Is hyperfission an easier goal than fusion?

[Cunjo Carl]

47 minutes ago, Nuke said:

if you use the tokamak yardstick. fringe fusion is always 5 years away. 

Not sure if he counts as fringe, but here's a nice five year design along the lines of your statement. Hugely worth the watch in my opinion, he does a great job explaining the present day of fusion.

 

 

For present day 'hyperfission' on the other hand there's this reported 1H + 1H -> 3 Kauons + 300MeV reaction. Kinda crazy! Not sure I believe this guy's theory, but his experiment's an interesting one. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1402-4896/ab1276/pdf . It is definitely an easier goal than fusion! Whether it's real...? Probably not, but bizarrely not "definitely not". Still looking into it.

[Guest]

@Dragon01 Interesting about the lignite o_o, I'd never heard of it before. 

I kinda feel like the nicest way of providing electricity (at least residentially outside of cities) is to just go a combination of rooftop solar and battery substations as a kind of local storage and redistribution capability for those houses that dont have a decent enough aspect to provide enough for their own needs. It would be super distributed network and easy on the environment  and everyone could drive around in electric cars yay :3 

As long as it's not cloudy for an extended period >_<

(in the case of cloudy weather then it becomes a public holiday! Im a genius!  )

Edited July 28, 2019 by Guest

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

6 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Then the Soviets took the other half, locked them up and told them to do the same thing, with a somewhat more limited budgets, but with some pilfered results from the US group

The international cooperation is a thing!

 

[AngrybobH]

1 hour ago, Dale Christopher said:

It would be super distributed network and easy on the environment

Except batteries are awful for the environment. As far as batteries go, our technology is terrible at storing power. And, we really need batteries for solar to work really well. We would be swapping our air pollution for ground pollution and probably more air pollution. Electric cars are a good example here. The carbon footprint of making the batteries for electric cars and recharging them is greater than the footprint of a similar sized gasoline powered car in normal operation for ~10 years. And how many batteries will an electric car need in 10 years? 3 probably. And, that only considers the carbon footprint. What about the mining waste from getting lithium?

On the subject of 'hyperfisssion', I really think we have taken fission about as far as is possible. Maybe one day with some super alloy or something that can contain nuclear bomb levels of energy continuously, we could get MOAR fission in a single reactor, but probably at the same efficiency we get now.

[Nuke]

2 hours ago, AngrybobH said:

Except batteries are awful for the environment. As far as batteries go, our technology is terrible at storing power. And, we really need batteries for solar to work really well. We would be swapping our air pollution for ground pollution and probably more air pollution. Electric cars are a good example here. The carbon footprint of making the batteries for electric cars and recharging them is greater than the footprint of a similar sized gasoline powered car in normal operation for ~10 years. And how many batteries will an electric car need in 10 years? 3 probably. And, that only considers the carbon footprint. What about the mining waste from getting lithium?

 On the subject of 'hyperfisssion', I really think we have taken fission about as far as is possible. Maybe one day with some super alloy or something that can contain nuclear bomb levels of energy continuously, we could get MOAR fission in a single reactor, but probably at the same efficiency we get now.

i think fission has quite a bit of wiggle room left in it. other fuel cycles, other modes of operation, fuel efficiencies greater than 1%. 

[Guest]

@AngrybobH

dude... how you can think the footprint of a lithium battery made in a factory that will run off solar power and is charged off solar power for the majority of its life, is worse than burning petrol for 10 years is beyond me, ( the lithium that goes into these batteries is also 100% recyclable into new batteries at the end of the battery’s lifespan (which exceeds 70% of new capacity at 100,000 miles (which is more mileage than my current 08 Lancer has on it.. which is a decade...@_@))

Edited July 28, 2019 by Guest

[mikegarrison]

On 7/26/2019 at 4:45 PM, Spacescifi said:

Basically you take an atom and convert more of it into energy than we currently do with fission. How about oh... 25% of the atom converted into energy after it is split? Instead of the standard 2%?

As with almost all your posts, I don't understand this. Why not just magically give yourself free energy? It's the same thing -- there is no such thing as "hyperfission". It makes no physical sense whatsoever. It might as well be magic.

So just use magic if that's what you want. You keep coming in here and using Star Trekish buzzwords that sound vaguely like real concepts but have no actual relationship to reality. Maybe another forum would be more appropriate, really?

[Guest]

I just remembered in Babylon5 I think the Vorlon planet cracker used a “Hyperspace Fission Beam” or something like that. 

At the time I heard it I was like... hmmm that don’t make sense but DAMN! It blows up planets so I’m not going to argue with them XD

Edited July 28, 2019 by Guest

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

i think fission has quite a bit of wiggle room left in it. other fuel cycles, other modes of operation, fuel efficiencies greater than 1%. 

Fission fragment reactors. It's as close to "hyperfission" as we can get. Ridiculously efficient, because it doesn't use a thermal generator. You can use it as an engine with an exhaust velocity so high that it shoots right out of the galaxy, but T/W sucks by necessity. In fact, any "direct conversion" scheme will pretty much ensure the jump in efficiency on order of what OP wants. The degree to which thermal loses affect our energy generation is staggering.

Edited July 28, 2019 by Guest

[steve_v]

On 7/27/2019 at 11:45 AM, Spacescifi said:

Hyperfission: More. More. More. More split atom, more energy released, more dangerous radiation in it's wake.

Basically you take an atom and convert more of it into energy than we currently do with fission. How about oh... 25% of the atom converted into energy after it is split? Instead of the standard 2%?

You really have no idea how a fission reactor works at all, do you? This is the "science and spaceflight" forum, not "wacky sci-fi ideas and buzzwords".
I'd be interested to know where you're getting that 2% figure too BTW. I've seen that number in relation to fuel burnup rates, but for the the energy released by a single fission we tend to use MeV.

 

14 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

if we could just do a chain reaction of fusion with say... 20 atoms exchanging their 2% for energy we can do it?

This makes absolutely no sense, even from a laymans perspective on nuclear physics.

If we want to discuss real, viable, high-efficiency fission reactors, there are plenty of gen IV designs in the pipeline (IMSR, PRISM, BN-1200 etc.) that we can talk about without all the Star-Trek rubbish.*

*Star-Trek is awesome, but it's also fiction, not science.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, steve_v said:

If we want to discuss real, viable, high-efficiency fission reactors, there are plenty of gen IV designs in the pipeline (IMSR, PRISM, BN-1200 etc.) that we can talk about without all the Star-Trek rubbish.*

 *Star-Trek is awesome, but it's also fiction, not science.

I love Star Trek but it must be said, some of it is also rubbish XD (you know who I mean o_o)

but yas! I’m interested in hearing about the designs! Which one do you think is the best and why?  

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, Dale Christopher said:

Which one do you think is the best and why?

Not being a reactor design engineer myself puts a rather subjective slant on any opinion I might have, but I do have a soft-spot for liquid-metal cooled fast-neutron breeder reactors like IFR (PRISM being the GE plant based on this design).

Why? IFR is reliable, safe, efficient and not too sci-fi. We could be building these right now if it weren't for politics.

The biggest deal for me wrt reactors is always going to be passive safety.
The IFR design is such that the reactor will safely shut down without active cooling (demonstrated in practice), largely due to the elimination of all the problems water/steam in the core creates, the large volume of the pool-type primary coolant system, and the good heat conductivity of the fuel assemblies.
If by some catastrophe the fuel elements do melt, being metallic, they extrude away from the active region and the reactor shuts down.
PRISM further refines this with a passive air-cooling of the reactor vessel.

Metallic fuel elements are also easier to fabricate than oxide-based systems and lend themselves to onsite pyro-reprocessing (electrorefining). Closed fuel cycle == good IMO... Assuming someone actually builds a refining plant of course.

Liquid sodium coolant removes the need for the pressure vessel you find in common LWR reactors entirely too, further improving safety, and it has excellent thermal and nuclear characteristics.
It also produces very little in the way of radioactive neutron activation products - non-radioactive coolant can't be a bad thing, right?

As with most fast reactors, IFR can run in a variety of fuel configurations, from pure burner to a breeder enriching spent LWR fuel. In the latter configuration it can actually produce more fissile material than it consumes.
Fast reactors can hit something like 95% fuel burnup (with onsite processing) compared to ~5% for a traditional LWR. Currently, almost all LWR waste goes into permanent storage around that 5% mark.
Not only do fast reactors produce ~1/20th the radioactive waste, it's  less hazardous waste to boot because most of the fission products have a comparatively short half-life.

That's not to say metal-cooled reactors are the best idea, there are some pretty spiffy gas-cooled designs around too.
I think I probably picked up my affinity for liquid metal cooling researching the Soviet "Lira" class attack submarines way long ago TBH. That beast was way ahead of it's time.  

Edited July 28, 2019 by steve_v
Add link to PRISM brochure, for nifty graphics.

[kerbiloid]

Quote

Nickel-62 is an isotope of nickel having 28 protons and 34 neutrons. It is a stable isotope, with the highest binding energy per nucleon of any known nuclide (8.7945 MeV).

Nickel-62 - Wikipedia

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-62

A nucleon rest mass is 900+ MeV.

So, unlikely a 1% of mass defect is practically achievable.

[Guest]

I found this interesting  

 

 

@steve_v do you know much about the NASA one being developed? “Kilopower” or something 

[steve_v]

12 minutes ago, Dale Christopher said:

do you know much about the NASA one being developed? “Kilopower” or something 

The KRUSTY system yeah? I know only what's floating about on the 'net, but what there is sounds very cool. Precisely what we need for for powering long-duration spaceflight - light, reliable, respectable power density. Liquid-metal heat-pipes and stirling engines IIRC.
Now, if someone would just reopen SNTP / Project Prometheus so we can have nuclear engines too. Mars, here we come.

Cool vid BTW, haven't seen that one.

Edited July 28, 2019 by steve_v

[DDE]

9 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Fission fragment reactors. It's as close to "hyperfission" as we can get. Ridiculously efficient, because it doesn't use a thermal generator. You can use it as an engine with an exhaust velocity so high that it shoots right out of the galaxy, but T/W sucks by necessity. In fact, any "direct conversion" scheme will pretty much ensure the jump in efficiency on order of what OP wants. The degree to which thermal loses affect our energy generation is staggering.

...and such systems are also quite handy for fusion energy conversion. Artzimovich looked at MHD coils from the day he built his first crude fusors.

12 hours ago, AngrybobH said:

On the subject of 'hyperfisssion', I really think we have taken fission about as far as is possible.

The issues are in the boardrooms, not reactor cores.

9 hours ago, Dale Christopher said:

It blows up planets so I’m not going to argue with them

You're not!?

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, DDE said:

...and such systems are also quite handy for fusion energy conversion. Artzimovich looked at MHD coils from the day he built his first crude fusors.

Of course, for the exact same reason it's good for fission. As a matter of fact, MHDs have even been used to improve efficiency in coal plants (albeit not as the primary generator). Direct conversion gets rid of of the single most wasteful step of energy generation. Even when using antimatter, you'd want something of that sort. We only use thermal because they're much easier to build, especially if you want them to handle high energy throughputs.

[Nuke]

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

Of course, for the exact same reason it's good for fission. As a matter of fact, MHDs have even been used to improve efficiency in coal plants (albeit not as the primary generator). Direct conversion gets rid of of the single most wasteful step of energy generation. Even when using antimatter, you'd want something of that sort. We only use thermal because they're much easier to build, especially if you want them to handle high energy throughputs.

direct conversion requires charged particles, which means aneutronic fusion. you slow them down with a positive grid and then give them an electron with a second grid, which gives you a high voltage dc supply. however because more common fuels like d-d and d-t have a higher cross section (easier to fuse) and produce more energy per fusion, that's what is going to be done first. its much easier to get to breakeven with those fuels and they are more common. i think 10:1 energy out vs energy in is what is needed to make a useful power plant (engineering breakeven). once we get those working and we get really good at wrangling ions then you can attempt to run aneutronic fuels like p-b11 where something like 99% of the products are alpha particles with a stray neutron or two thrown in. i think the real benefit is you can have a really compact reactor (useful for things like trucks, ships, spaceships, aircraft, and battlemechs), while power plants are better off running the more common fuels with the highest energy output possible and damn the neutrons (its still going to be a lot safer than a fission plant). you might have situations where another fuel is more common (a fusion reactor at a lunar colony might run he3 because its more abundant locally than other options).

Edited July 28, 2019 by Nuke

[Guest]

MHD generators don't require charged particles. Well, they do, but plasma works for that purpose. Fusion always takes place in plasma, aneutronic or not. I think that a linear "tandem mirror" arrangement, similar to a direct-impulse fusion drive, would be particularly suitable to that technology. The only problem is getting the MHD generator to work under those conditions, a nontrivial challenge to say the least.

[DDE]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

direct conversion requires charged particles

Direct conversion requires hot gas of absolutely any kind. Even a rocket engine will do - Purnell suggested hooking J-2s to an MHD as a source of a brief power surge for a laser launch system and RD-600 had an MHD coil built into a GCNR’s exhaust nozzle to get a megawatt of power while firing - while there are also proposals for high-temperature gas-cooled spaceborne reactors using just the MHD (e.g. the related EU-610).

Edited July 28, 2019 by DDE

[farmerben]

Accelerator driven hybrids could be the key.  High energy positive ion beams striking a metal foil target will either pass through or chip off nucleons.  Almost any metal beyond lead will chip off lots of nucleons or even fission.  500 MeV - 1GeV is about the particle beam energy we want.  Then it is a problem of getting high current pulses.  Cyclotrons are getting there, but the current would be multiplied by 10 if we converged the beams of 10 cyclotrons.  We would probably need even more beams for a similar amount of electrons to help focus the positive ions.   

Behind the foil target can be a sub critical reactor of almost any type, even a polywell and it will recieve an extreme kick of high energy radiation.  The particle beams provide throttle.  When the beams turn off the reactor idles along just below the temperature of fusion.  

[Guest]

9 hours ago, DDE said:

You're not!?

I’ll just be over here herding my nerfs minding my own business :p 

[kerbiloid]

I've lost the idea.

Is this discussion about fission (i.e. transformation of inner binding energy of a nucleus into a mass defect)?
Or about creating sparks by flint and firesteel particle beam and target?

Let's just create a fusion reactor enforced with antimatter, generate a beam with its power, by its hit make a fission target fission to run the fission and use the fission energy to power outlet.
But for the beam itself we should spend at least as much power as we get in the end, minus the mass defect.

So, as ⁶²Ni is a world champion in the binding energy storing (8.8 MeV / 940 MeV = 0.94%), we anyway can't gain even 1% of its rest mass, i.e. ~200 kt/kg.
And as this isotope is one of the most stable ones, and to extract this 200 kt/kg we should split it into single nucleons, unlikely this strange flintbox will ever be comparable even with shy 20 kt/kg of uranium fission.

Edited July 29, 2019 by kerbiloid

[RCgothic]

I think the precept of this thread basically misunderstands what's happening in a fission reaction. 

In a Fission reaction atomic nuclei and their protons and neutrons are arranged into a more stable configuration. Iron is the most stable configuration. That's why Fusion, joining small nuclei together, and Fission splitting large atoms apart, both release energy. To go the opposition directions consumes energy. That's why stars tend to die when they try to fuse iron, and the heavier elements are only really formed in hugely energetic events like supernova.

What do I mean by a "stable configuration"? I mean a state that takes a lot of energy to disturb. The harder it is to disturb, the more stable.

An atomic particle in free space has a lot of energy. It can't just join another particle and hold onto that energy - that amount of energy is by definition enough to disturb it from the stable state, but the particles want to be stable so the energy has got to go. That "binding" energy gets released. Particles generally aren't in free space. But if you compare their starting and end states you can work out how much energy will be released by the net difference in the stability of the two states.

This is exactly the same theory as chemical reactions. The difference is that nuclear binding energy is comparatively vast, and vast quantities of energy have non-negligible mass of their own. It may appear like fission has reduced the mass of the atomic particles, but actually they've only given up the mass associated with their binding energy.

Once you've reached iron, there is no more binding energy to give. You can't "hyperfission" to get more.

Furthermore, many elements either side of iron are nearly stable. It takes a lot of energy to disturb them into iron and the net return isn't great. Then consider that generating the required energy isn't 100% efficient and you get a prospect that isn't worth attempting. That's why we only attempt to split very unstable nuclei like Uranium.

Edited July 29, 2019 by RCgothic

[KerikBalm]

On 7/27/2019 at 7:01 AM, StrandedonEarth said:

Unfortunately, that's not how fission works.

^this^

Also, we've had Fusion energy since 1951 was it? The Russian's built the largest ever fusion reactor, its energy output was about 100x its energy input.

I'm speaking of course about Hydrogen bombs and the Tsar Bomba. They used a fission reaction to start the fusion reaction, but in the case of the Tsar bomba, the fission reaction only supplied about 1% of the device's energy output, the other 99% was fusion.

We just don't really have good a way of releasing that fusion energy in a more controlled, less destructive way.

Unfortunately, fusion seems to operate better at higher energy levels, there are large economies of scale.

If we wanted to make a fusion powered spacecraft, there's always the Orion drive.

In theory, one could build a massive underground device to capture energy from H-bombs, as a way to make energy from Fusion.

The problem is making reactors that don't release peta-joules worth of energy in a tiny fraction of a second, but still release energy at a high enough rate to make up for losses in the system maintaining the reaction conditions.

We've got nothing between a few hundred kilowatts (in a system requiring megawatts to maintain reaction conditions), and... I don't even know how many watts, Yota watts? whatever you call it when hundreds of Petajoules are released in... I don't know, 1/100000th of a second?