Would Antimatter Reactors Be Paradoxically Easier To Operate Than Fusion Reactors?

[Spacescifi]

 

I think yes.... provided you already had made enough AM and had a foolproof way of storing it without it going boom.

I know those are very big if's, but I just was comparing fusion and antimatter containment issues, and it seems of the two, fusion is harder to contain because... of hotter than the sun plasma.

Antimatter does not need to be stored as plasma, and so, again, provided you have foolproof storage, can easier to store.

Second, you could use power from antimatter reactions to power a thermal rocket or for external pulse propulsion.

[Shpaget]

21 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

fusion is harder to contain because... of hotter than the sun plasma

You don't think annihilation is hot?

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

You don't think annihilation is hot?

Of course it is, yet unlike fusion you do not need a constant inferno, you can choose when you want to ignite it.

[Terwin]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Of course it is, yet unlike fusion you do not need a constant inferno, you can choose when you want to ignite it.

Perhaps, but nuclear fuel is much easier to handle than antimatter, and can be kept for extended periods in adequately spaced racks.

Also, unless you find somewhere where we can mine antimatter, it only works as a storage medium(like hydrogen or batteries) not as a power source(like oil, coal or nuclear)

So if we have the power to create antimatter, why not just use that power directly instead of making an antimatter reactor?

(outside of a few edge cases like rocketry where doing things like manufacturing hydrogen, loading it on a rocket and then burning it actually makes sense)

 

Edited July 28, 2023 by Terwin

[Spacescifi]

53 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Perhaps, but nuclear fuel is much easier to handle than antimatter, and can be kept for extended periods in adequately spaced racks.

Also, unless you find somewhere where we can mine antimatter, it only works as a storage medium(like hydrogen or batteries) not as a power source(like oil, coal or nuclear)

So if we have the power to create antimatter, why not just use that power directly instead of making an antimatter reactor?

(outside of a few edge cases like rocketry where doing things like manufacturing hydrogen, loading it on a rocket and then burning it actually makes sense)

 

 

Because you can't?

I made another post about turning the moon into a giant solar panel farm with scifi super batteries which could charge up enough electricity to equal their mass... meaning a 1 kilogram battery would weigh 2 kilograms fully charged and be as energetic as a kilogram of AM.

Now obviously neither exists, but if you want big power you need a big power source, and the biggest we know of is our sun.

You literally cannot take the solar farm with you, but you could use it's energy to help generarte and store AM for future use.

You are right about fusion materials being easy to store... but a fusion reaction is most definitely not...  and neither is AM annihilation.

So perhaps neither make good reactors unless you have scifi ways of tanking or diverting the massive heat loads they cause.

[RCgothic]

1) Antimatter isn't a fuel. There's no natural antimatter resources in nature. It needs to be created from another energy source. It's effectively a storage medium.

2) Antimatter would not be easier than Fusion. Fusion admittedly needs a very hot plasma to overcome nuclear repulsion, but it only needs to pulse that hot briefly and if containment is not perfect the spill just quenches mostly harmlessly. Antimatter needs perfect containment. It still needs to be a plasma because it needs to be charged to be contained electromagnetically. It needs to be contained 100% if the time with 100% efficiency. And if containment isn't perfect it'll violently disassemble its containment assembly and everything in the immediate area.

[Spacescifi]

50 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

1) Antimatter isn't a fuel. There's no natural antimatter resources in nature. It needs to be created from another energy source. It's effectively a storage medium.

2) Antimatter would not be easier than Fusion. Fusion admittedly needs a very hot plasma to overcome nuclear repulsion, but it only needs to pulse that hot briefly and if containment is not perfect the spill just quenches mostly harmlessly. Antimatter needs perfect containment. It still needs to be a plasma because it needs to be charged to be contained electromagnetically. It needs to be contained 100% if the time with 100% efficiency. And if containment isn't perfect it'll violently disassemble its containment assembly and everything in the immediate area.

So you are proposing a pulsed fusion reactor?

On a spaceship?

Love to see the radiators on that thing... it's gonna be huuuge!

You would have an easier time with heat just going with external pulse propulsion (aka project Orion).

[Nuke]

you have the same containment requirements as fusion, except lost particles can annihilate parts of your containment system.

[Shpaget]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

So you are proposing a pulsed fusion reactor?

On a spaceship?

Love to see the radiators on that thing... it's gonna be huuuge!

You would have an easier time with heat just going with external pulse propulsion (aka project Orion).

While I hate to presume what somebody else meant, I can safely point out that, up until this post, nobody (including you) mentioned anything about spaceships or propulsion. 

Fusion reactor designs we have today rely on having tiny amounts of fuel inside the reactor that undergo fussion, after which the next batch of fuel is pumped in. This happens very rapidly, but those are distinct events - pulses. It has nothing to do with orion.

[Spacescifi]

18 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

While I hate to presume what somebody else meant, I can safely point out that, up until this post, nobody (including you) mentioned anything about spaceships or propulsion. 

Fusion reactor designs we have today rely on having tiny amounts of fuel inside the reactor that undergo fussion, after which the next batch of fuel is pumped in. This happens very rapidly, but those are distinct events - pulses. It has nothing to do with orion.

Fair enough.

Fusion designs for reactors never seem to scale down well though, and I suspect tge same for AM. Because bombs are far more energetic than reactors anyway often simpler to make.

[Shpaget]

AM would scale exceptionally well, if you could magic away all the containment issues.

There is no lower limit on the amount of antimatter that can annihilate.

[kerbiloid]

We should take a blackhole, split the pairs of the virtual particles, and collect antimatter. That's all.

[magnemoe]

Antimatter would be pretty easy to handle you could even use it as an way to generate fusion as I understand. The problem is producing and storing it. 

[Nuke]

it occurred to me that one small advantage to containment in antimatter over fusion is that you could keep the antimatter at lower temps. it still needs to be a plasma but significantly cooler than what you need for fusion. its harder for cold plasma to jump containment than hot plasma. you will still get the occasional wayward particle and my previous post still applies. 

[Spacescifi]

52 minutes ago, Nuke said:

it occurred to me that one small advantage to containment in antimatter over fusion is that you could keep the antimatter at lower temps. it still needs to be a plasma but significantly cooler than what you need for fusion. its harder for cold plasma to jump containment than hot plasma. you will still get the occasional wayward particle and my previous post still applies. 

I see.... so god-mode forcefields that won't let ANY stray oarticle through is necessary, or else a material that is AM neutral and won't react.

[darthgently]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Antimatter would be pretty easy to handle you could even use it as an way to generate fusion as I understand. The problem is producing and storing it. 

Big problems

[Nuke]

10 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

I see.... so god-mode forcefields that won't let ANY stray oarticle through is necessary, or else a material that is AM neutral and won't react.

i suppose you could shield the components such that the anti-particle will annihilate with something useless that will absorb the energy before it gets to your superconductors. but you are going to have to periodically shut down the reactor to replace these as they wear out.  i really dont think a single annihilation event will destroy a properly designed reactor, it might generate enough heat to cause a quench event in the superconductor though, and if that happens say goodbye to your magnetic bottle. so just be sure it hits something else first.

Edited July 29, 2023 by Nuke

[Spacescifi]

3 minutes ago, Nuke said:

i suppose you could shield the components such that the anti-particle will annihilate with something useless that will absorb the energy before it gets to your superconductors. but you are going to have to periodically shut down the reactor to replace these as they wear out.  i really dont think a single annihilation event will destroy a properly designed reactor, it might generate enough heat to cause a quench event in the superconductor though, and if that happens say goodbye to your magnetic bottle. so just be sure it hits something else first.

 

So instead of Chernobyl we get a giant crater and the equivalent of a nuclear winter from a SINGLE powerplant failure.

Ouch!

[darthgently]

4 minutes ago, Nuke said:

i suppose you could shield the components such that the anti-particle will annihilate with something useless that will absorb the energy before it gets to your superconductors. but you are going to have to periodically shut down the reactor to replace these as they wear out.  i really dont think a single annihilation event will destroy a properly designed reactor, it might generate enough heat to cause a quench event in the superconductor though, and if that happens say goodbye to your magnetic bottle. so just be sure it hits something else first.

It is hard for me to imagine a feasible way to portably contain antimatter.  The obvious approach is to not contain it, but immediately use it instead.  If not for thrust, then convert to some other form of energy storage.  But this implies a magical source of antimatter with a high enough flow rate.

I can't help but see the generation, handling, and containment overhead of antimatter cancelling any Isp advantage for the foreseeable future.  Like the problems with cryo hydrogen x 100,000

[Gargamel]

Again, you bring in antimatter as if it’s some magical resource.    Are you talking about anti apples or anti oranges?    Containing a wharehouse full of anti-chairs is a whole different story than containing a tank of anti hydrogen.  

Although, the delivery method for anti chairs would be far simpler in some aspects than a gas.

Build a big pit.

Minimum wage worker A tosses in a chair at the same time minimum wage worker B tosses in an anti chair using special gloves.

Everybody ducks.

Profit, and keep the help wanted ad posted.

 

 

 

 

[Nuke]

On 7/29/2023 at 12:22 PM, darthgently said:

It is hard for me to imagine a feasible way to portably contain antimatter.  The obvious approach is to not contain it, but immediately use it instead.  If not for thrust, then convert to some other form of energy storage.  But this implies a magical source of antimatter with a high enough flow rate.

I can't help but see the generation, handling, and containment overhead of antimatter cancelling any Isp advantage for the foreseeable future.  Like the problems with cryo hydrogen x 100,000

i view antimatter more as an exotic form of energy storage than a power source. so creating it just to immediately burn it is kind of pointless and will cost more energy than just using that energy directly. you are going to want to make the antimatter at a facility and fill up a portable magnetic bottle for transport. its going to need a multiple-redundant battery pack and liquid nitrogen supply to keep the superconducting coils charged. i also very much doubt you can get much antimatter into such a pod, a ton of equipment to store a few milligrams of antimatter, storing at any kind of pressure is going to increase the chances of losing particles. and presumably this would be transferred into a larger pod more suited for long term storage and utilization.

if you wanted to take the whole particle accelerator with you, you could probibly use the particle beam itself as a high isp thruster and forgo antimatter production entirely.

[Nuke]

On 7/29/2023 at 12:14 PM, Spacescifi said:

 

So instead of Chernobyl we get a giant crater and the equivalent of a nuclear winter from a SINGLE powerplant failure.

Ouch!

im talking single particles escaping the system. the design of your bottle will need to be such that small numbers of particles escaping over time wont cause a massive cascade failure resulting in a massive release of gamma rays and heat (think hiroshima, not chernobyl).

antimatter tech is definately for a post fusion world, by then all the containment problems should be solved. when a fusion reactor leaks particles, they take the heat with them, and so you replace it with a cold particle, it needs to be heated back up. so lost particles represent a huge  energy loss and are an efficiency hurdle to fusion power generation. the loss rates will get ever smaller, but i very much doubt they will hit zero.

hot particles are harder to contain than cold ones, since they have enough energy where they can zip right on through containment if the conditions are just right. so take an extremely robust containment system spun off from fusion tech, run it with a colder plasma, and you could get the loss rates way down. but not zero so you are going to have to deal with a lost particle every now and again.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Nuke

[darthgently]

4 hours ago, Nuke said:

i view antimatter more as an exotic form of energy storage than a power source. so creating it just to immediately burn it is kind of pointless and will cost more energy than just using that energy directly. you are going to want to make the antimatter at a facility and fill up a portable magnetic bottle for transport. its going to need a multiple-redundant battery pack and liquid nitrogen supply to keep the superconducting coils charged. i also very much doubt you can get much antimatter into such a pod, a ton of equipment to store a few milligrams of antimatter, storing at any kind of pressure is going to increase the chances of losing particles. and presumably this would be transferred into a larger pod more suited for long term storage and utilization.

if you wanted to take the whole particle accelerator with you, you could probibly use the particle beam itself as a high isp thruster and forgo antimatter production entirely.

Yes, that was my point of saying that using it instead of storing it would make more sense because storage is ridiculously complicated, but generating it on the fly is just as ridiculous.  Metallic hydrogen is in same category in my view.  The generation, containment, and handling of things so exotic are probably not as simple as a scifi fan would hope , or even necessarily possible.

The invocations of magical "force fields" to grant psuedo-plausibility is typically the tell.

If undiscovered magic is to be invoked then some theoretical unification of the EM force and the force of gravity seems the linchpin to me, not high maintenance, slippery, and cantankerous fuels

[farmerben]

I want to know what the engine looks like.   If you use antimatter to create a thermal rocket with 800s ISP that sorta sucks.

[Nuke]

6 hours ago, farmerben said:

I want to know what the engine looks like.   If you use antimatter to create a thermal rocket with 800s ISP that sorta sucks.

it could just be as straight forward as having a magnetic combustion chamber, where by steams of protons and antiprotons are fed. its the same kind of magnetic nozzle configuration often found on fusion engine designs. this is actually the straightforward part. the less straight forward part is that you need to plumb that engine. but where all the pipes are magnetic conduit. with magnetic valves, and must feed in only one direction. when one looks at the complexity of regular old rocket plumbing, then realize you have to accomplish the same feat entirely with magnetic fields, one realizes the magnitude of the problem. sure the hydrogen can be stored in tanks and ionized on demand (and it would probibly be safer to do so, since this makes it easier to control), but the antimatter must be 100% handled with magnetic fields. simply tanking up at the gas station becomes a potentially world ending ordeal. 

11 hours ago, darthgently said:

Yes, that was my point of saying that using it instead of storing it would make more sense because storage is ridiculously complicated, but generating it on the fly is just as ridiculous.  Metallic hydrogen is in same category in my view.  The generation, containment, and handling of things so exotic are probably not as simple as a scifi fan would hope , or even necessarily possible.

The invocations of magical "force fields" to grant psuedo-plausibility is typically the tell.

If undiscovered magic is to be invoked then some theoretical unification of the EM force and the force of gravity seems the linchpin to me, not high maintenance, slippery, and cantankerous fuels

magnetic fields are actually force fields, and they are very well understood (not witchcraft). gravity is another force field, less well understood. but for the sake of an antimatter reactor, em is all you need. mcf is teaching us everything we need to know about controlling plasmas with force fields. and frankly containment times are barely enough to conduct a shot let alone a continuous burn. thats the thing fusion needs to solve, and its mandatory for am systems. so the notion that am is somehow easier than fusion is completely bonkers. you got to walk before you can run.

thats ignoring the fact that no sane means of am production exists. we can create a few positrons for scientific and medical purposes, and a few tens of antiprotons for science purposes. and im not even sure if we ever tried to combine the two to create unionized anti-hydrogen (at which point you can no longer control it with magnetic fields).  building an am engine is like building an internal combustion engine before the invention of gasoline or oil refining. so there is considerable way to go. the path to fusion is at least visible and will give us some of the technology we will need. 

Edited July 31, 2023 by Nuke