Integral Fast Reactor: Why Did Funding Stop?

[Morbius]

Much as I would like to believe that Senator Kerry's motivations are pure, I feel constrained to point out: Big tobacco told you that nicotine was not addictive. Big coal told you that CO^2 does not cause global warming. Big physics told you that the IFR was a threat to non-proliferation.

Where did Kerry get the idea that the IFR led to nuclear proliferation? Since the MIT hot fusion scientists stood to lose billions of dollars in research grants (Why would we need a future source of base load power, when we already had a functioning source of base load power, the IFR?), they had spectacular reasons to give Kerry bogus advice.

sloughter,

You are 100% WRONG! I worked on the Integral Fast Reactor when I was at Argonne. MIT was
part of our academic PARTNERS. MIT Prof. Kazimi was on the safety committee for the IFR:

http://18.80.2.252/people/faculty/index.html?id=48

Member, Safety Subcommittee, Integral Fast Reactor Program, University of Chicago, 1990-1994

MIT scientists did NOT tell the Senators that the IFR was dangerous - in matter of fact - an MIT
professor was part of the group that was helping Argonne certify that the IFR was SAFE!

Additionally, you are also incorrect when you say that the hot fusion program at MIT would suffer
if the IFR program went forward. They are funded out of two separate programs within DOE. Congress
gives the fission energy program a certain amount of money, and they give the fusion program a certain
amount of money - and you can't "mix" the two "colors" of money. The MIT fusion program can't get
any of the fission program money and visa-versa.

Big physics did NOT tell you the IFR was a threat to proliferation. The only labs that are really qualified
to answer that question are Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Lawrence Livermore was asked by
the Administration for its determination and LLNL said that the IFR was NOT a proliferation threat.

The death of the IFR was driven not by scientists but PURELY by the POLITICIANS - and specifically
one VP Al Gore! If you want the name of the one person who pushed most for the cancellation of the
IFR, and is the single person that is most responsible for the demise of the IFR that one person would be
Al Gore.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[Morbius]

MIT physicists have undoubtedly been putting a bug in the ear of both Kennedy and Kerry how dangerous nuclear power is. Oooh the dreaded meltdown, the China Syndrome. Oooh---the threat of nuclear proliferation and the spread of nuclear weapony. It is a very effective ploy.

sloughter,

Again - 100% WRONG! The fusion program at MIT is run out of Course XXII - the Nuclear Engineering
Department - as is the fission reactor research program. In essence, at MIT is the same group of
professors. Where do you get this innuendo that "MIT physicists undoubtedl benn putting a bug in the ear.."
Pure 100% NONSENSE!

MIT has been particularly instrumental in publishing that the so-called "China Syndrome" of the anti-nukes
is a bunch of nonsense.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[Morbius]

Where did Kerry get the idea that the IFR led to nuclear proliferation?

sloughter,

From Clinton and Gore - NOT from MIT!

At the time - the early '90s; Plasma Fusion Center at MIT was well funded by the Dept. of Energy
to run the Alcator C-mod experiments. MIT wasn't in any danger of losing funding for its fusion program.

http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres95/07.140.html

The amount of money that MIT got for its fusion program from the DOE Office of Fusion Energy is
quite separate from how much money Argonne National Lab got for the IFR. They are basically two
non-fungible funding streams as far as the Dept. of Energy is concerned.

The Senators from Massachusetts have been vehemently anti-nuclear for decades. Those opinions
predate the IFR and MIT's founding of its Plasma Science and Fusion Center in 1976. Senator
Kennedy's opposition to nuclear power dates back to the '60s. John Kerry was actively opposed to
nuclear power as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts dating to 1982, and as US Senator since
1984.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[Morbius]

Where did Kerry get the idea that the IFR led to nuclear proliferation? Since the MIT hot fusion scientists stood to lose billions of dollars in research grants (Why would we need a future source of base load power, when we already had a functioning source of base load power, the IFR?), they had spectacular reasons to give Kerry bogus advice.

sloughter,

Kerry and Kennedy would like nothing better than to have the MIT fusion scientists lose their funding!
Kerry and Kennedy do NOT want nuclear research - fission or fusion - or nuclear "anything" in Cambridge.
They vote AGAINST funding nuclear research for MIT. They would be happy if all the MIT nuclear labs
along Albany Street from the reactor down to Alcator C-Mod would just "disappear".

Kerry and Kennedy are NOT going to attempt to help MIT keep their nuclear research funding - they want
that to go away. Is Harry Reid happy that billions of federal dollars are pouring into Nevada for the
Yucca Mountain project? NO - Harry Reid doesn't want the nuclear project in his state.

Likewise, the predecessor to the Integral Fast Reactor was the Clinch River Breeder Reactor project
which was to be built in Tennessee. Who opposed the Clinch River project and eventually killed it?
Tennessee Congressman and later Senator Al Gore. Al Gore doesn't want nuclear power - he wants
windmills, solar power, and carbon credit trading. When the Integral Fast Reactor project came along;
it was seen as a continuation of the Clinch River reactor project. The full-scale prototype of the IFR
could be built in Tennessee on the already approved Clinch River site. Gore opposed IFR.

Then in 1993, Gore became VP; and President Clinton gave him the job of "Reinventing Government" -
to get rid of wasteful and unnecessary federal spending. Gore determined that nuclear power research
like the IFR was unnecessary and needed to be terminated; which found its way into President Clinton's
State of the Union speech that I quoted above in post #102.

Kerry wasn't opposing IFR at the behest of MIT; he was taking his marching orders from the White House.

The cancellation of the IFR is not a "cat fight" between fission scientists and fusion scientists. Scientists
of both disciplines by in large believe that we need to pursue both approaches. After all, one of the most
promising ways to take fusion energy and turn it into useful power is to use the fusion reactor to drive
a sub-critical fission reactor in a hybrid system such as Lawrence Livermore's LIFE concept:

https://lasers.llnl.gov/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/how_life_works.php

That's basically fast reactor technology being used in the hybrid - so the fusion scientists have a
interest in good fast fission reactor technology.

The cancellation of the IFR was not due to the funding wishes of the fusion community. The demise
of the IFR was due to politicians who are anti-nuclear - the ones that consider anything nuclear as
being "evil". They don't want the money saved by canceling IFR spent on fusion - they want that
money spent on windmills, solar, and carbon-credit trading.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[sloughter]

Still, Senator Kerry was the one who shut down the IFR. If you plot our dependence on foreign oil over the past 35 years and plot on the same graph the amount of money spent on the hot fusion program at MIT, I'll bet you'll see a striking correlation. You can thank the multigenerational failure of the DOE, hot fusion scientists at MIT and our politicians for our failed energy policy.

Was there ever a Draft Environmental Impact Statement or a Final Environmental Impact Statement ever performed for the hot fusion program at MIT? Did DOE ever bother to get input from other branches of science i.e. geologists, chemists, biologists or atmospheric sciences before the started what they KNEW would be a fifty year long project? I submit that the hot fusion program is a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. There can be no greater impact on the environment then the expenditure of billions of dollars and the suppression of known, green technologies, due to the lack of funding. The hot fusion program will only be successful after global warming is terminal. Ask any hot fusion scientist when hot fusion will be commercially viable, their stock answer will be, "Thirty years from now."

As for Al Gore---he played fast and loose with his graphs. If you plot up the correlation between global warming and CO^2, there is a correlation, but not the one he would have you believe. He has got the cart before the horse. If you plot up the relationship of global warming and CO^2 over the past million years, FIRST you get global warming, THEN you get a 200 year lag, and then you get an increase in CO^2. This is not surprising when you think about it, because warm water will hold less gas than cold water.

Show me a place with cities and industries and so on where, say, more than 75% of the electricity has been reliably provided by alternatives, for at least a few years.

 

[sloughter]

It has been alleged that Senator John Kerry was against hot fusion at MIT. The following statement was made by Kerry in the following venue, "Bush and Kerry Offer Their Views" from Scienxpress.

Kerry stated, "Our energy plan will tap America's initiative and ingenuity to stengthen our national security, grow our economy, and protect our environment. I support a strategically balanced U.S. Fusion program that includes participation in ITER to supplement a strong domestic fusion science and technology portfolio."

I googled under the following search "Senator John Kerry oppostion to hot fusion at MIT" Nothing turned up, but I did find the above statement by Kerry.

Again to suggest that two streams of research don't impact on each other is absurd on its face. If the IFR got there first and could successfully be deployed as a reliable base-load power system that could sufficient power to meet our energy needs, what possible reason would we continue a hot fusion program that has never produced even one kilowatt of power and probably never? With hot fusion, we are not going to find a pot gold at the end of the rainbow, only a pot of manure.

Thank you for all the information, but what if you look at it in a perspective of IFR against all other alternate energy (solar, wind, biofuels) instead of against other reactors? Does that change anything?

 

[vanesch]

You can thank the multigenerational failure of the DOE, hot fusion scientists at MIT and our politicians for our failed energy policy.

I find this an odd statement. Now I don't know all the intrigue that has taken place here, but thinking that fusion research has anything to do with an energy plan for the next 50 years is not knowing what he's talking about.

Fusion research is no substitute at all for either nuclear fission or renewables. Fusion research is long term *research* out of which MIGHT be coming a brilliant energy solution 50 years from now (or not). Given the promise, it's worth doing the research.
But fusion has nothing to say about the energy provision between now and, say 2060 or so, and that's the time frame where fission nuclear, as well as renewables are playing in.

Considering that funding for nuclear fission is somehow related to the funding for fusion (in whatever way) is as relevant as considering that funding of a space telescope is somehow related to satellite television.

It might be, but then the one who did so was a nitwick, or a crook, or both.

 

[sloughter]

MIT hot fusion scientists will do whatever it takes to shut down the competition. To suggest, somehow, that Senator Kerry would not help out his constituents if they stood to lose billions of dollars in reseach grants, seems unlikely.

Here is a brief history of LENR research: When the first cold fusion experiments were done at MIT, initial results found excess heat in one cell. MIT hot fusion scientists in their preliminary report to DOE dutifully reported this. Then in the final version of their report they changed the expermental design to read the "sudden onset of heat". They then told DOE in their final report that they got a null result. That's right---they changed the experimental design after the experiment was run. This so thoroughly disgusted Eugene Mallove that he quit his good job as science writer for MIT to set up the New Energy Foundation and their flagship publication Infinite Energy. He knew that cold fusion would never be treated fairly in the press.

We learn the following from 'Emerging Energy Marketing Firm, (Inc.) (EEMF)...Prepared for Republican National Committee. Subject: the politics of new energy technology.'

"When low-energy nuclear fusion (dubbed 'cold fusion' by the media) was first announced, the 'hot fusion' community falsely assumed that this low energy nuclear reaction was a threat to the continuation of $500 million (or more) per year from the DOE. Lobbyists for the 'hot fusion' community took the following steps:

1)A committee visited several laboratories where low-energy nuclear reactions were achieved and declared them invalid,

2)An agent was obtained at the Office of Patents and Trademarks to ensure that no cold fusion patent applications were approved,

3)All major U.S. technical journal were warned against printing any cold fusion articles (All but FUSION TECHNOLOGY agreed not to publish),

4)A fund of about $30,000 was provided to Random House to fund a book to destroy the credibility of cold fusion. The book was BAD SCIENCE, THE SHORT LIFE AND WEIRD TIMES OF COLD FUSION, a hatchet job by Gary Taubes,

5)An 'official' from Washington, D.C. called all major universities and warned them, 'If you have so much as a graduate student working on cold fusion, you will get NO CONTRACTS OUT OF WASHINGTON!',

6)Robert Park, a self-appointed 'spokesman' for the American Physicial Society has been vigorously lambasting cold fusion and its supporters for over 10 years. PARK IS NOW BEING SUED."

What is the status of LENR today? Park recanted after 18 years and grudgingly acknowledged that cold fusion was, in his words, 'science'. Experts get excess heat, reliably on demand in a short period of time. They even get alpha particles from their cells.

Doubt this? Consider the following statement under the heading, "Invest in Cold Fusion Energy and Palladium Commodities/Palladium May 18, 2009,

"Cold fusion, that Pariah of established science, made a comeback in March as the US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Center went public with results which they believed confirmed that low-energy nuclear reactions were present, repeatable and decisively demonstrable in their specialized palladium/heavy water experiments."

MIT hot fusion scientists aggressively shut down cold fusion research in this country. The IFR was a far more immediate threat to their program so they were so anxious to shut it down, Kerry scuttled the research even though completing the research cost no more than shutting it down (Stanford). In view of their response to LENR research, do you really think that MIT hot fusion scientists had no interest in shutting down IFR research? If MIT hot fusion scientist were so anxious to shut down LENR research, don't you think that they would attempt to scuttle the IFR research, particularly if it made the hot fusion program superfluous? And who is the Senator whose constituents stood to lose billions of dollars in research grants if the IFR research reached commercial viability which it was predicted to do in as little as three years?

Show me a place with cities and industries and so on where, say, more than 75% of the electricity has been reliably provided by alternatives, for at least a few years.

 

[vanesch]

MIT hot fusion scientists will do whatever it takes to shut down the competition. To suggest, somehow, that Senator Kerry would not help out his constituents if they stood to lose billions of dollars in reseach grants, seems unlikely.
In view of their response to LENR research, do you really think that MIT hot fusion scientists had no interest in shutting down IFR research? If MIT hot fusion scientist were so anxious to shut down LENR research, don't you think that they would attempt to scuttle the IFR research, particularly if it made the hot fusion program superfluous? And who is the Senator whose constituents stood to lose billions of dollars in research grants if the IFR research reached commercial viability which it was predicted to do in as little as three years?

Maybe this is true, but then, it is done by people who don't know what they are talking about, or by people who think they have to do with people who don't know what they are talking about (which is not impossible, btw).

But I don't see how the IFR is a threat to hot fusion. The day that hot fusion works, we can start thinking about taking out all fission power. Hot fusion, *if it works*, is way better than fission: safety is easier, the waste problem is easier, the supply is easier. So *in any case* it is interesting to pursue fusion research. And, BTW, much materials research between fast reactors and fission is in common (behavior of materials under fast neutron irradiation). So a succesfull IFR program could only boost a hot fusion research program.

Only, the IFR is for the 21st century, and fusion is for the 22nd century. So I don't see the competition, unless the decider really doesn't know what he's talking about.

In France, there is no competition between fission research, and fusion research which is both done by the same organism (CEA). I don't see why this would be any different in the USA.

Fusion, for most the 21st century, has nothing to do with energy provisions. It is research. The IFR has everything to do with energy provision. It could have been up and running by now if Kerry didn't kill it. Fusion is not going to be up and running for most of the 21st century.

 

[Morbius]

But I don't see how the IFR is a threat to hot fusion. The day that hot fusion works, we can start thinking about taking out all fission power. Hot fusion, *if it works*, is way better than fission: safety is easier, the waste problem is easier, the supply is easier.

vanesch,

Actually the day we get hot fusion to work - we won't start thinking about taking out fission power.

When hot fusion works - you have most of your energy in 14.1 MeV neutrons - assuming D-T fusion.
The next step is "How do we get useful energy from hot fusion". It turns out that the leading idea there
is to run fusion-fission hybrid reactors. That's what is at the heart of Lawrence Livermore's LIFE concept:

https://lasers.llnl.gov/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/how_life_works.php

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[vanesch]

vanesch,

Actually the day we get hot fusion to work - we won't start thinking about taking out fission power.

When hot fusion works - you have most of your energy in 14.1 MeV neutrons - assuming D-T fusion.
The next step is "How do we get useful energy from hot fusion". It turns out that the leading idea there
is to run fusion-fission hybrid reactors. That's what is at the heart of Lawrence Livermore's LIFE concept:

https://lasers.llnl.gov/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/how_life_works.php

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

Myeah. That's one of the most complicated "accelerator-driven" subcritical reactor designs I've ever seen. Indeed, if *that*'s the goal, a "classical" fast reactor such as the IFR is way more practical, no ?

I can see the political advantages of that LIFE thing. It is "once-through" (although I'd be surprised to see that the spend fuel can handle a 1000 GW-day/ton burnup in one go...) which sounds nice, and in that case the "no reprocessing need" and yabadabadaba and no proliferation blahblah... And "no criticality required" yes, this will sell very well. But what are the genuine technical advantages over an IFR ?
Or even, over a "standard" spallation-source accelerator-driven system ?

I was more thinking of an ITER-like fusion concept, and when I say, "when hot fusion works", I meant that we have an up-and-running pure-fusion power plant. Such a plant, if it runs (economically), would surely be nicer than any fission reactor.

 

[Morbius]

Q

But what are the genuine technical advantages over an IFR ?
Or even, over a "standard" spallation-source accelerator-driven system ?

vanesch,

That's an unanswered question. In fact, one of my colleagues has been tasked with the job of
answering that very question.

As for the accelerator driven approach - the neutron fluences from an ICF ignition are MANY,
MANY orders of magnitude greater than what can be sustained in an accelerator.

I was more thinking of an ITER-like fusion concept, and when I say, "when hot fusion works", I meant that we have an up-and-running pure-fusion power plant. Such a plant, if it runs (economically), would surely be nicer than any fission reactor.

Even with ITER - you have a burning plasma that is throwing of 14.1 MeV neutrons like crazy. Now
how are you going to capture that energy in the most efficient manner and with the least amount of
radioactive activation?

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[vanesch]

As for the accelerator driven approach - the neutron fluences from an ICF ignition are MANY,
MANY orders of magnitude greater than what can be sustained in an accelerator.

Time-averaged too ?

Even with ITER - you have a burning plasma that is throwing of 14.1 MeV neutrons like crazy. Now
how are you going to capture that energy in the most efficient manner and with the least amount of
radioactive activation?

I don't know. Cook water with it ? A layer of a few meters of water would surely stop them and get most of their energy, no ? (and even produce deuterium) I have to say that I'm not terribly well versed in the technicalities of fusion.

 

[Morbius]

Time-averaged too ?
I don't know. Cook water with it ? A layer of a few meters of water would surely stop them and get most of their energy, no ? (and even produce deuterium) .

vanesch,

The mean free path for 14.1 MeV neutrons in water is about 10 cm - see page 11 at:

https://wci.llnl.gov/codes/tart/media/pdf/UCRL-TR-220605.pdf

However, you can get an order of magnitude more energy by using the 14.1 MeV neutrons to drive
a sub-critical fission system, as in the LIFE concept.

Additionally you don't need to produce deuterium - the easiest way to get that is to separate it from
ordinary water. What you do need to produce is tritium - and for that you need a target of lithium not
water.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[vanesch]

vanesch,

The mean free path for 14.1 MeV neutrons in water is about 10 cm - see page 11 at:

https://wci.llnl.gov/codes/tart/media/pdf/UCRL-TR-220605.pdf

Right, and if you have, say, 10 collisions with hydrogen, you have reduced the energy by about 1000 (so you've extracted most of useful energy), which means 1 meter of water (and even less, of course, because the cross section rises with lowering neutron energy, and the path is random, and not straight). So, 50 cm of water or so should absorb most of the neutron energy.

However, you can get an order of magnitude more energy by using the 14.1 MeV neutrons to drive a sub-critical fission system, as in the LIFE concept.

Sure, but what are the hardest problems of a fission system ? Not really reactivity control. The hardest part is cooling of the fission products, containment, and waste. And compared to a fast reactor, there's not really an improvement.

 

[sloughter]

When DOE first started funding the hot fusion program, did they require MIT before one dime flowed to prove that even IF they achieved hot fusion that the engineering considerations had a realistic chance of converting extremely energetic particles into electricity at 10cents/kWh, or was that just left up to the paeons, the engineers, to figure out? Would you steer me to a website from circa 1975 literature where MIT scientists connected the dots i.e. going from the plasma to electricity at 10 cents/kWh? There is no business model; utilities don't want expensive, complicated equipment that requires a Phd in physics to understand.

Light water reactors are simple; Mother Nature even built one in Oklo 1.7 billion years ago just to show you that you don't need physicists to build fission plants. Yet proponents of hot fusion will tell you, "We went from creating fission to commercial application in about 10 years. This should be possible with hot fusion reactors." Right!

As for the economics of plasma fusion: It requires incredibly complicated (does Murphy's law ring a bell?) unbelievably expensive equipment whose fuel right now costs as much as burning one carat diamonds in the reactor, and additional cooling towers even if Q=10, compared to either base-load coal or light-water reactors. Compared to that, we have simple, rapidly improving technology with free or cheap fuel and no cooling towers i.e. wind, solar, geothermal, and cellulose bio fuel. And, of course, the IFR has much cheaper fuel, is less complicated, has hundreds of years of reactor time under its belt, etc.

When were the hot fusion people going to tell America that there are small, but measurable amounts of the radioactive gas tritium released into the air as part of the cost of doing business? When were they going to tell Americans if tritium amounting to as little as a pound were stolen (start up amounts for a hot fusion reactor are about 10-12 pounds), it could be used to could convert a suitcase bomb into a bomb 1000 times the size of Nagasaki. Worried about suitcase bombs? You can buy tritium on line where you will also find a highly detailed schematic of a fission-fusion-fission bomb.

When were they going to tell Americans that the waste products of hot fusion are shorter-lived but more deadly than the waste from existing nuclear plants? This is a public relations time bomb just waiting to go off.

Now for the farcical Inertial Confinement Fusion program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. On Charlie Gibson, we have this real nifty cartoon showing the ICF plant firing every second. Let me get this straight---they are going to go from 100,000,000 degrees C to -260 degrees C (the temperature of a deuterium/tritium sand grain) in less than one second. Sounds reasonable doesn't it?

Of course the amount of energy seems pretty trivial to create enough to drive a base load plant, probably less than 300mW with just one gallon of gasoline/sec., the amount appearing from their trade literature. One minor detail---one pound of gasoline has the explosive equivalent of 15 pounds of dynamite. In other words we have the equivalent of 100 pounds of dynamite going off in the chamber every second!

Here are the steps: 1)Intake, 2)Compression, 3)Ignition, 4)Exhaust. Doesn't this sound like an internal combustion engine? Is this how we drive ICF reactors? Perhaps due to the wildly varying yield of each explosion, we could go with a flywheel, just like on a John Deere tractor. It would have to weigh at least 1000 tons and turn at a very rapid rate.

How long will it take to completely destroy the reactor vessel after thousands of explosions every day, not to mention the effect of the high energy neutrons on the reactor itself?

The deuterium/tritium particle entering the chamber will be about the size of a grain of sand. This requires Star Wars in a bottle i.e. we must be able to track a moving target and fire on it with tolerances in the neighborhood of trillionth of a second with over 100 lasers simultaneously. Sounds easy, doesn't it?

Now for the clincher. How do you isolate the lasers from a 100 pound stick of dynamite going off a few feet away? Suppose the laser zigs, when it should zag? How do you achieve ignition when the implosion front is all over the map due to the vibrating lasers. Bottom line, the reactors are going to have to cool off probably for over a minute, before the next sand grain of deuterium/tritium enters the champber; also, we must allow the lasers to calm down. Instead of one chamber, we might need as many as 60 chambers to get the amount of electricity ICF devotees believe is possible. Be prepared to pay $10/kWh for electricity generated by ICF.

As for fusion being the technology of the 22nd Century. Great! We've had pork for physicists for 35 years; now we can look forward to pork for physicists for another 100 years! Ever wonder where Dick Cheney learned how to funnel multi-billion no-bid contracts to Halliburton? He learned it from DOE and their multi-million dollar no-bid contracts to their hot fusion physicist buddies at MIT.

\QUOTE=Captainjf;1925304]I am in debate and i was instructed by my teacher to find negative evidence on the IFR reactor. is there anything wrong with the reactor that stands out alot?[/QUOTE]

 

[Morbius]

Light water reactors are simple; Mother Nature even built one in Oklo 1.7 billion years ago just to show you that you don't need physicists to build fission plants. Yet proponents of hot fusion will tell you, "We went from creating fission to commercial application in about 10 years. This should be possible with hot fusion reactors." Right!

sloughter,

Light water reactors are NOT simple. Mother Nature had an advantage back a few million years ago -
the enrichment of natural uranium was higher.

Additionally, designing the reactor to be critical is not the only concern - the reactor had to be
controllable, had to be able to withstand accidents...a number of things that Mother Nature didn't
need to take into account.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[Morbius]

When were the hot fusion people going to tell America that there are small, but measurable amounts of the radioactive gas tritium released into the air as part of the cost of doing business? When were they going to tell Americans if tritium amounting to as little as a pound were stolen (start up amounts for a hot fusion reactor are about 10-12 pounds), it could be used to could convert a suitcase bomb into a bomb 1000 times the size of Nagasaki. Worried about suitcase bombs? You can buy tritium on line where you will also find a highly detailed schematic of a fission-fusion-fission bomb.

sloughter,

If I could comment - I'd tell you how much those detailed schematics are worth. You can get schematics
of cars on the Internet - but do they tell you the spring constants of the springs in the car's suspension, or
how the piston rings were heat treated? Additionally, the DOE has never released a schematic of a true
nuclear weapon design - so the only things you see on the Internet are GUESSES at what the design is by
people who have never seen the real designs.

No one is going to simply turn the rumored "suitcase" nuke into a thermonuclear bomb. The design o
nuclear weapons is MUCH, MUCH, more complex than you are imagining. The US nuclear design labs
have always had the largest and most powerful computers available, as well as first rate experimental
facilities. It evidently takes a lot more than just some Internet schematics to engineer a nuclear weapon.

Even if tritium were released [ which is not necessary - I don't see where you get that assumption ];
Mother Nature is already producing tritium in the upper atmosphere to rain down on you - and anything
that Man could add would be an INSIGNIFICANT SMATTERING compared to what Mother Nature
is already exposing you to.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[Morbius]

Now for the farcical Inertial Confinement Fusion program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. On Charlie Gibson, we have this real nifty cartoon showing the ICF plant firing every second. Let me get this straight---they are going to go from 100,000,000 degrees C to -260 degrees C (the temperature of a deuterium/tritium sand grain) in less than one second. Sounds reasonable doesn't it?

sloughter,

That's what bombs do - why do you have a problem with it? You don't think it can happen?

In other words we have the equivalent of 100 pounds of dynamite going off in the chamber every second!

Actually, the idea is several times a second - but why is that a problem?

Here are the steps: 1)Intake, 2)Compression, 3)Ignition, 4)Exhaust. Doesn't this sound like an internal combustion engine? Is this how we drive ICF reactors? Perhaps due to the wildly varying yield of each explosion,

Why do you think there would be wildly varying explosive yields?

We have chemical explosives where the yield of each stick is well controlled from stick to stick -
otherwise people who use explosives could gauge how much explosive to use for their application.

How long will it take to completely destroy the reactor vessel after thousands of explosions every day, not to mention the effect of the high energy neutrons on the reactor itself?

The vessel isn't going to be destroyed by the micro-explosions. The effect of high energy neutrons
on the reactor vessel is a known quantity and the system is designed to deal with it. Unlike an LWR;
the vessel doesn't confine a large pressure of working fluid. So what is the problem?

Now for the clincher. How do you isolate the lasers from a 100 pound stick of dynamite going off a few feet away?

Because the laser are NOT a few feet away. At NIF, the lasers are in an adjacent building more than
100 feet away.

Suppose the laser zigs, when it should zag? How do you achieve ignition when the implosion front is all over the map due to the vibrating lasers.

Because the lasers are NOT vibrating - they are a good distance away and don't feel the effects
of micro-explosions.

Bottom line, the reactors are going to have to cool off probably for over a minute, before the next sand grain of deuterium/tritium enters the champber; also, we must allow the lasers to calm down.

Why do you need to let the lasers "calm down"?

You can run a continuous laser and use a Pockels cell to divert the continuous laser to the target
chamber for the brief period of time to hit the target. The laser's won't need a cool down - they are
running continuously in steady state.

He learned it from DOE and their multi-million dollar no-bid contracts to their hot fusion physicist buddies at MIT.

MIT and DOE contract similar to the way most science is done - for instance between a university and
the National Institute of Health, or the National Science Foundation. MIT or other university makes
proposals to a funding agency like DOE, NIH, NSF... and that agency looks at the multitude of
proposals they get and decide which to fund. They make the judgment as to what looks like a good
idea and what doesn't.

The process is nothing like Cheney funding Halliburton at all.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[Morbius]

Time-averaged too ?

The LIFE design is for a repetition rate of 20 Hz.

I don't know. Cook water with it ? A layer of a few meters of water would surely stop them and get most of their energy, no ? (and even produce deuterium) I have to say that I'm not terribly well versed in the technicalities of fusion.

And if you have that much water - a few meters thick - at what power level do you have to
operate the fusion reactor so that you get enough energy to boil that much water?

Hot water doesn't do much for generating electricity - perhaps if your goal was for residential
heating for the city, hot water is OK - but you need to turn the water to steam in order to get
something to turn a turbine with.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[mheslep]

The LIFE design is for a repetition rate of 20 Hz.

And if you have that much water - a few meters thick - at what power level do you have to
operate the fusion reactor so that you get enough energy to boil that much water?

Hot water doesn't do much for generating electricity - perhaps if your goal was for residential
heating for the city, hot water is OK - but you need to turn the water to steam in order to get
something to turn a turbine with.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

Lower boiling point fluids? And the power required to boil the water is dependent upon the water volume _and_ the heat flux out of the system.

 

[vanesch]

When DOE first started funding the hot fusion program, did they require MIT before one dime flowed to prove that even IF they achieved hot fusion that the engineering considerations had a realistic chance of converting extremely energetic particles into electricity at 10cents/kWh, or was that just left up to the paeons, the engineers, to figure out? Would you steer me to a website from circa 1975 literature where MIT scientists connected the dots i.e. going from the plasma to electricity at 10 cents/kWh? There is no business model; utilities don't want expensive, complicated equipment that requires a Phd in physics to understand.

This is why this is *research*. Explore nature, explore technologies, see what can be done, and what not. This is not *devellopment*. It is *research*. There is no planned outcome of research. There is a goal that is aimed for, and that is to FIND OUT what can be done and what not, and how. It is money for knowledge, not for working things.

And this is why this is in no competition with *devellopment* like the IFR. With the IFR, there is no question to be answered "can this be done" but rather, "how do we do this best ?" knowing it CAN be done.

It would be silly not to ask the question "can fusion be done? ", no ? It will take probably a century to answer that question. It's a scientific/technological question.

As for the economics of plasma fusion: It requires incredibly complicated (does Murphy's law ring a bell?) unbelievably expensive equipment whose fuel right now costs as much as burning one carat diamonds in the reactor, and additional cooling towers even if Q=10, compared to either base-load coal or light-water reactors. Compared to that, we have simple, rapidly improving technology with free or cheap fuel and no cooling towers i.e. wind, solar, geothermal, and cellulose bio fuel. And, of course, the IFR has much cheaper fuel, is less complicated, has hundreds of years of reactor time under its belt, etc.

Yes, so that's the time that is available to find out whether fusion is feasible.

The "complicated technology" argument is relative. If you would have proposed a cellular telephone network in the beginning of the 20th century, one would have told you that this was technologically too complicated.

When were the hot fusion people going to tell America that there are small, but measurable amounts of the radioactive gas tritium released into the air as part of the cost of doing business? When were they going to tell Americans if tritium amounting to as little as a pound were stolen (start up amounts for a hot fusion reactor are about 10-12 pounds), it could be used to could convert a suitcase bomb into a bomb 1000 times the size of Nagasaki. Worried about suitcase bombs? You can buy tritium on line where you will also find a highly detailed schematic of a fission-fusion-fission bomb.

The problem with selling a technology with too rosey arguments is always that it hits you back in the face at some time.
The main potential advantages of fusion over fission are:
- no LARGE amounts of highly radioactive material present (the complete dispersion of the contents of a fusion reactor in the environment - assuming complete failure of all forms of containment - is way way less severe than the same with a fission plant)
- no need to keep cooling when the reaction stops
- large provision of combustible material
- no long-term waste apart from activated structures

And research has to determine whether it is going to be possible to do so.

 

[RobertW]

It is ironic that Kennedy's brain cancer treatment includes radiation...

 

[vanesch]

The LIFE design is for a repetition rate of 20 Hz.

And if you have that much water - a few meters thick - at what power level do you have to
operate the fusion reactor so that you get enough energy to boil that much water?

Erh, if it is going to be a power plant that delivers power, I'd say that one would expect a few GW of time-averaged continuous thermal power, no ? Otherwise it is not a power source worth the attention, I'd say. One would expect a thermal power flux to be at least comparable to a good old PWR. And boil water in the same way ? So a pressurized water mantle from which to make steam at 300 C or the like ? You can of course also have a liquid metal mantle, but the problem is that you need to have enough scattering cross section with neutrons in order to absorb their energy. Gasses will be too tenuous I guess.

 

[Morbius]

Erh, if it is going to be a power plant that delivers power, I'd say that one would expect a few GW of time-averaged continuous thermal power, no ? Otherwise it is not a power source worth the attention, I'd say. One would expect a thermal power flux to be at least comparable to a good old PWR. And boil water in the same way ? So a pressurized water mantle from which to make steam at 300 C or the like ? You can of course also have a liquid metal mantle, but the problem is that you need to have enough scattering cross section with neutrons in order to absorb their energy. Gasses will be too tenuous I guess.

vanesch,

I think you will find that the heat fluxes in a tokamak are considerably LOWER than what one would
find in a PWR. A few Gw(t) PWR core is MUCH more compact than a few Gw(t) tokamak. NONE
of the conceptual designs for tokamak "balance of plant" that I've seen consider jacketing the tokamak
with water. Water really doesn't have the properties that you want for your neutron energy to heat
transfer medium. A denser material would certainly be much more desireable.

It's usually jacketed with a molten salt or "Flibe" (LiF-BeF2) as opposed to water.

http://www.osti.gov/bridge/purl.cov...815705858A99?purl=/752080-IbRXGs/webviewable/

Heat fluxes in a tokamak is considerably below what one would find in a PWR; after all the plasma density
that can be magnetically confined in a tokamak are quite low - most would call such densities a "near vacuum".
When you have very low densities - you aren't going to be able to support very high heat fluxes vis-a-vis a
denser solid material.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[Morbius]

It is ironic that Kennedy's brain cancer treatment includes radiation...

RobertW,

What is really ironic is the MIT has been researching a technique call BNCT -
Boron Neutron Capture Therapy that is intended to treat gliobastoma multiforme
which is exactly the brain cancer that Kennedy has:

http://web.mit.edu/nrl/www/bnct/

http://web.mit.edu/nrl/www/bnct/info/description/description.html

Kennedy has been fighting MIT on this - and now it turns out he was fighting the
very research that might have saved his life if it had progressed further.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[vanesch]

Water really doesn't have the properties that you want for your neutron energy to heat
transfer medium. A denser material would certainly be much more desireable.

It's usually jacketed with a molten salt or "Flibe" (LiF-BeF2) as opposed to water.

As I said, I'm not well-versed in this problem. However I would guess that this salt is essentially there to try to get every neutron captured by lithium, in order to get the balance about right ? After all, you use up one tritium nucleus for one fusion reaction and you get out exactly one neutron. On Li-6 you get your tritium back, but you use up the neutron ; on Li-7 you produce a triton and you get a new neutron, which is what can make your balance work out. I guess that's the principal reason for this blanket. I don't see why one couldn't heat water with neutrons if the only goal would be to get the heat out and use it.

 

[mheslep]

...
The main potential advantages of fusion over fission are:
- no LARGE amounts of highly radioactive material present (the complete dispersion of the contents of a fusion reactor in the environment - assuming complete failure of all forms of containment - is way way less severe than the same with a fission plant)
- no need to keep cooling when the reaction stops
- large provision of combustible material
- no long-term waste apart from activated structures

And research has to determine whether it is going to be possible to do so.

Proliferation advantage/disadvantage? Oversight or discounted?

 

[Morbius]

Proliferation advantage/disadvantage? Oversight or discounted?

mheslep,

Actually, it's quite the opposite!

Nuclear fusion because it produces high-energy fast neutrons is good for destroying
weapons grade materials - and doesn't produce weapons usable material. In this
respect it is like the LLNL fission-fusion hybrid system, LIFE:

https://lasers.llnl.gov/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/

By burning nuclear waste for its fuel, LIFE has the added benefit of dramatically shrinking the planet's
stockpile of spent nuclear fuel and other materials that lend themselves to nuclear proliferation.

https://lasers.llnl.gov/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/benefits_challenges.php

LIFE is proliferation resistant. Proliferation risk, the chance that fuel destined for a nuclear power plant
could be diverted for weapons purposes, is virtually eliminated with fuel for a LIFE engine.

In that sense, it is like the IFR - which can also destroy weapons material and does
not make weapons usable material.

Of course, the whole proliferation aspect is overblown anyhow. Commercial nuclear reactors
really aren't a very good way of producing weapons material. In fact, the number of nations
that have nuclear weapons that obtained their weapons material by co-opting a commercial
nuclear power program is precisely ZERO. EVERY nation that has nuclear weapons got its
nuclear material by building special purpose facilities, like a production reactor.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[vanesch]

Of course, the whole proliferation aspect is overblown anyhow. Commercial nuclear reactors
really aren't a very good way of producing weapons material. In fact, the number of nations
that have nuclear weapons that obtained their weapons material by co-opting a commercial
nuclear power program is precisely ZERO. EVERY nation that has nuclear weapons got its
nuclear material by building special purpose facilities, like a production reactor.

This is true. So I essentially agree with you. But if you want to nitpick, any source of fast neutrons can be abused in principle to make plutonium from depleted uranium, so a fusion reactor, or a fast reactor, or a fusion-driven sub-critical fast reactor (LIFE) ... all of them can, in principle (I don't say it is practical) be used as a "production reactor". Now, as you say, if you have enough technology in house to do so, then it is way easier to build a standard production reactor.

 

[Morbius]

This is true. So I essentially agree with you. But if you want to nitpick, any source of fast neutrons can be abused in principle to make plutonium from depleted uranium, so a fusion reactor, or a fast reactor, or a fusion-driven sub-critical fast reactor (LIFE) ... all of them can, in principle (I don't say it is practical) be used as a "production reactor". Now, as you say, if you have enough technology in house to do so, then it is way easier to build a standard production reactor.

vanesch,

Actually you DO NOT WANT fast neutrons on depleted Uranium for making Plutonium - you want
THERMAL neutrons. The reaction you want to happen is a capture reaction in order to transmute
U-238 to Pu-239. Thermal neutrons can do that quite well.

If you have fast neutrons; like from a fast reactor or thermonuclear system; then you are above the
FISSION threshold for U-238. That's NOT what you want to do.

Production reactors are moderated thermal reactors. For example, the production reactors at
Hanford were thermal reactors moderated by graphite, and the production reactors at
Savannah River were heavy water moderated thermal reactors.

The fast neutron systems like the IFR, thermonuclear systems, or LIFE are Plutonium BURNERS!
[The IFR can also make Plutonium - but NOT weapons usable Plutonium. ]

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[vanesch]

Actually you DO NOT WANT fast neutrons on depleted Uranium for making Plutonium - you want
THERMAL neutrons. The reaction you want to happen is a capture reaction in order to transmute
U-238 to Pu-239. Thermal neutrons can do that quite well.

I thought that the problem with using thermal neutrons to produce plutonium (although, as you say, that is the standard way of producing weapons-grade plutonium) was that you need to remove the uranium when there is a low amount of bred plutonium, in order to get relatively pure Pu-239. You want the produced Pu-239 not to be exposed too long to thermal neutrons, in order to avoid capture, and production of Pu-240 and higher.
So you need continuous loading and unloading, or short cycles, and the amount of Pu in the uranium is pretty low.

In a fast spectrum, you will produce Pu-239. You will also fission some, but you will have a very low capture Pu-239 (n,gamma) Pu-240. So you can irradiate your uranium for a long time, and get out a higher amount of rather pure Pu-239.
I once did the calculation, and you get out a much higher percentage of Pu-239 with fast neutrons (although indeed, you also have fissioned part of it) than with thermal ones if you wait long enough. True, this was with a fission spectrum around 1 MeV and not with a fusion spectrum around 14 MeV...

 

[Morbius]

In a fast spectrum, you will produce Pu-239. You will also fission some, but you will have a very low capture Pu-239 (n,gamma) Pu-240. So you can irradiate your uranium for a long time, and get out a higher amount of rather pure Pu-239.
I once did the calculation, and you get out a much higher percentage of Pu-239 with fast neutrons (although indeed, you also have fissioned part of it) than with thermal ones if you wait long enough. True, this was with a fission spectrum around 1 MeV and not with a fusion spectrum around 14 MeV...

vanesh,

Go to the Nuclear Data Center at Brookhaven National Laboratory and plot the capture and fission
cross-sections of U-238 as a function of energy. At around 1 MeV; the neutron capture reaction - which
is the one that produces Plutonium for you; starts a precipitous DROP. At about the same place;
the fission cross-section of U-238 starts to precipitously rise.

So at about 1 MeV; your production of Plutonium is falling off, and fissioning of U-238 is going up.

At thermonuclear fusion neutron energy of 14.1 MeV there's about 3 orders of magnitude difference in
the cross-sections. That is for every 1 Plutonium yielding capture reaction; you will have 1000 U-238
destroying fission reactions.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

 

[signerror]

For convenience - what Morbius is talking about, U-238 fission vs. neutron capture:

And vanesch, Pu-239 + n --> Pu-240:

Both graphs made with the free online NNDC tools:

http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/sigma/

 

[Morbius]

For convenience - what Morbius is talking about, U-238 fission vs. neutron capture:

signerror,

Thank you for posting those graphs.

From the upper graph, you can see that at fusion neutron energies, the fission cross-section is
about 1000 times the capture cross-section. So you are going to get more fissions and less
Plutonium production.

The lower graph shows how the capture cross section that gives you Pu-240 is dropping and at
fusion neutron energies is 1000 times less than the fission cross-section. So you are 1000 times
more likely to fission the Plutonium than to capture the neutron and make Pu-240.

So things "flip around" at about 1 MeV.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist