Thoughts on types of fusion

Rideron

Sonofusion, Cold Fusion, Crossfire, IEC, MC, you name it.

I'm a young scholar interested in the various kinds of fusion and where they stand in terms of validity, possibility, practicality, etc. I'm mostly curious on what people think of the kinds of fusion out there and what science has shown to work so far.

My particular interest is in Sonofusion so I suppose I'll start there and ask what kind of progress (or the opposite) has been made and what sort of findings there are on it?

Drakkith

Bubble Fusion (Sonofusion) doesn't appear to be fusion at all. According to the wiki there is a significant amount of doubt about the quality of the data, and multiple experiments have failed to replicate the results. Although at the same time there appears to be several published papers claiming that their experiments did actually show fusion. However much of this work is highly disputed. I'd say it might need more work, but it looks like a dead end.

Cold fusion is BS. Plain and simple. People have been doing things for like 20 years and no one has yet to be able to show reliable data that it exists. Most people claiming it does are trying to get funding for their device without letting independent researchers verify that it actually works first or simply doing poor quality experiments. Not a good indicator of a "real" fusion device.

Crossfire - I don't really know. I don't even know if any devices have even been built.

IEC - Not going to get anywhere as long as there's a grid that particles can collide with. Period. The Polywell may show promise since the grid is shielded and they use a virtual cathode, but it's too early to say.

MC - Magnetic Confinement is currently our most likely candidate. The ITER is supposed to break even when it comes online. Let's cross our fingers!

Crazymechanic

@Drakkith Could you please elaborate on the Crossfire fusion because as much as I have read and seen about it , it seems either a scam or the guy just has high hopes on his own idea.
Well I don' t know maybe you have some deeper papers about him but if that thing would be so great I think there would be huge interest in that from big companies and agencies already.
The device sounds similar to the "Hirsch Farnsworth fusor" Ok waiting to hear someone elses thoughts.

Drakkith

I know next to nothing about it, sorry.
My search on google for it lead me to the website for it, but all I saw were design pictures, not an actual built machine, so I assume it hasn't even been built yet. (But I wasn't all that thorough as I was pressed for time)

Crazymechanic

Well I was thinking more of the theory of that crossfire fusion , as with Iter it also is just a theory for now until they have the real machine but as we know all machines start with theory and that theory basically tells us is the machine going to work at all and how.

mfb

ITER is based on previous experiments proving the possibility to get significant fusion with magnetic confinement. I don't see a similar demonstration for any other concept except IFC (and maybe myon-catalyzed, but that is not very promising), but that is far away from any reasonable values for a power plant. The polywell concept might be able to get such a demonstration, who knows.

kweba

There is a great documentary about Fusion by BBC Horizon, especially featuring Sono/Bubble Fusion, including its research efforts and initiatives that have been done/doing, and features Fusion Physicist Rusi Taleyarkhan, a pioneer in Sono/Bubble Fusion, and his struggles with his research and presenting Sono/Bubble Fusion to the Physics Community, which attracted controversy on the subject, and on himself and his career. The documentary also features short accounts of previous Fusion efforts, like the controversy on Cold Fusion and its scientists.

The BBC Horizon documentary is actually on YouTube. I just watched it myself recently about a couple of months ago, and it's a great informative documentary. BBC Horizon even hired physicists and experts, and did/replicated Taleyarkhan's experiment on Sono/Bubble Fusion themselves. I'd recommend you and the others watch it too. Here's the link on the video.

I think there's also a separate documentary on Cold Fusion uploaded on Youtube, but I haven't seen it yet.

Here's more info about Taleyarkhan and Sono/Bubble Fusion:

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

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


I agree that Magnetic Confinement seems to show great promise and possibilities in the future of Fusion, and ITER is on top of this research initiative and project. It uses the "Tokamak" concept. In my opinion, if I may, ITER may be like the LHC in Fusion Research.

The MC research effort also intersects with Plasma Physics, as MC uses plasmas to be generated and kept confined magnetically, and are "heated" enough to induce Fusion, inside the Tokamak.

For Rideron, and the others who are interested, you can learn more about Fusion, Magnetic Confinement, Plasmas, and ITER, including their Tokamak machine and their Fusion process, and all their research and project in Fusion, in their website:

http://www.iter.org/

ITER - What is fusion?

ITER - Plasma Heating

ITER Machine/Tokamak

ITER - Plasma Confinement


Note: I would like to apologize if I may have stated any incorrect statements and information in this post, as I humbly admit I am not an expert and still lack complete/working knowledge of Physics in general. Thank you.