Unfortunately, the article doesn’t provide much detail on what the breakthrough was except the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet. I would think the breakthrough would have something to do with harnessing fusion power itself, not the size of the reactor.
Agreed! I want to know the theoretical basis of this breakthrough!
But, hey, even if it’s no more than an engineering improvement – hot dog! That’s damn fine news, all by itself!
If that were a movie, Cracked could add it to this list.
Reddit has a thread on it where some nuclear physicists/engineers discuss it. That particular sub is better about having actual PhDs instead of self-appointed experts, but grain of salt and all that.
From that thread, I gather they’re using a magnetic mirror with a Polywell core, which are both old technologies that didn’t work, but maybe they will work when put together. Also, I am not a nuclear physicist, so I have no idea what they’re talking about except that I know what the words “magnet” and “fusion” mean.
I notice that they’re looking to have a working prototype in 5 years, which is significantly sooner than the 20 years that we’ve been promised for the last 50 years or so.
One thing that is promising here is that the news is coming out of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, not from some guy in his garage…and the design they’re talking about would appear to have quite a few military applications, meaning that they might actually have the funding to get this thing built.
There are (a few) more details in this Aviation Week article, but it seems that Lockheed’s ‘big innovation’ is specifically the shape of the reactor (and that the size is just a side effect thereof).
Oh boy! a nuke-powered M1A1?
Maybe a REALLY long-range bomber?
When I see it, kids, when I see it…
Does it cure cancer too?
Imagine if they do pull it off in 5 years. How would that change our world? And no flying cars! There again, its Lockheed…
Scientists Are Bashing Lockheed Martin’s Nuclear Fusion ‘Breakthrough’
No flying cars…but electric cars quickly would become the standard. Yay!
Thanks for the link johnpost. Stranger indeedy that Lockheed would make such an announcement.
Here’s a direct link to Lockheed Martin’s page about their fusion work.
I still say that with sufficient miniaturization, a total disregard for your target, and guns that eject once they pass the radiation “safe zone”,
you could have an effective belt-fed machine gun of nuclear bullets delivered from an airborne or space-based platform.
I’m not sure what technology could survive it, but that just might be the point.
I’ll believe it when it’s described as a “weird discovery” made by a bored housewife.
A rather interesting article here.