Article

2005-06-12 Home Front: Tech

Coming in out of the cold: Cold fusion, for real

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Posted by too true 2005-06-12 10:36|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 If it gets to net positive as an energy source, well ... don't have to tell RB'ers what that will do

Does Islam allows cannibalism (of other Moslems, that is)?

Posted by gromgoru 2005-06-12 11:07|| 2005-06-12 11:07|| Front Page Top

#2 Does Islam allows cannibalism?

I'm guessing that eating christians, heretic muslins and generic infidels is ok. Joooos, of course, are considered unclean.

Posted by SteveS 2005-06-12 11:17|| 2005-06-12 11:17|| Front Page Top

#3 So when do they start selling fusion kits at Wal-Mart and what website will give me hacking tools to turn it into a bomb? I can hardly wait. My neighbor's gonna pay for that atrocious purple garage door.

Posted by Zpaz 2005-06-12 11:51|| 2005-06-12 11:51|| Front Page Top

#4 For a bomb you're gonna have to reproduce what the big boys have. Sorry about that neighbor .....

Posted by too true 2005-06-12 11:59|| 2005-06-12 11:59|| Front Page Top

#5 "The current cold fusion apparatus still takes much more energy to start up than you get back out"
And why would anyone assume that will change?

Posted by Tom 2005-06-12 12:28|| 2005-06-12 12:28|| Front Page Top

#6 "...the scientists at UCLA cleverly used the structure of an unusual crystal."

Hmmm...so just make sure that Scotty can keep the crystal from overloading in the future.

Posted by Ebbereck Uneregum5631 2005-06-12 12:47|| 2005-06-12 12:47|| Front Page Top

#7 This isn't a device for producing power. It is a neutron generator similar to the accelerated ion neutron generators that have been produced for years. This one is just a little smaller, more reliable, longer lifed, and somewhat more efficient. This article is pop science crock, in that they are slanting it to make you believe some new way of producing energy was discovered. Lousy science reporting aside, it's still a nifty new method for generating neutrons, which will have many benefits for medical treatment, material analysis, etc.

Posted by DO 2005-06-12 12:58|| 2005-06-12 12:58|| Front Page Top

#8 From the American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News:

Pyrofusion: A Room-Temperature, Palm-Sized Nuclear Fusion Device

A room-temperature, palm-sized nuclear fusion device has been reported by a UCLA collaboration, potentially leading to new kinds of fusion devices and other novel applications such as microthrusters for MEMS spaceships.

The key component of the UCLA device is a pyroelectric crystal, a class of materials that includes lithium niobate, an inexpensive solid that is used to filter signals in cell phones. When heated, a pyroelectric crystal polarizes charge, segregating a significant amount of electric charge near a surface, leading to a very large electric field there. In turn, this effect can accelerate electrons to relatively high (keV) energies (see Update 564).

The UCLA researchers (Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski, Seth Putterman) take this idea and add a few other elements to it. In a vacuum chamber containing deuterium gas, they place a lithium tantalate (LiTaO3) pyroelectric crystal so that one of its faces touches a copper disc which itself is surmounted by a tungsten probe. They cool and then heat the crystal, which creates an electric potential energy of about 120 kilovolts at its surface.

The electric field at the end of the tungsten probe tip is so high (25 V/nm) that it strips electrons from nearby deuterium atoms. Repelled by the positively charged tip, and crystal field, the resulting deuterium ions then accelerate towards a solid target of erbium deuteride (ErD2), slamming into it so hard that some of the deuterium ions fuse with deuterium in the target.

Each deuterium-deuterium fusion reaction creates a helium-3 nucleus and a 2.45 MeV neutron, the latter being collected as evidence for nuclear fusion. In a typical heating cycle, the researchers measure a peak of about 900 neutrons per second, about 400 times the "background" of naturally occurring neutrons.

During a heating cycle, which could last from 5 minutes to 8 hours depending on how fast they heat the crystal, the researchers estimate that they create approximately 10-8 joules of fusion energy. [To provide some perspective, it takes about 1,000 joules to heat an 8-oz (237 ml) cup of coffee one degree Celsius.]

By using a larger tungsten tip, cooling the crystal to cryogenic temperatures, and constructing a target containing tritium, the researchers believe they can scale up the observed neutron production 1000 times, to more than 106 neutrons per second. (Naranjo, Gimzewski, Putterman, Nature, 28 April 2005).

The experimental setup is strikingly simple: "We can build a tiny self-contained handheld object which when plunged into ice water creates fusion," Putterman says. (More information at http://rodan.physics.ucla.edu/pyrofusion .)

And in the team's news release:

The researchers say that this method of producing nuclear fusion won't be useful for normal power generation, but it might find applications in the generation of neutron beams for research purposes, and perhaps as a propulsion mechanism for miniature spacecraft

Posted by rkb 2005-06-12 13:12|| 2005-06-12 13:12|| Front Page Top

#9 I was going to leave this alone, but WTF. You start out with Hydrogen atoms and end up with Helium atoms, then fusion has occured. This not open to debate. Only time will tell if this or other mechanisms for cold fusion result in a commercially viable source of energy. And I still don't get the pathological objection to the possibility, which this article demonstrates. It is a precondition to being taken seriously in this field that you deny the possibility of a viable energy source. You will forgive me if it looks to me like a manifestation of the Left/Green/Enviro Western Capitalism is evil and therefore the sky must be falling syndrome, cos cold fusion as a viable energy source means the energy crisis dissapears overnight. Thanks, I feel better now.

Posted by phil_b 2005-06-12 18:40|| 2005-06-12 18:40|| Front Page Top

#10 Good, I'm glad you're better, phil_b. So far cold fusion uses expensive materials (e.g. Palladium at $183 USD per troy ounce) to produce little or no excess energy or uses lithium tantalite crystals (cost unknown to me) to produce no excess energy. I can do better striking a match.

All the facsination with scale-up so "the energy crisis disappears overnight" is wildly-optimistic conjecture with no basis in fact. There are lots of things that don't scale up well. [The billions of dollars that have gone into "hot" fusion research in the last 50 years prove that.]

And even if they did scale up well, they may not be cost-effective or they may have large-scale major drawbacks such as the "free neutrons and high energy radiation" mentioned in this article. One of the many problems with "hot" fusion is that everything around it gets a mega-radiation dose and that creates contamination and material properties changes that don't get mentioned in the glossy brochures for non-physicist lab visitors.

It's not time to buy Palladium or lithium tantalite crystals yet.

Posted by Tom 2005-06-12 20:32|| 2005-06-12 20:32|| Front Page Top

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