# Lockheed claims to be 4 years away from fusion power plant **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 5, 2013, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058 "2013-03-05T01:31:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/21 "2013-03-05T14:42:36Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > If your energy is cheap enough you can even take the carbon out of the air, combine that with hydrogen from water and synthesize useful liquid fuels, and nip that global warming thing in the bud. As a bonus, you’ll also be creating plenty of cheap oxygen we can use to keep the rapidly growing population of old people alive. Yes. And then we could make artifical coal and gas burning plants that provide electricity and put new carbon dioxide into the air keeping the planet nice and toasty warm and giving us a an endless supply of fuel to synthesize using the free fusion energy. And then we could put windmills on our cars too! ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/22 "2013-03-05T14:52:45Z")
I don’t want to watch the video at work. Is he talking about regular fusion or cold fusion? If the former, is there really a benefit over fission? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/23 "2013-03-05T15:58:47Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I don’t want to watch the video at work. Is he talking about regular fusion or cold fusion? If the former, is there really a benefit over fission? It’s not cold fusion…no idea where some of the comments in this thread are coming from (didn’t read the other thread though). It’s simply an alternative to the tokomak fusion concept that uses dense plasma fusion instead. Is everyone saying that Lockheed Martin has come back and said that this is not something they are working on, and that the guy who is doing the video doesn’t work for them or is a spokesman for Skunk Works? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/24 "2013-03-05T16:04:12Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Mostly, because the funding situation never seems to hold. While there have certainly been funding issues for fusion research over the years, the primary showstoppers seem to be the technical issues with plasma stability, maintaining confinement at fusion conditions, and bremsstrahlung losses in conventional inertial and magnetic confinement fusion. Every decade or some effort has focused on some novel way of achieving the orders of magnitude improvements, such as RF heating, electrostatic confinement, novel nested toroid configurations, et cetera. Sometimes these result in incremental improvements in the state of the art, but often they reveal unappreciated complexities in plasma dynamics and end up being abandoned. Muon-catalyzed fusion (the original “cold fusion”) seemed very promising for a long time until the alpha sticking problem (where muons would stick to an alpha particle, limiting their usefulness to catalyzing fewer reactions before decaying than the energy they produce) was generally regarded as a fundamental limitation (though there are still a few groups working on a means to reduce the alpha sticking rate). Part of the issue is that we have historically lacked the computational power to simulate the highly non-linear plasma dynamics that occur in an “equilibrium” state of plasma at fusion temperatures. For an area like solar physics it is generally sufficient to represent the turbulent behavior in a statistical fashion, but for very fine grained control of a net equilibrium plasma you actually have to be able to simulate the behavior of the plasma and the electromagnetic field it generates (and the interaction with the confinement field) with very high fidelity including perturbations. Only in about the last ten years has that kind of computing ability and the systems to manage it become readily available. Even so, it doesn’t resolve the fundamental physical issues with stability and transport control that make maintaining a stable plasma field so difficult. Fusion seems like it ought to be easy; we can see it in the sky, and we can produce it in terrestrial conditions in brief, destructive flashes. We can even build devices that will produce fusion products on a bench top scale, albeit at energy negative levels. But the ability to actually maintain fusion conditions at a output level that is useable for power generation is frustratingly evasive. More research funds do mean more avenues that one can pursue (at least in theory) but the basic technical hurdles remain. > [@billfish678](#): > > If your energy is cheap enough you can even take the carbon out of the air, combine that with hydrogen from water and synthesize useful liquid fuels, and nip that global warming thing in the bud. As a bonus, you’ll also be creating plenty of cheap oxygen we can use to keep the rapidly growing population of old people alive. However, one needs to appreciate the fact that all this synthesizing of fuels “out of the air” requires considerable work, and all work produces waste heat, e.g. energy at a low enough thermal differential that it is not practical to extract it. In general, the faster your process, the more waste heat it produces. We currently only worry about waste heat at a very local level, e.g. a power plant heating a river or lake that it uses for cooling. If you suddenly have a massive effort to synthesize hundreds of petajoules of fuel per day, the waste heat is going to also scale with that, potentially becoming a regional or even global issue if the waste heat generation exceeds the Earth’s capacity for radiative emissivity. Just having a new energy source is not a magic fix-all for current energy problems. > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I don’t want to watch the video at work. Is he talking about regular fusion or cold fusion? If the former, is there really a benefit over fission? The benefits of fusion are [ul] [li]Cheap, nontoxic, and available energy source (deuterium, lithium, boron)[/li][li]High specific yield for footprint (presuming it can be scaled to a reasonable size)[/li][li]High thermal gradient (thermodynamically more efficient)[/li][li]Little or no radioactive residue[/li][/ul] The downsides depend upon the method used. Neutron-producing fusion (D-D, D-T) has significant material science and maintenance issues as well as the obvious radiation hazards. Aneutronic fusion (D-[SUP]3[/SUP]He, [SUP]3[/SUP]He-[SUP]3[/SUP]He, p-[SUP]7[/SUP]Li, p-[SUP]11[/SUP]B) have much higher triple product requirements and yield less overall energy. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/25 "2013-03-05T16:08:24Z")
There’s been plans for personal fusion plants for a long time: [Mini Nuclear Power Plants Could Power 20,000 Homes (Update)](http://phys.org/news145561984.html) ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/26 "2013-03-05T16:10:22Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Is everyone saying that Lockheed Martin has come back and said that this is not something they are working on, and that the guy who is doing the video doesn’t work for them or is a spokesman for Skunk Works? Everyone is saying there is no other indication that Lockheed has made a breakthrough in fusion technology outside of this video clip. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/27 "2013-03-05T16:20:21Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > It’s always 50 years away 🙂 No kidding. Imagine [Philip D. Reed](http://www.ge.com/company/leadership/past-leaders) making this statement?? > [@](#): > > We are no more than 50 years away from fusion electricity ! The North Fork of Long Island will become the power generation point for North America !!! 😃 It makes one question the scale of the project. Is this desktop science or an energy revolution? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/28 "2013-03-05T16:23:19Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Everyone is saying there is no other indication that Lockheed has made a breakthrough in fusion technology outside of this video clip. A quick Google search turns up a lot of links on it…such as [this](http://americansecurityproject.org/blog/2013/lockheed-martin-outlines-plans-for-nuclear-fusion-reactor/). > [@](#): > > Lockheed Martin caused quite a stir in the nuclear energy industry as it announced plans to begin work on a nuclear fusion reactor. Speaking at the recent Google “Solve for X” conference on February 7, Charles Chase of Lockheed’s “Skunk Works” said that a prototype 100-megawatt nuclear fusion machine will be tested in 2017, and that a fully operational machine should be grid-ready ten years from now. > > This project is significant because the Lockheed reactor design is smaller than other proposed prototypes. Its design will use a compact cylinder, rather than a traditional bulky ring, and provide a stronger magnetic containment field. This leaves fewer points of weakness where energy can escape than in traditional designs. It could also make the reactor small enough for a truck to transport, yet strong enough to generate power for thousands of homes. > > Today, nuclear power plants around the world utilize fission power, which involves the splitting of atoms to release energy for electricity. By contrast, nuclear fusion would fuse together two isotopes of the element hydrogen; the subsequent reaction formed after creates a large amount of energy. An ASP Fact Sheet on Nuclear Fusion noted that fusion energy is safe, clean, and has the potential to deliver an abundant amount of electricity. However, it has been difficult to produce nuclear fusion today for a number of reasons. > > One difficulty in harnessing fusion power is a control issue. If the energy from fusion can be released slowly, it can be used to produce electricity. But an effective way to do so has not yet been discovered, and scientists are still trying to overcome the problems associated with controlling nuclear fusion. It is also enormously expensive to work on nuclear fusion projects; one such example of this is the ITER experiment in southern France. > > These impediments have not stopped scientists from working on nuclear fusion projects over the last few decades. An experiment at Sandia National Laboratories this past year focused on making small cylinders able to withstand the powerful magnetic force that is the result of nuclear fusion. Other countries, such as China, Russia and France are researching nuclear fusion, and the National Ignition Facility is helping collaborate on fusion experiments with scientists in South Korea, Japan, and the United Kingdom. I don’t know how realistic their time table is (seemed overly optimistic to me), but I don’t see any reason to doubt that LM is working on a system of it’s own at it’s Skunk Works facility…that seems reasonable to me, at least on brief inspection. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/29 "2013-03-05T16:38:59Z")
> [@XT](#): > > A quick Google search turns up a lot of links on it…such as [this](http://americansecurityproject.org/blog/2013/lockheed-martin-outlines-plans-for-nuclear-fusion-reactor/). > > I don’t know how realistic their time table is (seemed overly optimistic to me), but I don’t see any reason to doubt that LM is working on a system of it’s own at it’s Skunk Works facility…that seems reasonable to me, at least on brief inspection. That looks like another article that is based only on the video linked in the OP. There’s a ton of links to popular science and free energy sites that all go back to that brief video. Now it’s possible Lockheed has something up their sleeve, and this is some sort of feeler to gauge responses, but it sounds more like Charles Chase is a spokesman for wishful thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/30 "2013-03-05T16:42:41Z")
> [@Shakes](#): > > Even if it were true, how would fusion make cars go or airplanes fly? > > Isn’t all that stuff to makie fusion happen way too bulky to put inside those things? Extremely cheap energy will make hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars feasible. ---
**Author:** ![Michael63129](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Michael63129](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael63129)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/31 "2013-03-05T17:32:37Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I don’t see what’s so impressive about 100 milliwatts. I’m pretty sure that they meant megawatts (MW), because I can’t possibly see why anybody would be so eager to get a 100 milliwatt fusion reactor (for “commercial purposes”, and generate all of our energy in a couple more decades). Also, if you are talking about a white LED, 100 mW (milliwatts) isn’t enough for even two - and that is the tiny low-power indicator kind (max current 20 mA typical, ~3.5 V for white LEDs = 70 mW, although you can run them on lower current). ETA: See **XT** ’s post, which gets the terms correct, if because it spells out megawatt. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/32 "2013-03-05T17:49:42Z")
> [@moriah](#): > > There’s been plans for personal fusion plants for a long time: [Mini Nuclear Power Plants Could Power 20,000 Homes (Update)](http://phys.org/news145561984.html) That is a fission-powered plant, and it is hardly “personal” size, insofar as it is the size of a small grain silo and provides 25 MW of power. > [@XT](#): > > A quick Google search turns up a lot of links on it…such as [this](http://americansecurityproject.org/blog/2013/lockheed-martin-outlines-plans-for-nuclear-fusion-reactor/). > > I don’t know how realistic their time table is (seemed overly optimistic to me), but I don’t see any reason to doubt that LM is working on a system of it’s own at it’s Skunk Works facility…that seems reasonable to me, at least on brief inspection. All of the links I find point back to the same guy, and indeed, the same presentation, which again, has essentially zero technical content to evaluate either feasibility or the proposed timeline. More than likely, this is a business development person spinning out exaggerated tales of novel, revolutionary technology in order to get the interest of investors for other projects, as BD people are wont to do. > [@Terr](#): > > Extremely cheap energy will make hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars feasible. Having a ready supply of hydrogen is only one small aspect of a practical hydrogen fuel economy. You also need infrastructure (transportation, storage, handling), safety training and regulation, and economically viable and practical fuel cells technology. Currently, hydrogen fuel cells cost around US$50/kW and the best volumetric energy density of about seven times less than gasoline. Hydrogen fuel cells also don’t function well if at all below about 5 °C, making them impractical for cold climes without some kind of additional on-board heating. So, even having some kind of stationary non-pollution power supply is not the magic cure-all for world energy demands the way this guy or others claims it to be. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/33 "2013-03-05T18:09:03Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Practical fusion power is about 50 years away, provided that the funding situation holds. The saying used to be “Fusion power has been 10 years away for the last 30 years”. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/34 "2013-03-05T23:39:22Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > The saying used to be “Fusion power has been 10 years away for the last 30 years”. I recall it as being 20 years away. In any case, it’s considerably less BS than before. Originally that statement was pie in the sky based on nothing but wishful thinking. Today we have working reactors, just not ones that are feasible (that generate more power than they use, for example). We know what problems need to be solved, and we have promising avenues for solutions. I’m 55 and I do expect to see fusion reactors in my lifetime, but just barely. Fingers crossed! ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/35 "2013-03-05T23:44:02Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > … or even global issue if the waste heat generation exceeds the Earth’s capacity for radiative emissivity. Just having a new energy source is not a magic fix-all for current energy problems. Yup. I remember years (decades) ago reading Jerry Pournelle’s “A Step Farther Out”, where he essentially says that with enough energy and technology, we can overcome any of the looming issues that are limits to continued growth (of population, economy, etc). I do remember wondering what the heck we’d do with all the waste heat from using that energy. But I guessed that Jerry would say that if we have enough energy and technology, we can solve THAT problem too! ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2013, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/36 "2013-03-06T00:15:32Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > I do remember wondering what the heck we’d do with all the waste heat from using that energy. But I guessed that Jerry would say that if we have enough energy and technology, we can solve THAT problem too! There is a fundamental thermodynamic limitation here, though, which is that if you are producing waste heat you have to dump it into a low temperature reservoir. Ultimately, the only permanent and sustainable reservoir is the sky, and if you are exceeding Earth’s capacity to reject heat the only solution is to either increase the effective emissivity (i.e. make Earth a better radiator) or move your heat-generating processes somewhere else. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2013, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/37 "2013-03-06T04:12:43Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > The benefits of fusion are [ul] > [li]Cheap, nontoxic, and available energy source (deuterium, lithium, boron)[/li][li]High specific yield for footprint (presuming it can be scaled to a reasonable size)[/li][li]High thermal gradient (thermodynamically more efficient)[/li][li]Little or no radioactive residue[/li][/ul] You left out the part about fusion reactions being driven: there would be no realistic way for a fusion generating plant to run out of control and melt down or explode (though I have heard that fission plants could be designed to a similar type of controlled reaction). > [@](#): > > The downsides depend upon the method used. Neutron-producing fusion (D-D, D-T) has significant material science and maintenance issues as well as the obvious radiation hazards. This is a much bigger problem than most people realize. The intense radiation from the reaction – especially the undirectable neutrons – would almost certainly degrade the confinement system (superconducting electromagnets) very quickly, which would be an enormous expense to maintain and replace. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2013, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/38 "2013-03-06T07:39:35Z")
> [@Michael63129](#): > > I’m pretty sure that they meant megawatts (MW) Whoooosh!🙂 ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2013, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058/39 "2013-03-06T17:17:28Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > There is a fundamental thermodynamic limitation here, though, which is that if you are producing waste heat you have to dump it into a low temperature reservoir. Ultimately, the only permanent and sustainable reservoir is the sky, and if you are exceeding Earth’s capacity to reject heat the only solution is to either increase the effective emissivity (i.e. make Earth a better radiator) or move your heat-generating processes somewhere else. > Stranger Pournelle’s colleague Larry Niven anticipated this problem in his “Known Space” millieu. The Pierson’s Puppeteers are, in this setting, an ancient star-faring race of considerable technological advancement. The progressively solved the technological problems of energy generation, eventually mastering an unspecified total matter conversion technology. Clean, easily fueled, totally free of waste products except for one: waste heat. Quoting from Ringworld: > [@](#): > > “I had explained,” said Nessus, “that our civilization was dying in its own waste heat. Total conversion of energy had rid us of all waste products of civilization, save that one. We had no choice but to move our world outward from its primary.” So, apparently one solution is [astronomical engineering](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_engineering). That does seem like the scale of solution needed to solve that final waste problem. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lockheed-claims-to-be-4-years-away-from-fusion-power-plant/652058.md?page=1)