Warp Speed Mr Sulu: US Navy Files Patent For Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor | HotHardware The US navy has patented a design for a compact fusion reactor to go in their ships and submarines. People might think it odd, since we don't have any commercial fusion reactors of any size, but their patenting this design now likely means they've had the technology for awhile now and recent advances have merely allowed them to perfect the design. The same thing happened when a DARPA scientist patented the first room temperature superconductor this year, implying they had been sitting on the technology right up until other researchers started to get close to patenting it themselves. Turbulence in particular, is the bane of fusion reactors, but not this design which uses inertial confinement. For example, the plasma is as hot as the sun, capable of melting right through anything anybody can make in a heartbeat, so they often inject inert gas like nitrogen between the walls of the container in more conventional torus or Tokamak designs and the plasma, so the nitrogen carries away the worst of the heat. If the nitrogen pump failed, I guess the thing would just turn into a superhot puddle of metal that could melt through the floor if its not thick enough, but this design is more like a digital recording that just makes little explosions that won't melt the walls. The really interesting thing about their patent, besides being compact, is the output they claim it has, which is off the charts. All this research dates back to the US government creating giant lasers such as the Z-machine, which actually has to harness the power of artificial lightning just to provide enough power to the thing, without draining the local power plant entirely every time you fire it. The US is way ahead of the rest of the world in laser technology with the Z-machine being used for, among other things, to simulate nuclear explosions so they don't have to pollute the environment just testing different designs. Anyway, fusion research has been done largely by the international community until now, because the US required more than just the best lasers to make it work. While other countries may soon build their own commercial fusion reactors and test how cost effective they can be, the US navy is obviously planning on starting by installing compact designs in their ships. The output is so enormous, its obvious they intend to use them along with their newest rail guns and particle beam weapons. They've been testing those for quite a while now, but the energy demands are off the charts. The most popular request at the White House website, is to build a Star Wars Death Star battlestation, and this is a rather huge leap in that direction. Hyper Missiles and whatnot are superfast, but don't stand a chance against something like a particle beam or rail gun, which can use a laser just to punch a hole in the air, so the slug or particles can travel through a vacuum, all the way to their target. A coffee can slug from a rail gun, would travel at 8,000mph or faster, and go through something like an aircraft carrier and out the other side, before exploding, because the metal itself can't explode faster than the projectile is moving. For the first time, they may have to slow down the velocity of their ordinance according to its distance from the target and the thickness of the target, in order to make it explode inside the ship.
Phys.org is buzzing with talk about this reactor, which according to the designs is two meters in size or less, and puts out up to a terawatt of power, which means you could use one in semi truck as a portable backup power supply for NYC. The fuel it uses is likely tiny glass pellets covered with a thin gold patina and filled with deuterium, or heavy water, which is toxic to drink but, otherwise, totally harmless and found throughout nature. While the thermal diode, or Maxwell's Demon, recently invented could easily make it obsolete within twenty years, this is a first step towards clean energy for the military and emergency applications. How much nuclear waste sits on the bottom of the ocean is anyone's guess at this point, and we need to stop installing fission reactors in ships ASAP, before a war could possibly send half of them to the bottom, and this power generator is so powerful it could save millions of lives during something like a natural disaster. As bizarre as it might sound, the US military is now the world's only natural disaster relief organization with the manpower and machinery to work miracles, and their next mission could be to clean up the environment and enforce international pollution laws. Our internal politics are a disaster, but the US is famous for taking opportunities to charge in to the rescue like the calvary.
Its a six foot reactor, you don't built it anywhere, you set it on the floor or on the back of a flatbed.
