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Nuclear fusion from Google, Lockheed, Draper Fisher



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Nuclear fusion from Google, Lockheed, Draper Fisher

By  | February 15, 2013, 5:25 AM PST
X marks a spot of fusion. Charles Chase describes how Lockheed Martin's fusion device trumps huge government fusion projects in this photograph by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson from a Google "Solve for X" event last week.
A well-known venture capitalist has his eye on one of the biggest and most elusive prizes of our times: nuclear fusion. And the “skunkworks” project he’s eyeing is not from some stealth startup or academic lab. Rather, it’s under development at aerospace company Lockheed Martin and has connections to, yes, the omnipresent Google.
Steve Jurvetson, managing director at Silicon Valley VC Draper Fisher Jurveston (DFJ), has posted photographs and information on Flickr of a presentation by Lockheed senior program manager Charles Chase of a small fusion machine that Chase says Lockheed will fashion into a prototype by 2017. Chase made the presentation last week at Google “Solve for X” gathering. Solve for X encourages solutions to pressing problems.
There is nothing in the posting that says DFJ or Google are currently backing the project financially. But one can assume that Jurvetson might be waiting out the count to invest in a possible grand slam, as VCs are known to try to do (Jurvetson’s own portfolio has included Hotmail, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, among others). Google has a history of investing in sustainable energy.
Atomic again. VC Steve Jurvetson has been on the nuclear trail before. Here he is outside an accelerator-driven neutron source under construction at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, in 2004.
Many people regard fusion power as the Holy Grail of energy because in theory it would provide a safe, endless power source. Fusion mimics the process of the sun, hurling atoms together rather than splitting them apart as today’s nuclear fission technology does.
But ever since scientists first began working on it in the 1950’s, it has remained 30-to-50 years away, because no one has figured out how to continuosuly harness more energy than they spend in creating fusion reactions.
Large international government projects like ITER in France and NIF in Livermore, Calif. are nowhere near perfecting the technology on which they are spending considerable sums. ITER has a budget of around €13 billion ($17.3 billion), for instance.
THE FIGHT FOR FUSION
A number of smaller, privately held and in some cases venture backed startup companies have been tackling fusion using technologies different from those at the behemoths. Many of them have smaller fusion machines in mind, not like the 20-story “tokamak” that ITER is building, or the 3-football-field-long laser facility at NIF. The smaller fusion machines would have less capacity than the 1.5 gigawatt reactors that define nuclear fission new builds today, and thus could fit into the “modular” nuclear movement, auguring benefits like lower cost and transportability.
The Lockheed “skunkworks,” as Jurvetson calls it is the latest known example. (Perhaps he takes the word from Lockheed. Chase’s LinkedIn profile identifies him as “senior program manager, revolutionary technology programs, at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works” - the Palmdale, Calif. division of the Bethesda, Md. company. Either way, a little intrigue is never a bad idea for a stealth marketing campaign).
As Jurvetson reports:
“Lockheed is working on a compact 100MW high-Beta reactor…that should be about 2×2x4 meters. They hope to have a prototype working by 2017, to be able to meet global baseload energy demand by 2050, in time to have an impact on our climate.”
The 2050 projection is startling. Chase basically believes that Lockheed’s reactor can start connecting to the grid 10 years from now (5 years after the prototype is ready) and that it can feed all of the planet’s “baseload” requirements by 2050 (when he says “baseload” will entail supplying power for electric vehicles, among other things).
Chase also says that the large government projects won’t be able to do this until the turn of the century, “when it might be just a little too late,” to stave off disastrous global warming consequences of fossil fuels. ITER and NIF’s own timelines are probably not as far out as Chase suggests for them.
Lockheed will compete against privately-backed fusion startups, including:Lawrenceville Plasma Physics; the Jeff Bezos-backed General Fusion; Helion Energy; and the under-the-radar Tri-Alpha Energy, which has backing from Goldman Sachs, Venrock, Vulcan Capital, New Enterprise Associates and reportedly from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. And that’s just a sampling (write in below with your favorite fusion projects!).
Each of these companies is approaching fusion with its own different approach. LPP and Tri-Alpha are attempting a form of fusion called “aneutronic,” which directly creates electricity in the form of charged ions, rather than creating heat to drive a turbine to make electricity.
REBRANDING NUCLEAR
Some fusion supporters want to drop the word “nuclear” from their technology, in order to distance themselves from a brand that suffers disdain from many public quarters (despite a remarkable safety record, a history of causing far fewer fatalities and illnesses than fossil fuels, and outperforming solar PV, hydroelectric and biomass as a low CO2 emitter over its life cycle - but more on that another time).
Jurvetson is certainly among the crowd searching for a new moniker. On his Flickr posting, he notes, “Looking for a better name, I suggested that they call it ’sequestered solar.’”
If you want to learn more about Lockheed’s project, you can see Chase in action at the Google event in a YouTube video below. I found it as I was posting this story, and haven’t had a chance to view yet. I will shortly, and I’ll probably write in more detail later on my Weinberg Foundation blog (Weinberg is a London-based non-profit group that advocates alternative forms of nuclear fission and fusion that could operate more efficiently and even more safely than the conventional nuclear technology that has been in place for some 50 years).
Have a look. Feel free to react in the comments section below. Go nuclear, if you want:
Photos are from Steve Jurvetson via Flickr.
UPDATE, 10:50 a.m. PST, Feb. 15: This version corrects an earlier one that put Lockheed’s project on a similar long-term timeline to the big government projects. After watching the YouTube video, it’s clear that Lockheed’s Chase believes his reactor can generate significant “baseload” amounts of CO2-free electricity well before ITER or NIF will. You can read more on my Weinberg blog here.
Get together with more fusion stories on SmartPlanet:
And elsewhere:
For many links to lively SmartPlanet stories on alternative nuclear technologies including thorium, fast reactors, molten salt, modular designs, fusion and others, click here.
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Mark Halper

About Mark Halper

Mark Halper is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.
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-1Votes
Good to work on but don't count on it.
When I was young nuclear fission was as exciting as fusion is today. We were told it would be so cheap to produce electricity in this way that there would be no need to have meters or even to charge people for the electricity they would use. It was estimated the average home would use a fraction of a penny of electricity a month. Well it didn't quite work out that way, today it's one of the most expensive ways to make energy. Viewing the machines that have been built in an attempt to create controlled fusion, it looks like it will be pretty expensive to make energy this way too.
Posted by Kevin D. Jackson
Updated - 15th Feb
0Votes
France
... produces 75% of their energy using one of the most expensive ways possible? Japan is considering going BACK to nuclear (after foreswearing it post-tsunami) for cost and national security reasons?? China's hope for the future (to stop burning coal) is new, safe fission technologies which they are in the forefront of developing???

You sound like a smart guy; what are we missing here?
Posted by ClearCreek
15th Feb
0Votes
I think he is referring to this.
The long, expensive and largely unsuccessful history of fusion research reactors. The best reactors can hold a reaction for split seconds at best using far more power than it could produce. Taking that to the self sustaining level needed for power production has proven impossible so far.

http://english.turkcebilgi.com/tokamak

The first attempt at a power producing plant saw construction start in 2007 with it going active for testing in 2020. No time frame has been set for excess power production. They are still trying to make it self sustaining.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

http://www.iter.org/
Posted by Hates Idiots
Updated - 15th Feb
0Votes
Are you hinting
That you own a coal mine? Or that your a fan of fission? Aren't we talking fusion? The electric utilities are in no danger they own the distribution monopoly. So do not be shocked when you get billed.
Posted by Altotus
25th Feb
0Votes
Actually the economy of power is the way it is for a reason.
The truth is it is a monopoly and as far as fuel goes a cartel. The production of energy is cheap the cost to you is not. No free lunch and no free market. You carry the wealth of the planet on the shoulders of the people that want to be warm want a job and drive to work.
Posted by Altotus
25th Feb
+1Vote
What Do I Know?
Next to nothing about this. But it might perhaps answer a question that has been noodling me for several years. The question is, why hasn't the US been researching and putting into production thorium fission reactors which don't create extremely high level wastes, shut down on their own, and can't have bombs made from them? We had a prototype in the 50's but decided to go with uranium for bomb making. China and India are working on thorium fission reactors.

Perhaps it's because the small fusion being discussed here will actually work and be much better than thorium fission. We can only hope.
Posted by Ron Shook
15th Feb
0Votes
You asking big oil to support thorium?
Wale up the Bush fortune comes from what? Oil! How about that! Congress and senate have members from big oil states well how about that! China and India will develop Thorium someday china and India could be selling us power plants but oh no not while there is a lump of coal unburned.
Posted by Altotus
25th Feb
0Votes
Cracking fusion solves so many problems beyond just energy
Imagine being able to transform toxic and hazardous compounds into more desired commodities at the atomic level. All of a sudden, people will be buying landfills as a source for their "raw material". Cheap energy plus material abundance? It really could be like "Star Trek".

I don't expect this within my lifetime, but I do believe the idea is worth perusing.
Posted by JohnMcGrew@...
15th Feb
0Votes
If they don't hurry up and get this done within the next 20 years,
we'll all be dead from global warming.

Okay, maybe not 20, but 50?

This project is being justified by using global warming as a scare-mongering tactic.

Most of us won't be around to see the project come to fruition. In fact, none of the people alive on the planet today, will be alive to see the project complete, and neither will the next 100 generations. Oh, yeah, the fusion plants may get constructed, but, they won't be energy efficient to the point where they will be producing more energy that the consume to create that fusion. Remember that, the project is intended to produce clean energy that is renewable, and without being wasteful. Wasteful could be where the plant uses more energy than it consumes, and wasteful would also be where the amount of money to sustain the plant would be higher than whatever people would have spent on the "evil, global warming inducing", fossil fuels.
Posted by adornoe
15th Feb
-2Votes
A Crazy Idea for Global Warming
We are actively working on ways to adjust the trajectory of comets and asteroids so they won't hit the earth. Once we know how to do that, we should be able to adjust the paths of comets and asteroids in such a way that they transfer their energy to the earth so that they will slow down and the earth will speed up a little when they go by. An earth that is moving a little faster will move further from the sun in order to maintain a stable orbit. Think of how NASA uses the gravitational sling-shot effect to greatly increase the speed of spacecraft, only in reverse. This could resolve the global warming issue.
On a related topic, who decides what the correct temperature is for the earth? History says the planet was in a warmer period during the Middle Ages and that higher global temperatures opened up great amounts of land to cultivation which led to a population boom for humanity. Whether or not that was a good thing is another question but I think many people on the planet today are hungry and more cultivatable land would surely be a good thing in that it could help feed the hungry.
Posted by Kevin D. Jackson
Updated - 15th Feb
+1Vote
What about the next Ice age?
Apparently the earth is in a warm period at the moment as well. We are overdue for the next Ice age, which could be with us within the next 2000 years. I suppose by then we should have cracked fusion, and can just move Earth closer to the sun again. wink
Posted by Riaanh
17th Feb
0Votes
You are without a clue here.
Fossil energy plants reject approx 80% of the fuels energy as waste.
Posted by Altotus
25th Feb
+1Vote
Neutron containment issue solved, then?
So what's the mechanism to stop neutron degradation of the containment vessel going to look like? Shielding doesn't work, magnet deflection can't work, and just letting them fly means the containment vessel eventually grows holes and fails. I have yet to see a winning engineering solution here. I'd like to see what Chase and Lockheed think will work. That would be a real breakthrough.
Posted by progan01@...
15th Feb
-2Votes
Mark Halper is such a give me the press release
and I'll print it like it's my researched article kind-of-guy.
Spare me.
Next, "Charles Chase describes how Lockheed Martin's fusion device trumps huge government fusion projects " excuse me but what government with whose tax dollars has set Lookheed up? Not to mention all the other defense companies, and Fedex, and of course Hallibuton(with headquarters in The Grand Caman Islands; as in loyal red blooded Americans) - the list really does go on, and so do these self righteous blow hards.
We are so dumb to listen to these guys.
Watch the neo-cons take all the money for education and the postal service and put it into profit making (as in big lobbyist spending/rewarding and GOP donation spending private companies.
If you don't think you've been conned, you have been conned.
Cheers
Posted by affordablecomputerguy@...
Updated - 15th Feb
-1Votes
Actually, it sounds like you've been conned, and brainwashed by all of
those talking points from the democrats and the liberal media.

You are like a liberal sponge for the stupidity which the democrats feed to the idiots in society, who can't be bothered to check out the veracity of what they're told to believe.

Education and the postal service have been ruined by liberal policies and unions.

Businesses have been failing and laying off people because of more liberal stupidity, which pits businesses against the people. Businesses have had to leave for better and less inhospitable conditions overseas. Halliburton was demonized to the point where they decided that, any place was better than staying in the U.S. Apple and many other corporations have decided that, making and keeping their money safely away from the U.S. government's grubby hands. Apple was "used" by Obama at the State of the Union speech, for political purposes, and not because they are a favorite of the liberals or Obama. Apple has around 100 billion dollars kept safely out of the U.S., and Obama didn't even bother to mention that, because, he was mostly interested in bashing those who have had to send jobs and operations overseas. Apple might be building a plant to manufacture Macs in the U.S., but, that's very minor when compared to the rest of the manufacturing which Apple will keep overseas, which include the iPads and iPhones and iPads. The small gesture that Apple is making with the Macs, is mostly for trying to get a bit better image when it comes to public relations. Otherwise, the hero that Obama made Apple to be, is a complete farce. However, I don't blame Apple or any other corporation for trying to maximize their bottom line by seeking better and more hospitable business environments. The U.S. is headed for big-time failure, thanks to the liberalism which has destroyed this once great economic giant.

Wake up and stop being so stupid!
Posted by adornoe
16th Feb
0Votes
Dont you mean the US is assisanated by republican political manuvering?
100+ billion in cash is not failing and laying off liberal stupidity. Apple got used and happy to be used I bet. Halliburton is that the no bid contract company? Brown and Root the subsidiary? Well all those billions and billions of no bids means they can go where they want with you tax money (not a liberal hangout as I understand). You really have nothing to say relevant to this topic of the fusion reactor of such a size that three can fit on the back of a semi?
Posted by Altotus
25th Feb
0Votes
Nuclear fusion?
The answer lies in the synthesis of Moebius strip and the shape of human DNA.... I saw it in a dream BUT am not mathematical enough to do the physics.
Posted by r2dege
17th Feb
0Votes
Aneutronic yet another important correction for this article
Aneutronic has nothing to do with ions it means no neutrons. Reactions like that of boron with hydrogen (if the proper isotopes are used) nearly no neutrons and are therefor not radioactive in any real sense. The fusion of BH goes to produce lots of energy and two helium nuclei. Very, very hot helium which is the energetic component used to do work (make power, turn wheels, or propellers).

NIF is very close to net power gain and most expect it to go over break even in the next three years.
Posted by attoman
5th Mar
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