Why I'm excited about Lockheed's Nuclear Fusion Reactor

"Racescort666" (Racescort666) 10/27/2014 at 09:16 • Filed to: fusion, awesome, spacelopnik, planelopnik

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When I saw the news on our sister site !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! announced an aggressive plan to bring compact nuclear fusion into reality, naturally, I was excited. There has been some skepticism about their claim but seeing as how this is Lockheed Martin, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! they carry a bit more weight than some dude that did this in his garage. No offence to guys who like to tinker in their garages, I like to as well, but when it comes to particle physics, I'm going to leave it to the experts. A physicist I am not, so that's the last I'll talk about whether or not Lockheed can actually do what they're saying they can do.

As an engineer, there are a number of applications that I see as awesome and practical. The first thing that everyone thinks of is solving the world's energy needs. After all, this is pretty much the primary goal of nuclear fusion with it's safe operation, cheap and readily available fuel (hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe). How they do this is somewhat less clear.

This is a simplification of how current nuclear power generation works. In fact, if you replace "reactor vessel" with "coal furnace", "natural gas burner", or any other fossil fuel method of heat generation, you have the majority of every other method of generating electricity out there. Essentially, the reactor is merely a heat source. You use the heat source to boil water and generate steam, the steam is used to drive a turbine, the turbine powers a generator, and the magic of electricity is born.

Lockheed comes in by replacing the reactor vessel with their compact fusion reactor that has minimal radioactive byproducts, cheap fuel, and inherently safe operation. If there is a reactor breach, the reaction stops. This is unlike traditional nuclear power where the reactor is containing a chain reaction where without input, problems happen, to put it lightly.

Now, aside bringing peace and prosperity to the earth, what else can we do with a heat source that uses barely any fuel? Answer: airplanes. Enter the Convair X-6. Yes, in the 50s, they not only considered but tried nuclear powered airplanes.

In the X-6 experiments, they got as far as flying the plane with the reactor running but not powering the airplane. This is on top of an entire engine development project that proved out the feasibility of the engine design.

These are pictures of the HTRE 3, the proposed engine for the Convair X-6. Thermodynamically, this engine works the same as any other: suck, squeeze, bang, blow. Air is drawn in, it's compressed, heat is added (fuel burnt most commonly), and it's driven through a turbine to power the compressor. The difference with this one is that the rector is designed to be air cooled and the compressed air from the engine is used to cool the reactor. That cooling heats the compressed air, raising the pressure, which is then driven through the turbine on the engine the same as any other, creates thrust, and away you go.

This program was developed with the intention of long range bombers. This was big in the 50s along with many programs like the XB-70. Long range bombers were of great strategic importance to the US because you could take off from the mainland, drop bombs, and return without the need for refueling. Eventually the program was cancelled by President Kennedy with the rise of ICBMs making long range bombing unnecessary.

Now, with the promise of safe, clean power, available for everyone, you could easily take the same idea and testing and research and apply it to commercial airlines. Imagine if you will, a jet the size of a 747 that is able to fly anywhere in the world without refueling.

Fuel is roughly !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of the operating cost for airlines. Granted, this is likely to have a big impact on capital expenditures but fuel expenses are the biggest reason for flying smaller jets and cut backs in operations. It would allow airlines to commonize fleets. This would in turn reduce maintenance expenses from having to have multiple airplanes and staff trained in maintenance. Dare I say it, it would improve flying in general because with aircraft size not being a limitation, row spacing could increase and everyone's bane of flight, no leg room, would no longer be an issue. Embrace the fusion, be happy, fly happy. Ok, that went a little too far.

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Anyway, what else can you do? Rockets! Yep, again, in the 50s, they not only tested jet engines with nuclear reactors, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

This is the same idea of using nuclear fission (fusion) as a heat source. A propellant (the diagram says hydrogen but it really doesn't matter what it is as long as it's liquid) is run over a reactor, heated, pressurized, and forced through a nozzle to create thrust.

Again, they actually got to the point of testing this and at one point it was considered as an alternative for the Apollo program.

(The test engine was never intended to fly and was named Kiwi as a reference to the flightless bird. See, engineers have a sense of humor)

Anyway, nuclear thermal rockets engines offer a few advantages over traditional chemical rockets. The most notable is their incredibly high specific impulse compared to chemical rockets. Specific impulse is a way of comparing rocket engines to each other by comparing how much thrust they generate with how much fuel they use. A sort of fuel economy for rockets. (If you run the numbers for lift off, it's on the order of feet per gallon.)

Just so everyone knows, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! have the highest !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of any rocket engine developed. Chemical rockets, like those currently used by orbital launch providers, have the advantage of large gross thrust. This is where ion engines fall off. They do not have very high gross thrust. However, nuclear thermal rocket engines have both high gross thrust as well as a high specific impulse, which is around 3 times chemical rockets.

There have been a few discussions on whether nuclear thermal engines would be an improvement over chemical rockets but chemical rockets still win out in the gross thrust category. Ideally, you'd like the vehicle to have a thrust to weight ratio !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! since the vehicle has to accelerate upward but not too much to be a detriment to the structure. This is why chemical rockets are used as a first stage and will continue to be !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Nuclear thermal rockets just can't seem to get the gross thrust necessary for a first stage of a rocket. This is why the biggest advantage seems to be in the upper stages of a lift vehicle. Once out of the atmosphere (100 km/62 mi... ish), nuclear thermal rockets could provide the acceleration necessary to achieve orbital velocity or exceed it to go beyond. Ultimately, the program was dropped in favor of chemical rockets and it never saw production for the Apollo program.

There is that one pesky drawback of nuclear thermal engines, radiation. This is where our fusion reactor comes in handy. There really isn't any radiation (aside, possibly the containment vessel.) It literally does the same thing, heats the "fuel" (fuel is anything that isn't an oxidizer but lets not get hung up on terminology) to be expelled from the engine at high velocity but it does it using a different process.

So maybe this could be used as a viable upper stage for orbital and beyond rockets. Would this justify the expense of a fusion reactor powered upper stage rocket? I don't know, no one really does yet. However, what gets me excited is !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ?

You may break even from a performance standpoint with a [fusion] nuclear thermal rocket engine. However, once it's in space, you have the same thing you have on earth: a nearly unlimited power supply. That thing that was propelling your ass to space, is now powering your ion engine, it's powering your asteroid recovery system, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! The nerd in me is literally freaking out!

Anyway, that's your take away and the exciting thing is that all of these things have been studied already. If Lockheed keeps to their word, we could see a viable space mining operation in our lifetime. Bringing freedom to the solar system. [img:Ronald Regan riding a velociraptor]

f86sabre > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 09:38

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Bring it...

Great write up. My fingers are crossed for Lockheed. Really, if anyone can figure it out my money is on the Skunk Works.

Racescort666 > f86sabre 10/27/2014 at 09:43

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Thanks! Yeah, I'll admit that I was very skeptical when I first read the article. The type of news and the source are both subject to over-embellishment but I kept coming back to the fact that Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works division was the one making the announcement. I'm still holding out hope that I can fly in space.

djmt1 > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 09:49

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Between this, BAE's railgun and NASA's lasers I feel we are actually quite close to cool spaceships.

Just need a FTL drive and Alpha Centauri here we come.

f86sabre > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 09:51

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Me too.

Racescort666 > djmt1 10/27/2014 at 09:59

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They're working on FTL drives too. So far, physics hasn't said that it's impossible.

spanfucker retire bitch > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 10:03

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Lockheed comes in by replacing the reactor vessel with their compact fusion reactor that has minimal radioactive byproducts, cheap fuel, and inherently safe operation. If there is a reactor breach, the reaction stops. This is unlike traditional nuclear power where the reactor is containing a chain reaction where without input, problems happen, to put it lightly.

Sadly, thanks to lack of funding and FUD bullshit from organizations like Green Peace, there isn't a single Western Nation that is actively working towards Liquid Fuel Thorium Reactor development as a viable source of power while we "wait" for Fusion. It too stops immediately upon a reactor breach. It will also stop immediately if the thorium fuel gets too hot as it will automatically empty out into a control basin.

But that's just a personal gripe of mine - great writeup. I too look forward to seeing what Skunk Works can actually pull off.

Racescort666 > spanfucker retire bitch 10/27/2014 at 10:19

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I thought Argonne National Laboratory was working on one? Maybe not, I don't know. I keep tabs on space exploration and rocket/aircraft development so I'll admit that nuclear reactors aren't my forte.

spanfucker retire bitch > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 10:45

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I haven't heard of Argonne working on it, but I might be out of the loop. I know there was a research facility in France that was trying it out but that's been shut down for years.

There's two governments that are spending big on LFTR development and those are India and China. No one else seems to be too interested in upgrading their nuclear infrastructure from 60 year old designs.

LFTR could also bring a measure of political stability for Nuclear Energy development as well, because it doesn't require refined uranium and it also doesn't produce fissile material that is usable in nuclear weapons.

Sally O'Broder > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 12:34

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My guess?

We've had the basics of all of these kinds of technology already, only we've just been sitting on it due to short term costs/wanting to ride out the profit bubbles of existing fuel sources for as long as possible.

Blue 300 > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 19:09

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Racescort666 > Blue 300 10/27/2014 at 19:18

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Come at me bro!

HammerheadFistpunch > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 19:22

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Can't wait to get to all of this. I will say that the nuclear jet had 2 big problems that were never quite solved.

1. shielding was too heavy and not effective enough

2. The more efficient direct cycle engines are powerful but super dirty (radioactive dirty), the indirect cycle engines were too heavy and complicated.

HammerheadFistpunch > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 19:28

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if only we had a way to convert matter to energy directly we'd be set! Seriously though, I can't wait!

Racescort666 > HammerheadFistpunch 10/27/2014 at 19:34

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Yeah, converting it to heat isn't super helpful.

HammerheadFistpunch > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 19:39

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What are they down to for the mass energy required for the FTL drive? something like 1600 lbs? given that a fission type bomb only has a Mass-energy conversion efficiency of .03%, thats 54,000 lbs (or 27 tons) of plutonium for a one way trip. Yikes! Doc brown's going to have to get busy.

Blue 300 > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 19:49

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"We don't need to show guns and missiles to highlight our great contribution to humanity and ecology. We help humans achieve greatness through acts of kindness and conservation. Just look at this bird that was found. The bird was found crossing into shipping lanes who's boundaries were clearly marked by a iridescent black slick (that we thoroughly meant to clean up). Despite the bird's irresponsibility, we took it upon ourselves to take credit for bathing him and ceremoniously sending him on his way. It's little achievements like this that pepper our hearts in knowing that we are doing the right thing; the American thing." - American Petroleum Institute

Mochimaster > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 20:00

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Great informative article, 10/10. My question is, since I've been out of the loop on news considering nuclear advancements in the energy field, do you know how close we are to achieving a fusion reaction whose net gain is larger than net loss?

Racescort666 > Mochimaster 10/27/2014 at 20:14

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Lockheed's claim is 5 years for a prototype and another 5 for a production model. Most current fusion generators are the Tokamak type which is still several years out from achieving net gain. Lockheed hasn't been very forthcoming with exactly what they're doing but they're claiming their generator will be much smaller than the tokamak types thus they will have less expenditure and design time between iterations.

FredZ > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 21:13

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It's so great that you think engineers have a sense of humor, because the Lockheed "compact fusion reactor" drivel is nothing more than a big joke. Forget about the plasma physics problems, which are impossible to solve in the manner Lockheed describes, and just think about the materials engineering problems. There is no known material that could survive the 14-MeV neutron fluences, energy densities and temperatures that would be involved. So all your hilarious speculation makes about as much sense as debating what TV shows purple unicorns would prefer to watch.

If you really do want to learn about the history of nuclear fusion R&D, then try reading en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power . If you had read this background info before writing this preposterous article, then you would have looked a lot smarter, but then I wouldn't be laughing so hard at this nonsense.

Here's a garage guy I know you'll love: nanospireinc.com/Fusion.html . These guys can make "any element in the periodic table" from plain water, through the amazing power of "cavitation" and of course "zero point energy." The only problem is they are suffering from grandiose delusional disorder (aka paranoia, or "nuttier than a fruitcake" to laymen) just like the Lockheed people.

Drakkon- Most Glorious and Upright Person of Genius > HammerheadFistpunch 10/27/2014 at 21:40

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The theoretical physicist I heard talking about FTL said that you have this huge leap of energy to get 'over the hump.' Then as you need to drop back out of FTL, there would be a planetary size (or possibly bigger) energy pulse. Think a quantum leap, but on a planet size level instead of electron size level.

You may get way across the universe to a cool spot and just as you slow down, you wipe out everything in your path. The alien neighbors are going to hate you before you even have a chance to introduce yourself.

New Fire > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 23:46

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Anyone here like the NASA EmDrive

Mike > Racescort666 10/27/2014 at 23:50

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All of this reminded me of the Interstellar mod for Kerbal Space Program. It's a nice practical showcase of both nuclear thermal turbojets and rockets.

Dutchman61 > Racescort666 10/28/2014 at 08:30

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I doubt Lockheed is going to be successful in under 20 years, but the simple truth is the existing research efforts have produced giant toys that will never lead to anything useful. And we have invested $ billions over the decades in that boondoogle. In truth I wonder if there is even a desire to complete the work since scientists have literally worked their entire career on this and retired with no accountability. Lockheed on the other hand has the perfect motive: $$$$. I think the real reason they jumped into this is the DOD work is limited and, unless there is a new world war , with little growth potential. On the flip side whoever grabs the holy grail of energy will be rich beyond definition. I suspect though this research actually has its roots in the Star Wars program which would explain Lockheed's tie in. Most likely, DOD was forced to drop it due to budget and they gave Lockheed permission to continue the work. I hope it works.

Dutchman61 > djmt1 10/28/2014 at 08:32

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What you are describing is the Star Wars defense Ronald Reagan laid out 30 years ago. I don't think it is a coincidence that the rail gun, lasers and progress on fission pop up at the same time.

djmt1 > Dutchman61 10/28/2014 at 08:37

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True but I'm not sure how useful oribital defense/bombardment is since it is quite easy to shoot a satellite out of the sky.

Frank W. > Racescort666 10/28/2014 at 11:13

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I worked years in aerospace, many as an engineer for Lockheed Martin. From the very onset, I got the feeling that LM jumped the gun on their fusion reactor. Then I find it is entirely theoretical at this point. Notice that the mainstream news media are picking up little or none on this. Skunk Works and LM don't much publish their failures, or redefine success when outed. LM is the leading smoke-and-mirrors contractor.

Casey > Racescort666 10/29/2014 at 22:28

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It's a great what if game if this pans out. Consider this, you are the CEO of Mitsubishi, Siemens, GE, etc. Someone has just announced a technology breakthrough the helps/hinders your future business model. Do you jump in and try to build your own version? Do you partner? Do you just wait it out and see how it develops? You have to realize worldwide demand will be huge once they start becoming available.

What about the Mideast? Say Lockheed delivers a prototype in 1-2 years. Does the US Govt start telling you that since they're not going to need your oil you folks best solve your own problems because we no longer give a rat's ass about you. Its impossible to predict how major a change this could have on basically everything as oil is relegated to a lubricant & source of plastic.

Environmentalists? Just about every objection they've had involving power generation is dead. Climate Change? As fossil fuels use winds down, its no longer worth the debate.

As mentioned, does this the jump the space program needs because we now have a power source that can potentially take us around our own galaxy at weeks/months instead of decades.

Can't wait till someone mounts one on a Deloren.