
“Presently, our contribution as one of the seven partners in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project in France is 10%. The knowledge that we gain will be used to set up our own demonstrator reactors at home. We will begin by setting up an experimental version of the Cadarche ITER reactor in France here,” ITER-India’s project director Shishir Deshpande said here on Monday night.
Deshpande along with ITER’s top brass – Dr Sergio Orlandi (director – central engineering and plant) and deputy director general Dr Remmelt Haange — is touring India to review progress made by Indian companies involved in the fusion reactor project.
Sources said that the central government has sanctioned Rs 2,500 crore to seed research in nuclear fusion.
India is also very active in Thorium fission research – a new 300Mw Thorium reactor is scheduled to go online in 2016. India takes Thorium very seriously. Although India does have some significant Uranium deposits, India has around 25% of the world’s known Thorium reserves.
Aneutronic reactor seems better and less expensive than Tokamaks.
http://youtu.be/u8n7j5k-_G8
I watched the CrossFire video. The waste heat conversion system, if it worked, would render the rest of the system unnecessary. It would alone replace all current thermal power stations. Its output efficiency is unphysical as I suspect is to the mechanism of using sets of helical waves to contain and then initiate fusion.
The graphics are lovely. Maybe the system can be turned into a space craft’s Probability Drive which works by knowing precisely all the ways in which it cannot.
Musing on the con-fusion …
Map of the Problematique
Let’s see now China has a vague pledge for CO2 and coal cuts at a distant point in the future with some metro area cuts in coal plants. At least India gets a research center out of its “looking busy” pledge. Only the U.S. will have cuts and decline in manufacturing. This fits with the city states design plan around a service economy and supporting dear leaders voter strategies within those cities. Fly over country will be further de-populated and they don’t count anyway in the new model of vote buying and campaign strategy.
@Gamecock > There was no thorium reactor at Oak Ridge. Indeed, thorium isn’t even reactive.
You are in error. Oak Ridge’s Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) included investigating thorium as a nuclear fuel, with positive results. Naturally occurring thorium is effectively all Th-232, which is fertile, not fissionable. Which means a thorium burning reactor requires an igniter fuel which is fissionable to start it up, after which it breeds fissionable U-233 from Th-232.
cf. http://energyfromthorium.com/ornl-document-repository/ documents on the MSRE
ITER is a waste of money, but I still have hopes for Z-pinch, Field Reversed Configuration, and Polywell.
“included investigating thorium as a nuclear fuel”
There was no thorium in any Oak Ridge reactor. None. Double ought zero.
LarryD, Gamecock is correct. Please see my note above.
And Britain is still giving ‘poverty aid’ to India?
Our David Camoron (sic) is a numbskull.
Didn’t India reject the UK’s last offer of aid because it was too small compared with the size of their own economy?
Yes, we gave them $409 this year, but hopefully that should be the end of it. Our government is desperate to give it away to other countries, like…
Uganda £80 million
Kenya £105 million
Tanzania £145 million
Ethiopia £350 million
Pakistan £250 million
Nigeria £180 million
Afghanistan £165 million
Of course, here in Britain, we have so much money that we simply have to give it away.
Who ever reaches a Thorium powered civilized existence first wins !!
Wind and Solar will confine a society to a 19th century at best civilization.
Wind and solar are proven to kill birds and bats, disturb wild animals and natural habitats, noise affecting nearby residents, visual impact of the development on the landscape.
Wind is solar. What century was Lucy ? Figs were plentiful back then !
That will be India. They have little local uranium, but thorium is massive in India, so they have a clear long term plan to use thorium as their primary fuel. Already demonstrated in their existing CANDU style reactors with MSR on the way.
At least the money is being spent on work that might have a useful outcome instead of being poured down the planetary black hole that is renewables subsidy. Though, I have doubts as to whether the overcomplex and costly ITER design is feasible as a commercial power unit. Particularly as the best it is likely to achieve is D-T fusion, which requires a scarce fuel and tends to degrade the apparatus through its very energetic neutron emissions.
Robert Bussard’s Polywell design (magnetic containment but electrostatic acceleration instead of thermal) has already demonstrated fusion using inexpensive pure deuterium fuel, which does still release neutrons, although less energetic ones. A larger Polywell (a few metres across, still very much smaller than ITER) would probably be able to run on protium/boron fuel, which in theory is aneutronic. There would still be some neutrons due to secondary fusion reactions and hard X-rays due to bremmstrahlung (an inevitable consequence of magnetic containment) but these should be less of a problem than the copious fast neutrons of D-D or D-T fuel. The other advantage of p-B fuel is that the products being alphas, it may even be possible to extract the energy directly as electricity, eliminating the conventional boiler, turbine and alternator. There would still have to be a fairly sophisticated inverter to transform several Mv of DC into utility current, but I am sure modern electronics is up-to that task.
Though, if the claims of the LENR developers are valid, then hot fusion research might indeed be a waste of time. If we can do the equivalent in a 25cm quartz tube instead of a multi-ton vacuum chamber, then no point. I understand that an 18 hour self-sustaining run has been had with an E-Cat or similar device.
Don’t forget this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_St._Vrain_Generating_Station
http://www.fsvfolks.org/FSVHistory_2.html
Another contender in the energy production that will likely outperform ITER is Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Focus Fusion approach http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/
There have also been great advances in the LENR field recently with A Russian scientist replicating Rossi’s E-Cat twice and announcement of labs dedicated to its study in Europe, Japan, and India.
I thought Ford already had designed the Fusion. Can’t India just buy them instead?
Follow the Money!
India knows that the fission trail is cold.
There are big contracts to be had, to try though.
Has the Smell and Colour of Climate change.
Rossi is a liar, a serial scammer and a convicted fraud. Evidence of this is all over the web. Parkmanov is a bumbling fool who published obvious fraud (the “cut and paste” temperature series).
Rossi told Florida Bureau he has no US factory, no Nuclear reactions(after claiming for years that he had both).
http://freeenergyscams.com/the-thermoelectric-scam-of-andrea-rossi-part-1/
Rossi scammed the US government out of millions of dollars with his “Thermoelectric Generator” scam.
60 years of Tokamak has produced donuts.
Yum! donuts are health food.
[Only if you subscribe to the circular principles of a holistic diet. .mod]
Reblogged this on The Arts Mechanical and commented:
India would be better off looking at all the small fusion reactors being developed. Tokamaks are a dead end unfortunately. I was told that personally by the head of Princeton’s plasma physics lab almost twenty years ago. Nothing I’ve seen since has changed that.
India is wasting money on fusion research they don’t have.
China’s first test thorium Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) reactor goes online later this year, with the revised goal of developing a commercial MSR for large-scale rollout by 2024 (initial goal was by 2040….)
The biggest problem with Fusion is how to contain 14,000,000C of liquid plasma. With thorium MSRs, you’re dealing with how to contain molten salts at 1,400C and how to chemically remove unwanted transuranics in the uranium decay chain; a MUCH simpler problem.
The Chinese are delighted to watch the West and India waste $trillions on wind, solar, bio-fuels, geo-thermal, ITER fusion, Compact Fusion Reactors, etc., while they quietly develop MSRs that’ll produce electricity for $0.03/kWh and use MSR waste heat to synthesize hydrocarbons and desalinate ocean water; thereby becoming 100% energy, hydrocarbon and fresh water self-sufficient.
“The biggest problem with Fusion is how to contain 14,000,000C of liquid plasma”
Only if you take the perversely difficult approach of accelerating particles by heating them.
Imagine if CERN had taken that route, their apparatus would probably not fit on the planet. The sensible way to accelerate ions is with an electrostatic field. Instead of a million degrees, ten kilovolts will give you low-rate deuterium fusion. The Farnsworth fusor, which works on this principle, has been around for years as an industrial low-rate neutron source for radiographic processes, etc.
The difficulty then is not one of producing fusion (easy) but doing it in a way which keeps the energy losses down to less than the energy output. A key part of that problem is that in a tenuous gas phase,only a small fraction of accelerated ions interact such as to result in fusion, and the gain from these is easily outweighed by the losses from ions striking electrodes, bremsstrahlung, etc.
“China’s first test thorium Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) reactor goes online later this year”
Thorium is not fissile. A thorium reactor is a physical impossibility.
Thorium breeds into U-233 A Thorium Reactor can be done with solid fuel in a PWR but misses the important safety and efficiency of the molten salt reactor.
If you put sugar in your coffee, it is still coffee. Putting thorium in a reactor doesn’t make it a thorium reactor. “Thorium reactor” is a marketing phrase.
The problem with thorium to U-233, as determined by U.S. experiments, is that not enough is converted fast enough for it to be worthwhile.
I love the conspiracy theories, like
Gary Pearse
April 10, 2015 at 9:43 am
. . . link telling us the Pentagon shutdown thorium development in 1973, when, in fact, thorium breeding testing was conducted at Shippingport from 1977 to 1982.
Wind and solar power proponents tell us wind and sunlight are free. Thorium reactor (sic) proponents tell us thorium is four times more common than uranium. That, and a buck-eighty, will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. In today’s world, uranium is far cheaper than trying to produce it by transmuting thorium.
Why are India and China pursuing it? Perhaps they fear there sources may be cut off. The two are doing a lot of sabre rattling these days.
One more thing . . . at Aiken, some trace amounts of the ultra nasty, gamma-emitting, U-232 were created, along with the 630 kilos of U-233 they made from thorium. The new types of reactors planned for breeding may produce MORE U-232. Which could kill the whole program.
Hundreds of years from now, thorium breeding may be necessary for uranium replacement. Today, it is the 100 mpg carburetor, all over again.
And the last time I looked, Switzerland was a Federal Republic, not a direct democracy, Daniel.
http://direct-democracy.geschichte-schweiz.ch/
How’s polywell fusion coming along?
According to this presentation http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=238715
Wiffle ball 8 has verified the “high beta” proof of principle. EMC2 are now ready to produce a full size working prototype having about 1gw generating capacity. The cost of this was given as “a few hundreds of millions of dollars” and time scale of 3 years.
Sounds to me a better use of India’s few hundred million dollars than the ITER boondoggle which has already had countless billions thrown at it.
My understanding is that the Polywell’s power output will scale rapidly with reactor size, so a very large unit like ITER should not be needed. The remaining feasibility issue seems to be whether bremsstrahlung losses will soak up too much of the power. There are seveal theories on that, but the only real proof would be to build a production-size model and see. As the cost won’t be all that high, why aren’t we doing that right now, I ask?
As far as I can understand bremsstrahlung ends in form of waste heat and one-third of that energy can be retrieved into electric power again.
The so called “third party report” is, in reality, no such thing. The convicted criminal fraudster Rossi was present and doing the actual operating at all pertinent times. He loaded the “fuel”(it’s no such thing) and turned on the junk pile. He then raised the power of the thing to “operating temperature”. He turned it off at the end and he removed the “ash”. The “ash” consisted of 99% Ni62 which is really strange given the starting isotope distribution. It is obvious that Rossi substituted the ash with commercially available Ni62. Rossi has admitted in the past to having switched samples. He did it again.
The “third party report” has not been published. The TPR was done by a bunch of long time collaborator’s of Rossi. They are a bunch of washed up nobodies who do not have the support of their institutions.
http://freeenergyscams.com/andrea-rossi-e-cat-industrial-heat-llc-first-rossi-lies-about-national-instruments-now-rossi-is-caught-lying-about-working-with-siemens/
BS piled wider and deeper remains BS.
No it is entirely proper that A does not devalue this important site by pushing the junk-science of LENR in general and criminal Rossi in particular, just as he properly does not allow discussion of “ch?m???ils”.
So you think the CBS video is wrong then?
The test ran for 32 days and Rossi was neither at the controls nor running the reactor during this time (so you have to cite where you found such a lie). It is this report that Dr. Parkamov used to replicate the heat effect. The testers and results of that device are credible, and based on that report a replication of the heat effect has occurred.
It really does not matter since LENR has been replicated many times by others. Just like many have difficulty grasping that CAGW is a scam, some simply lack the ability to make an informed judgment on LENR. This is only due to peoples own limitations and shortcomings. Anyone who spends a bit of time with a trained intellect can easy figure out LENR is real or they are people who must submit to higher authorities on such matters since they cannot make their own judgments.
This week is the 19th conference on cold fusion (being held in Pauda Italy). And the CEO of the company that purchased Rossi’s rights is speaking. Tom Darden, CEO of Cherokee Investments who owns a company called Industrial Heat will speak. Industrial heat is currently running an e-cat in an industrial setting.
It should be a great week for LENR.
Regards,
Albert D. Kallal
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
Yes CBS 60 Minutes is garbage. It is an entertainment program made by people who have no understanding of science. The whole video here is wrong except for the few seconds of Dr Richard Garwin. He is 100% correct.
McKubre is an idiot. He says one thing that is true. He does not know how to measure power. He says it in a sarcastic way implying strongly that he does. But he doesn’t. Dr barry Kort has shown why.
Yes CBS 60 Minutes is garbage. It is an entertainment program made by people who have no understanding of science. The whole video here is wrong except for the few seconds of Dr Richard Garwin. He is 100% correct.
McKubre is an idiot. He says one thing that is true. He does not know how to measure power. He says it in a sarcastic way implying strongly that he does. But he doesn’t. Dr barry Kort has shown why.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
India. Forward thinkers in rational, clean, efficient and reliable energy production.
India. Seeing through and beyond the ideological mess of ‘unreliable’ technology (wind/solar) c/o the politics of “climate change” that is savaging the west.
I have spent literally decades learning about this stuff. It is extremely irritating when a newcomer comes along and tries to educate me and those of us who have spent a lot more time studying this than most people have and the newcomer has spent. No I don’t know everything there is to know about the latest IPCC report, not that I am impressed by everything the IPCC says, but for gosh sakes it is not worth arguing the basic points in IPCC report with someone who doesn’t understand them himself. This is like a first grader, who doesn’t know that 1+1=2 trying to teach me calculus. I love the free speech that WUWT allows, but when one demonstrates a major lack of knowledge, I think their comments might be subjected to a bit more scrutiny by the moderator.
[Ah, but the moderators here usually find that it is more illustrative and much better training for the public at large to let those who make such errors be exposed (and rapidly corrected), rather than be arbitrarily censored, deleted and silenced. .mod]
Tom Trevor
You have made your feelings known, but you have also failed to say who this “newcomer” is, nor why you disagree with his statements. Nor have you established your own credentials to correct/criticize him.
A complaint? Yes. Most definitely.
A useful complaint? No.
Watch the units, guys. This is a nuclear-flim-flam.
500 megawatts is a measurement of power not energy.
How long do you have to pump 50 MW of power into the ITER before you get a 500 MW output power in a pulse for a fraction of a second? Is the energy of the output going to be greater than the energy of the input? I doubt it. But even if it is a theoretical energy breakeven, it is useless, for there is no way to use the energy.
Even taking their goals as achievable, 500 MW for 400 sec is 55 MWhr of raw, uncaptured energy. 55 MWhr of delivered electrical energy is worth only about $5,500.
The Energy Breakeven hill for Fusion is nothing compared to the viable economic hill.
None of these Tokomak designs make any sense from a power generation standpoint. There is no way to make them work in continuous operation, feeding fresh fuel in and removing the helium “ash”. It is as if you were designing a coal-fired boiler where you loaded the firebox with a few pounds of coal, bolted the door closed, lit the fire and burn the coal, then had to let it cool off before removing the ashes and reloading the firebox with another couple of pounds of coal.
Electrical generation — of any kind — requires a near constant energy conversion. Even wind and solar fit that bill, albeit poorly. A 1 GW coal fired powerplant consumes 400 tons per hour, 7 tons per minute, over 100 kg of coal per second pulverized and blown in to the furnace constantly, 24/7. BTW, those 400 tons of coal cost only $12,000.
I might be a little more charitable toward Stellerator designs. But Tokomaks are an engineering dead end.
sure. and tesla makes the worlds logistic dreams come through. Dream along.
India, tesla, wind elecs – any emergency way out there?
Hans
I think India might be able to find something more worthwhile to spend money on rather than shoveling $400 million down the fusion rathole. Maybe something like: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-in-school/more-than-half-of-indian-households-dont-have-a-toilet/article5368906.ece