After the discovery of nuclear fission, the reverse process was discovered: nuclear fusion- when light nuclei combine to form heavier ones.
Nuclear fusion processes take place in the Sun - four isotopes of hydrogen (hydrogen-1) combine to form helium-4, releasing a colossal amount of energy.
On Earth, the fusion reaction uses hydrogen isotopes: deuterium (hydrogen-2) and tritium (hydrogen-3):
3 1 H + 2 1 H → 4 2 He + 1 0 n
Nuclear fusion, like nuclear fission, was no exception. This reaction received its first practical application in hydrogen bomb, the consequences of the explosion of which were described earlier.
If scientists have already learned to control the chain reaction of nuclear fission, then controlling the released energy of nuclear fusion is still a pipe dream.
The practical application of nuclear energy fission at nuclear power plants has a significant drawback - the disposal of spent nuclear waste. They are radioactive and pose a danger to living organisms, and their half-life is quite long - several thousand years (during this time, radioactive waste will pose a danger).
Nuclear fusion has no harmful waste - this is one of the main advantages of its use. Solving the problem of controlling nuclear fusion will provide an inexhaustible source of energy.
As a result of a practical solution to this problem, the TOKAMAK installation was created.
The word "TOKAMAK" - according to different versions, it is either an abbreviation of the words TOROIDAL, CHAMBER, Magnetic Coils, or an abbreviation adapted for easy pronunciation from Toroidal Chamber with Magnetic Field, which describe the main elements of this magnetic trap invented by A.D. Sakharov in 1950. The TOKAMAK diagram is shown in the figure:
The first TOKAMAK was built in Russia at the Institute of Atomic Energy named after I.V. Kurchatov in 1956
For successful work The TOKAMAK installation needs to solve three problems.
Task 1. Temperature. The process of nuclear fusion requires an extremely high activation energy. Hydrogen isotopes must be heated to a temperature of approximately 40 million K - this is a temperature higher than the temperature of the Sun!
At this temperature, the electrons “evaporate” - only positively charged plasma remains - the nuclei of atoms, heated to high temperature.
Scientists are trying to heat a substance to such a temperature using magnetic field and laser, but so far without success.
Task 2. Time. For the nuclear fusion reaction to begin, the charged nuclei must be at a fairly close distance from each other at T = 40 million K, quite long time- about one second.
Task 3. Plasma. Have you invented the absolute solvent? Amazing! But, let me ask - where will you store it?
During nuclear fusion, the substance is in a plasma state at a very high temperature. But under such conditions, any substance will be in a gaseous state. So how do you “store” plasma?
Since plasma has a charge, a magnetic field can be used to confine it. But, alas, scientists have not yet succeeded in creating a reliable “magnetic flask”.
According to the most optimistic forecasts, it will take scientists 30-50 years to create a working source of environmentally friendly energy - the "tombstone" for oil and gas magnates. However, it is not a fact that by that time humanity will not use up its oil and gas reserves.
Thermonuclear reaction- This is the reaction of fusion of light nuclei into heavier ones.
For its implementation, it is necessary that the original nucleons or light nuclei come closer to distances equal to or less than the radius of the sphere of action of nuclear attractive forces (i.e., to distances of 10 -15 m). This mutual approach of nuclei is prevented by the Coulomb repulsive forces acting between positively charged nuclei. For a fusion reaction to occur, it is necessary to heat a substance of high density to ultra-high temperatures (on the order of hundreds of millions of Kelvin) so that the kinetic energy of the thermal motion of nuclei is sufficient to overcome the Coulomb repulsive forces. At such temperatures, matter exists in the form of plasma. Since fusion can only occur at very high temperatures, nuclear fusion reactions are called thermonuclear reactions (from the Greek. thermo"warmth, heat").
Thermonuclear reactions release enormous energy. For example, in the reaction of deuterium synthesis with the formation of helium
\(~^2_1D + \ ^2_1D \to \ ^3_2He + \ ^1_0n\)
3.2 MeV of energy is released. In the reaction of deuterium synthesis with the formation of tritium
\(~^2_1D + \ ^2_1D \to \ ^3_1T + \ ^1_1p\)
4.0 MeV of energy is released, and in the reaction
\(~^2_1D + \ ^3_1T \to \ ^4_2He + \ ^1_0n\)
17.6 MeV of energy is released.
Rice. 1. Scheme of the deuterium-tritium reaction
Currently, a controlled thermonuclear reaction is carried out by the synthesis of deuterium \(~^2H\) and tritium \(~^3H\). Deuterium reserves should last for millions of years, and easily mined lithium reserves (to produce tritium) are sufficient to supply needs for hundreds of years.
However, during this reaction, the majority (more than 80%) of the released kinetic energy comes from the neutron. As a result of collisions of fragments with other atoms, this energy is converted into thermal energy. In addition, fast neutrons create a significant amount of radioactive waste.
Therefore, the most promising are “neutron-free” reactions, for example, deuterium + helium-3.
\(~D + \ ^3He \to \ ^4He + p\)
This reaction has no neutron output, which removes a significant portion of the power and generates induced radioactivity in the reactor design. In addition, reserves of helium-3 on Earth range from 500 kg to 1 ton, but on the Moon it is found in significant quantities: up to 10 million tons (according to minimum estimates - 500 thousand tons). At the same time, it can be easily produced on Earth from lithium-6, which is widespread in nature, using existing nuclear fission reactors.
Thermonuclear weapons
On Earth, the first thermonuclear reaction was carried out during the explosion of a hydrogen bomb on August 12, 1953 at the Semipalatinsk test site. “Her father” was academician Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, who was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor three times for the development of thermonuclear weapons. The high temperature required for the start of a thermonuclear reaction in a hydrogen bomb was obtained as a result of the explosion of the atomic bomb included in its composition, which played the role of a detonator. Thermonuclear reactions that occur during hydrogen bomb explosions are uncontrollable.
Rice. 2. Hydrogen bomb
see also
Controlled thermonuclear reactions
If under terrestrial conditions it were possible to carry out easily controlled thermonuclear reactions, humanity would receive a practically inexhaustible source of energy, since the reserves of hydrogen on Earth are enormous. However, great technical difficulties stand in the way of implementing energetically favorable controlled thermonuclear reactions. First of all, it is necessary to create temperatures of the order of 10 8 K. Such ultra-high temperatures can be obtained by creating high-power electrical discharges in the plasma.
Tokamak
This method is used in “Tokamak”-type installations (TORIODIUM CHAMBER with MAGNETIC COILS), first created at the Institute atomic energy them. I. V. Kurchatova. In such installations, plasma is created in a toroidal chamber, which is the secondary winding of a powerful pulse transformer. Its primary winding is connected to a bank of capacitors of very large capacity. The chamber is filled with deuterium. When a battery of capacitors is discharged through the primary winding in a toroidal chamber, a vortex electric field is excited, causing ionization of deuterium and the appearance of a powerful pulse of electric current in it, which leads to strong heating of the gas and the formation of high-temperature plasma in which a thermonuclear reaction can occur.
Rice. 3. Schematic diagram reactor operation
The main difficulty is to keep the plasma inside the chamber for 0.1-1 s without its contact with the walls of the chamber, since there are no materials that can withstand such high temperatures. This difficulty can be partially overcome with the help of a toroidal magnetic field in which the camera is located. Under the influence of magnetic forces, the plasma is twisted into a cord and, as it were, “hangs” on the magnetic field induction lines, without touching the walls of the chamber.
The beginning of the modern era in studying the possibilities of thermonuclear fusion should be considered 1969, when a temperature of 3 M°C was reached in a plasma with a volume of about 1 m 3 at the Russian Tokamak T3 installation. After this, scientists around the world recognized the tokamak design as the most promising for magnetic plasma confinement. Within a few years, a bold decision was made to create a JET (Joint European Torus) installation with a significantly larger plasma volume (100 m 3). The operating cycle of the unit is approximately 1 minute, since its toroidal coils are made of copper and heat up quickly. This installation began operating in 1983 and remains the world's largest tokamak, providing plasma heating to a temperature of 150 M°C.
Rice. 4. JET reactor design
In 2006, representatives of Russia, South Korea, China, Japan, India, the European Union and the United States signed an agreement in Paris to begin work on the construction of the first International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Magnetic coils The ITER reactors will be based on superconducting materials (which, in principle, allow continuous operation as long as current is maintained in the plasma), so designers hope to provide a guaranteed duty cycle of at least 10 minutes.
Rice. 5. ITER reactor design.
The reactor will be built near the city of Cadarache, located 60 kilometers from Marseille in the south of France. Work to prepare the construction site will begin next spring. Construction of the reactor itself is scheduled to begin in 2009.
Construction will last ten years, work on the reactor is expected to be carried out for twenty years. The total cost of the project is approximately $10 billion. Forty percent of the costs will be borne by the European Union, sixty percent will be shared in equal shares by the other project participants.
see also
- International Experimental Fusion Reactor
- New installation for launching thermonuclear fusion: 01/25/2010
Laser fusion (LSF)
Another way to achieve this goal is laser thermonuclear fusion. The essence of this method is as follows. A frozen mixture of deuterium and tritium, prepared in the form of balls with a diameter of less than 1 mm, is uniformly irradiated from all sides with powerful laser radiation. This leads to heating and evaporation of the substance from the surface of the balls. In this case, the pressure inside the balls increases to values of the order of 10 15 Pa. Under the influence of such pressure, an increase in density and strong heating of the substance in the central part of the balls occur and a thermonuclear reaction begins.
In contrast to magnetic plasma confinement, in laser confinement the confinement time (i.e., the lifetime of the plasma with high density and temperature, which determines the duration of thermonuclear reactions) is 10 –10 - 10 –11 s, therefore LTS can only be carried out in a pulsed mode. The proposal to use lasers for thermonuclear fusion was first made at the Physical Institute. P. N. Lebedev of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1961 by N. G. Basov and O. N. Krokhin.
At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, construction of the world's most powerful laser complex was completed (May 2009). It was called the US National Ignition Facility (NIF). Construction lasted 12 years. $3.5 billion was spent on the laser complex.
Rice. 7. Schematic diagram of the ULS
Based on NIF – 192 powerful laser, which will be simultaneously directed at a millimeter spherical target (about 150 micrograms of thermonuclear fuel - a mixture of deuterium and tritium; in the future, radioactive tritium can be replaced with a light isotope of helium-3). As a result, the temperature of the target will reach 100 million degrees, while the pressure inside the ball will be 100 billion times higher than the pressure of the earth’s atmosphere.
see also
- Controlled thermonuclear fusion: TOKAMAKI versus laser fusion 05/16/2009
Advantages of synthesis
Proponents of using fusion reactors to produce electricity cite the following arguments in their favor:
- practically inexhaustible reserves of fuel (hydrogen). For example, the amount of coal required to operate a thermal power plant with a capacity of 1 GW is 10,000 tons per day (ten railway cars), and a thermonuclear plant of the same power will consume only about 1 kilogram of the mixture per day D + T . A medium-sized lake can provide any country with energy for hundreds of years. This makes it impossible for one or a group of countries to monopolize fuel;
- absence of combustion products;
- there is no need to use materials that can be used to produce nuclear weapons, thus eliminating cases of sabotage and terrorism;
- compared to nuclear reactors, a small amount of radioactive waste with a short half-life is produced;
- the synthesis reaction does not produce atmospheric emissions carbon dioxide, which is the main contributor to global warming.
Why did the creation of thermonuclear installations take so long?
1. For a long time it was believed that the problem of the practical use of thermonuclear fusion energy did not require urgent decisions and actions, since back in the 80s of the last century, fossil fuel sources seemed inexhaustible, and environmental problems and climate change did not concern the public. Based on estimates from the US Geological Survey (2009), the growth of global oil production will continue for no more than the next 20 years (other experts predict that peak production will be reached in 5-10 years), after which the volume of oil produced will begin to decrease at a rate of about 3% in year. Prospects for natural gas production don't look much better. Usually they say that coal we have enough for another 200 years, but this forecast is based on maintaining existing levels of production and consumption. Meanwhile, coal consumption is now increasing by 4.5% per year, which immediately reduces the mentioned period of 200 years to just 50 years! From what has been said, it is clear that we must now prepare for the end.2. A thermonuclear installation cannot be created and demonstrated in small sizes. The scientific and technical capabilities and advantages of thermonuclear installations can be tested and demonstrated only at fairly large stations, such as the mentioned ITER reactor. Society was simply not ready to finance such large projects until there was sufficient confidence in success. Mass is a special form of energy, as evidenced by Einstein’s famous formula = E mc2. It follows from this that it is possible to convert mass into energy and energy into mass. And such reactions actually take place at the intraatomic level of matter. In particular, part of the mass of the atomic nucleus can be converted into energy, and this happens in two ways. Firstly, a large nucleus can decay into several small ones - this process is called a reaction disintegration . Secondly, several smaller nuclei can combine into one larger one - this is the so-called reaction synthesis Mass is a special form of energy, as evidenced by Einstein’s famous formula = E
. Nuclear fusion reactions are very widespread in the Universe - suffice it to mention that it is from them that stars draw their energy. Nuclear decay today serves as one of the main sources of energy for humanity - it is used in nuclear power plants. In both decomposition reactions and synthesis reactions, the total mass of the reaction products is less than the total mass of the reactants. This difference in mass is converted into energy according to the formula
Decay In nature, uranium occurs in the form of several isotopes, one of which, uranium-235 (235 U), spontaneously decays with the release of energy. In particular, when a sufficiently fast neutron hits the nucleus of a 235 U atom, the latter disintegrates into two large pieces and a number of small particles, usually including two or three neutrons. However, adding up the masses of large fragments and elementary particles, we will miss a certain mass compared to the mass of the original nucleus before its decay under the influence of a neutron impact. It is this missing mass that is released in the form of energy distributed among the resulting decay products - first of all, kinetic energy
(energy of movement). Rapidly moving particles fly away from the site of disintegration and collide with other particles of matter, heating them up.
Uranium mined from natural uranium ore, the uranium-235 isotope, contains only 0.7% of the total mass of uranium - the remaining 99.3% comes from the relatively stable (weakly radioactive) isotope 238 U, which simply absorbs free neutrons without decaying under their influence. Therefore, to use uranium as fuel in nuclear reactors it is necessary first enrich - that is, bring the content of the radioactive isotope 235 U to a level of at least 5%.
After this, uranium-235 in the enriched natural uranium in a nuclear reactor disintegrates under the influence of neutron bombardment. As a result, an average of 2.5 new neutrons are released from one 235 U nucleus, each of which causes the decay of another 2.5 nuclei, and the so-called chain reaction. The condition for the continuation of the undamped decay reaction of uranium-235 is that the number of neutrons released by decaying nuclei exceeds the number of neutrons leaving the uranium conglomerate; in this case, the reaction continues with the release of energy.
In an atomic bomb, the reaction is deliberately uncontrolled, resulting in decay in a fraction of a second. huge number 235 U nuclei and explosive energy of colossal destructiveness is released. In nuclear reactors used in the energy sector, the decay reaction must be strictly controlled in order to dose the energy released. Cadmium is a good neutron absorber; it is usually used to control the decay rate in nuclear power plant reactors. Cadmium rods are immersed in the reactor core to the level necessary to reduce the free energy release rate to technologically reasonable limits, and if the energy release drops below the required level, the rods are partially removed from the reaction core, after which the decay reaction is intensified to the required level. The released thermal energy is then converted into electrical energy in the usual manner (via turbogenerators).
Synthesis
Thermonuclear fusion is a reaction exactly opposite to the decay reaction in its essence: smaller nuclei combine into larger ones. The most common reaction in the Universe in general is the reaction of thermonuclear fusion of helium nuclei from hydrogen nuclei: it continuously occurs in the depths of almost all visible stars. In its pure form, it looks like this: four hydrogen nuclei (protons) form a helium atom (2 protons + 2 neutrons) with the release of a number of other particles. As in the case of the decay reaction of an atomic nucleus, the total mass of the resulting particles turns out to be less the mass of the initial product (hydrogen) - it is released in the form of kinetic energy of reaction product particles, due to which the stars heat up.
In the depths of stars, the thermonuclear fusion reaction does not occur simultaneously (when 4 protons collide), but in three stages. First, two protons form a deuterium nucleus (one proton and one neutron). Then, after another proton hits the deuterium nucleus, helium-3 (two protons and one neutron) plus other particles is formed. Finally, two helium-3 nuclei collide to form helium-4, two protons, and other particles. However, taken together, this three-stage reaction gives the net effect of the formation of a helium-4 nucleus from four protons with the release of energy carried away by fast particles, primarily photons ( cm. Evolution of stars).
The natural reaction of nuclear fusion occurs in stars; artificial - in a hydrogen bomb. Alas, man has still not been able to find the means to direct thermonuclear fusion in a controlled direction and learn to obtain energy from it for peaceful purposes. However, scientists do not lose hope of achieving positive results in the field of obtaining “peaceful and cheap” thermonuclear energy in the foreseeable future - for this, the main thing is to learn how to contain high-temperature plasma either by laser beams, or through super-powerful toroidal electromagnetic fields ( cm.
Thermonuclear fusion (thermonuclear fusion, controlled thermonuclear fusion, controlled fusion) - an old, but still valid method of cutting budget dough on a global scale, capable of producing as a by-product a source of hundreds of energy, starships and other kosher things.
The working prototype of the miracle machine is clearly presented in the form of the Sun rotating above the surface of the earth's disk. True, we can’t make exactly the same thing: for hydrogen to be able to produce a thermonuclear reaction on its own, without a body kit, you need a lot of it. No, A LOT. 80 Jupiter masses or more. But we are working on it.
Thermonuclear plasma.
The Essence™
Briefly about the main thing. A long time ago, Einstein extended E=mc², now known even to children, to all objects (including those moving at near-light speed, without any ethers and electrodynamics). At the same time, scientists realized that it is not without reason that two nuclei of a deuterium atom ²H (this is a heavy isotope of hydrogen) weigh slightly more than one helium-4 4 He nucleus. Moreover, during the synthesis of this same helium from hydrogen, the binding energy Δm×c², where Δm is the mass defect, happily flies away in the form of the kinetic energy of the synthesis products.
In principle, there are actually a little more than a shitload of synthesis options. You can use deuterium, lithium, and tritium - whatever! Just this:
- for the synthesis of heavier elements you need O higher temperature;
- During the synthesis of elements heavier than iron, less energy is released than during the synthesis of iron.
Fusion research is largely an experimental science. This is not Perelman, you can’t do anything meaningful with three kopecks of money. You need complex, expensive equipment and a bunch of black nerds who will service this equipment. All this requires a lot of money. And, oddly enough, they still stand out. And when any government allocates money for something, it inevitably goes not only to those aspects that are really important, but also to those that are better advertised. Even those scientific organizations that really want to do something useful are often forced to do something that is more “fashionable” than really important, since otherwise they will not receive money.
To be fair, it is worth noting that the costs of fusion seem enormous only until you compare them with all sorts of nanotechnologies and other joys of sawmills.
Why is this even necessary?
As you know, oil, coal and gas will not last very long. And environmentalists are also unhappy. There seems to be enough uranium and thorium, but people are afraid of something. And it’s unclear where to put so much radioactive waste.
In the future, thermonuclear fusion makes it possible to obtain energy literally from water, and the waste from its operation will be only ordinary harmless hydrogen and helium. There will be radioactive tritium inside the reactor, but it will be hundreds of grams, as opposed to hundreds of tons of half-spent fuel in conventional nuclear reactors, so nothing like Chernobyl can happen even if the fusion reactor explodes. But its explosion is only possible in the event of a terrorist attack, since the reaction there, in principle, cannot develop spontaneously.
Also, in theory, rocket engines based on the subject are capable of delivering a greater impulse than plasma, electric and all sorts of nuclear ones. This makes it possible to obtain a tractor suitable for use on planetary and even interstellar scales at a speed of 10% of light speed. In the second case, however, the flights will be unmanned. But you can get to the nearest star within 50 years.
Why doesn't it work?
For a fusion reaction to occur, two nuclei must come very close together. But the nuclei have a positive charge, and therefore repel each other. To bring them closer to each other, they need to be accelerated to enormous speeds. One of the main options for such overclocking is heating to a high temperature. Calculations show that a temperature of about 10^9 Kelvin is needed. But due to the so-called “Maxwellian tail”, synthesis is ignited already at 10^7. Popularly this can be explained as follows: at a given temperature, gas particles move with various velocities determined (in the prerelativistic region) by the Maxwell distribution. Therefore, already at a temperature of 10^7K there will be particles whose velocities are sufficient to overcome Coulomb repulsion and merge two nuclei into one. But at such temperatures, the substance becomes plasma and emits energy very intensely, that is, it cools quickly.
Farnsworth Fusor
If you, anon, really want to carry out thermonuclear fusion and don’t need energy, then building a mega-reactor is not at all necessary. Enough subject - small device, allowing you to freely burn down a thermonuclear reaction on your desk. The only negative is that the Farnsworth fusor does not generate energy, but, on the contrary, it eats quite a bit. In the 2000s, in the USA they tried to make an improved version of the fusor, called “Polywell”, in the hope that it would work at least something. It didn’t work out, it didn’t work out - he just began to consume a little less.
Cold fusion and stuff
An epic gathering of charlatans. Moreover, while some of them only offer their own promising “solutions,” others even offer ready-made solutions implemented “in hardware.”
Among all this numerous nonsense, normal developments occasionally occur. In particular, muon catalysis, the use of colliding beams of fast deuterium and tritium ions, etc. But all of them are still extremely far from obtaining useful energy and in practice can be (and are) used only as sources of fast neutrons.
Hybrid fusion reactor
It is known that thermonuclear bombs often use a shell of depleted uranium to significantly increase the power of the explosion: neutrons D-T reactions have such high energy that they cause fission of even “non-fissile” heavy isotopes. Of course, the idea quickly arose to apply the same principle to peaceful reactors.
Why is this good?
- You can start creating a hybrid power plant even tomorrow, since the use of depleted uranium will increase energy release by 5-10 times;
- Thousands of tons of depleted uranium will finally find a useful use (for now they are stupidly fired from tank guns in the form of ordinary blanks into tank armor);
- In intense fluxes of fast neutrons, many long-lived isotopes are converted into short-lived ones, which makes it possible to recycle waste from conventional nuclear reactors;
- In such reactors it is possible to produce a lot of clean and cheap uranium-238 and plutonium-239 for atomic bombs (it is worth noting that the same thing happens in fast neutron nuclear reactors. And that same 239 Pu will most likely be used as fuel in reactors , since BN reactors are able to make it from useless uranium-238 in huge quantities (more precisely, with a yield coefficient of 1.4-1.5)).
- Such a reactor contains hundreds of tons of radioactive substances, which means you can expect a sea of lulz. Although here, unlike fission reactors, they can only be obtained under powerful external influence, uncontrolled development of the reaction is impossible here;
- In such a reactor, radioactive waste is not only processed, but also produced, which needs to be disposed of somewhere (however, it is mostly short-lived, unlike fission reactors).
ITER
Dawn over the great construction site of thermonuclearism.
The largest on this moment unit. Type - tokamak. Built in the south of France. The name originally meant “International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor” (“International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor”), but now they prefer not to decipher it at all - they say that the word “thermonuclear” has bad associations for some. However, we have already received a safety certificate, even more than one. At the beginning of 2014, one fan began collecting votes for the production of a LEGO model. A relatively small piece requires about five hundred bricks.
pros
- Should provide a tenfold return in energy for a short period of time. This is approximately what a real power plant needs - only, of course, constantly.
- Has its own website. It is updated regularly, so that everyone can regularly rejoice in the successes of humanity.
- The site has a link to a webcam standing next to the construction site, so that everyone can be convinced (except for those cases when it is transferred to the view from the other side) that they are actually working there and not sawing. Or maybe they started cutting - for some reason they have been limiting themselves to relatively regular photos for quite a long time.
Lulz
Theoretical physicists are still shitting bricks, and Murphy is assembling a template from the H-mode installations with magnetic confinement. Thus, when a certain power of additional plasma heating is reached in tokamaks (and later this was achieved in stellarators), the transfer, and therefore the loss of energy in the plasma, sharply slows down. Just imagine: you spent a long time developing everything, making calculations, building a tokamak, and suddenly it works twice as well as expected!
Theorists have come up with a bunch of hypotheses on how to explain the appearance of the H-mode and the complete discrepancy between experimental formulas and classical theoretical ones, even in terms of the sign of the derivative, but there is still no single clear model. The experimenters simply figured out how it works and began to resemble shamans no less than the administrators: they just can’t explain how it works, but it still works.
Those who like to look for deeper meaning and religious people may believe that this is a sign from G-d that we are moving in the right direction or modern manna from heaven from him.
This also allows optimists to count on the discovery of some UH mode in the future and the emergence of thermonuclear power plants much faster than current forecasts. Well, or for pessimists, expect the appearance of some kind of reverse mode, which will make the situation even worse than it was before the discovery of the H-mode. And food for theorists, of course - the relativistic case closely clashed with the quantum one, and what else is needed for string theory? They have black holes, now they also have the Higgs boson, and then there is the H-mode.
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- Translation
This field is now called low-energy nuclear reactions, and it may be where real results are achieved - or it may turn out to be stubborn junk science
Dr. Martin Fleischman (right), an electrochemist, and Stanley Pons, chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Utah, answer questions from the Science and Technology Committee about their controversial work in cold fusion, April 26, 1989.
Howard J. Wilk is a chemist, a specialist in synthetic organics, who has not worked in his specialty for a long time and lives in Philadelphia. Like many other researchers working in the pharmaceutical field, he was a victim of the drug industry's R&D declines in last years, and is now engaged in part-time work not related to science. With time on his hands, Wilk tracks the progress of New Jersey company Brilliant Light Power (BLP).
This is one of those companies that is developing processes that can be generally referred to as new energy extraction technologies. The movement is largely a resurrection of cold fusion, a short-lived 1980s phenomenon involving producing nuclear fusion in a simple benchtop electrolytic device that scientists quickly dismissed.
In 1991, BLP founder, Randall L. Mills, announced at a press conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the development of a theory in which an electron in hydrogen could transition from a normal, ground energy state to a previously unknown, more stable, lower energy state. , with release huge amount energy. Mills named this strange new type of compressed hydrogen, " ", and has since been working to develop a commercial device that harvests this energy.
Wilk studied Mills' theory, read papers and patents, and did his own calculations for hydrinos. Wilk even attended a demonstration at BLP grounds in Cranbury, New Jersey, where he discussed hydrino with Mills. After this, Wilk still can't decide whether Mills is a unrealistic genius, a raving scientist, or something in between.
The story begins in 1989, when electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons made the astonishing announcement at a University of Utah press conference that they had tamed the energy of nuclear fusion in an electrolytic cell.
When researchers submitted electricity per cell, in their opinion, deuterium atoms from heavy water that penetrated the palladium cathode entered into a fusion reaction and generated helium atoms. The excess energy of the process was converted into heat. Fleischmann and Pons argued that this process could not be the result of any known chemical reaction, and added the term " cold fusion».
After many months of investigating their mysterious sightings, however, science community agreed that the effect was inconsistent or non-existent and that there were errors in the experiment. The research was scrapped, and cold fusion became synonymous with junk science.
Cold fusion and hydrino production are the holy grail for producing endless, cheap, and clean energy. Cold fusion has disappointed scientists. They wanted to believe in him, but their collective mind decided that it was a mistake. Part of the problem was the lack of a generally accepted theory to explain the proposed phenomenon - as physicists say, you cannot trust an experiment until it is confirmed by a theory.
Mills has his own theory, but many scientists don't believe it and consider hydrinos unlikely. The community rejected cold fusion and ignored Mills and his work. Mills did the same, trying not to fall into the shadow of cold fusion.
Meanwhile, the field of cold fusion changed its name to low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) and continues to exist. Some scientists continue to try to explain the Fleischmann-Pons effect. Others have rejected nuclear fusion but are exploring other possible processes that could explain the excess heat. Like Mills, they were attracted by the potential for commercial applications. They are mainly interested in energy production for industrial needs, households and transport.
The small number of companies created to try to bring new energy technologies to market have business models similar to those of any technology startup: define new technology, try to patent the idea, attract investor interest, get funding, build prototypes, conduct demonstrations, announce dates for the working devices to go on sale. But in the new energy world, missing deadlines is the norm. No one has yet taken the final step of demonstrating a working device.
New theory
Mills grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, received a degree in chemistry from Franklin and Marshall College, a medical degree from Harvard University, and studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a student, he began developing a theory he called the "Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics", which he said was based on classical physics and proposed a new model of atoms and molecules that departed from the foundations of quantum physics.It is generally accepted that a single electron of hydrogen darts around its nucleus, located in the most suitable orbit of the ground state. It is simply impossible to move a hydrogen electron closer to the nucleus. But Mills says it's possible.
Now a researcher at Airbus Defense & Space, he says he has not monitored Mills' activities since 2007 because the experiments did not show clear signs of excess energy. "I doubt that any of the later experiments were scientifically selected," Rathke said.
“I think it is generally accepted that Dr. Mills's theory as the basis for his claims is controversial and not predictive,” Rathke continues. – One might ask, “Could we have so fortunately stumbled upon an energy source that simply works by following the wrong theoretical approach?" ».
In the 1990s, several researchers, including a team from the Lewis Research Center, independently reported replicating Mills' approach and generating excess heat. The NASA team wrote in the report that “the results are far from convincing” and did not say anything about hydrino.
Researchers have proposed possible electrochemical processes to explain the heat, including irregularities in the electrochemical cell, unknown exothermic chemical reactions, and recombination of separated hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water. The same arguments were made by critics of the Fleischmann-Pons experiments. But the NASA team clarified that researchers shouldn't discount the phenomenon, just in case Mills was onto something.
Mills speaks very quickly and can go on and on about technical details. In addition to predicting hydrinos, Mills claims that his theory can perfectly predict the location of any electron in a molecule using special molecular modeling software, and even in complex molecules such as DNA. Using standard quantum theory Scientists have a hard time predicting the exact behavior of anything more complex than a hydrogen atom. Mills also claims that his theory explains the phenomenon of the expansion of the Universe with acceleration, which cosmologists have not yet fully understood.
In addition, Mills says that hydrinos are created by the burning of hydrogen in stars such as our Sun, and that they can be detected in the spectrum of starlight. Hydrogen is considered the most abundant element in the universe, but Mills argues that hydrino is dark matter, which cannot be found in the universe. Astrophysicists are surprised by such suggestions: "I've never heard of hydrinos," says Edward W. (Rocky) Kolb of the University of Chicago, an expert on the dark universe.
Mills reported successful isolation and characterization of hydrinos using standard spectroscopic techniques such as infrared, Raman, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In addition, he said, hydrinos can undergo reactions that lead to the emergence of new types of materials with “amazing properties.” This includes conductors, which Mills says will revolutionize the world of electronic devices and batteries.
And although his statements contradict public opinion, Mills' ideas do not seem so exotic compared to other unusual components of the Universe. For example, muonium is a known short-lived exotic entity consisting of an antimuon (a positively charged particle similar to an electron) and an electron. Chemically, muonium behaves like an isotope of hydrogen, but is nine times lighter.
SunCell, hydrin fuel cell
Regardless of where hydrinos fall on the credibility scale, Mills said a decade ago that BLP had moved beyond scientific confirmation and was only interested in the commercial side of things. Over the years, BLP has raised more than $110 million in investments.BLP's approach to creating hydrinos has manifested itself in a variety of ways. In early prototypes, Mills and his team used tungsten or nickel electrodes with an electrolytic solution of lithium or potassium. The supplied current split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and when the right conditions lithium or potassium played the role of a catalyst to absorb energy and collapse the electron orbit of hydrogen. The energy created by the transition from the ground atomic state to a lower energy state was released in the form of bright, high-temperature plasma. The associated heat was then used to create steam and power an electric generator.
BLP is currently testing a device called SunCell, which feeds hydrogen (from water) and an oxide catalyst into a spherical carbon reactor with two streams of molten silver. An electrical current applied to the silver triggers a plasma reaction to form hydrinos. The reactor's energy is captured by carbon, which acts as a "black body radiator." When it heats up to thousands of degrees, it emits energy in the form of visible light, which is captured by photovoltaic cells that convert the light into electricity.
When it comes to commercial developments, Mills sometimes comes across as paranoid and at other times like a practical businessman. He registered trademark"Hydrino". And since its patents claim the invention of hydrino, BLP claims intellectual property for hydrino research. Because of this, the BLP prohibits other experimenters from conducting even basic research on hydrinos that could confirm or disprove their existence without first signing an intellectual property agreement. "We invite researchers, we want others to do this," Mills says. “But we need to protect our technology.”
Instead, Mills appointed authorized validators who claim to be able to confirm the functionality of BLP inventions. One of them is Bucknell University electrical engineer Professor Peter M. Jansson, who is paid to evaluate BLP technology through his consulting company, Integrated Systems. Jenson maintains that compensation for his time “does not in any way affect my conclusions as an independent investigator of scientific discoveries.” He adds that he “refuted most discoveries" that he studied.
“BLP scientists are working on real science, and so far I have not found any errors in their methods and approaches,” says Jenson. – Over the years, I have seen many devices in BLP that are clearly capable of producing excess energy in meaningful quantities. I think it will take some time for the scientific community to accept and digest the possibility of the existence of low-energy states of hydrogen. In my opinion, Dr. Mills' work is undeniable." Jenson adds that BLP faces challenges in commercializing the technology, but the obstacles are business rather than scientific.
In the meantime, BLP has held several demonstrations of its new prototypes for investors since 2014, and published videos on its website. But these events do not provide clear evidence that SunCell actually works.
In July, following one of its demonstrations, the company announced that the estimated cost of energy from SunCell is so low—1% to 10% of any other known form of energy—that the company "is going to provide self-contained, custom power supplies for virtually all desktop and mobile applications, not tied to the grid or fuel energy sources.” In other words, the company plans to build and lease SunCells or other devices to consumers, charging a daily fee, allowing them to go off the grid and stop buying gasoline or solar power while spending a fraction of the money.
“This is the end of the era of fire, the internal combustion engine and centralized systems energy supply,” says Mills. “Our technology will make all other forms of energy technology obsolete. Climate change problems will be solved." He adds that it appears BLP could begin production, to begin with MW plants, by the end of 2017.
What's in a name?
Despite the uncertainty surrounding Mills and the BLP, their story is only part of the larger saga of new energy. As the dust settled from Fleischmann-Pons's initial announcement, two researchers began studying what was right and what was wrong. They were joined by dozens of co-authors and independent researchers.Many of these scientists and engineers, often self-funded, were interested less in commercial opportunities than in science: electrochemistry, metallurgy, calorimetry, mass spectrometry, and nuclear diagnostics. They continued to run experiments that produced excess heat, defined as the amount of energy produced by a system relative to the energy required to operate it. In some cases, nuclear anomalies were reported, such as the appearance of neutrinos, alpha particles (helium nuclei), isotopes of atoms and transmutations of some elements to others.
But ultimately, most researchers are looking for an explanation for what's happening, and would be happy if even a modest amount of heat were useful.
"LENRs are in an experimental phase and are not yet understood theoretically," says David J. Nagel, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Washington. George Washington, and former research manager at the Naval Research Laboratory. “Some results are simply inexplicable. Call it cold fusion, low-energy nuclear reactions, or whatever - there are plenty of names - we still don't know anything about it. But there is no doubt that nuclear reactions can be started using chemical energy.”
Nagel prefers to call the LENR phenomenon “lattice nuclear reactions,” since the phenomenon occurs in the crystal lattices of the electrode. An initial offshoot of this field focuses on introducing deuterium into a palladium electrode using a feed high energy, explains Nagel. Researchers have reported that such electrochemical systems can produce up to 25 times more energy than they consume.
The other main offshoot of the field uses combinations of nickel and hydrogen, which produces up to 400 times more energy than it consumes. Nagel likes to compare these LENR technologies to the experimental international fusion reactor, based on well-known physics - the fusion of deuterium and tritium - which is being built in the south of France. The 20-year project costs $20 billion and aims to produce 10 times the energy consumed.
Nagel says the field of LENR is growing everywhere, and the main obstacles are a lack of funding and inconsistent results. For example, some researchers report that a certain threshold must be reached to trigger the reaction. She may demand minimum quantity deuterium or hydrogen to trigger, or the electrodes need to be prepared with crystallographic orientation and surface morphology. The last requirement is common for heterogeneous catalysts used in gasoline purification and petrochemical production.
Nagel acknowledges that the commercial side of LENR also has problems. The prototypes being developed are, he says, “pretty crude,” and there has yet to be a company that has demonstrated a working prototype or made money from it.
E-Cat from Russia
One of the most striking attempts to put LENR on a commercial basis was made by an engineer from Leonardo Corp, located in Miami. In 2011, Rossi and his colleagues announced at a press conference in Italy the construction of a benchtop "Energy Catalyst" reactor, or E-Cat, that produces excess energy in a process using nickel as a catalyst. To substantiate the invention, Rossi demonstrated the E-Cat to potential investors and the media, and commissioned independent tests.
Rossi claims that his E-Cat undergoes a self-sustaining process in which an incoming electrical current triggers the synthesis of hydrogen and lithium in the presence of a powder mixture of nickel, lithium and lithium aluminum hydride, resulting in an isotope of beryllium. Short-lived beryllium decays into two alpha particles, and the excess energy is released as heat. Some of the nickel turns into copper. Rossi talks about the absence of both waste and radiation outside the device.
Rossi's announcement gave scientists the same unpleasant feeling as cold fusion. Rossi is mistrusted by many people due to his controversial past. In Italy he was accused of fraud due to his previous business dealings. Rossi says the allegations are in the past and doesn't want to discuss them. He also once had a contract to create thermal systems for the US military, but the devices he supplied did not work to specifications.
In 2012, Rossi announced the creation of a 1 MW system suitable for heating large buildings. He also assumed that by 2013 he would already have a factory producing a million 10 kW, laptop-sized units annually, designed for home use. But neither the factory nor these devices ever happened.
In 2014, Rossi licensed the technology to Industrial Heat, Cherokee's public investment firm that buys real estate and clears old industrial sites for new development. In 2015 CEO Cherokee, Tom Darden, a lawyer and environmental scientist by training, called Industrial Heat "a source of funding for the inventors of LENR."
Darden says Cherokee launched Industrial Heat because the investment firm believes the LENR technology is worthy of research. “We were willing to be wrong, we were willing to invest time and resources to see if this area could be useful in our mission to prevent pollution [ environment],” he says.
Meanwhile, Industrial Heat and Leonardo had a fight and are now suing each other over violations of the agreement. Rossi would receive $100 million if a one-year test of his 1 MW system was successful. Rossi says the test is complete, but Industrial Heat doesn't think so and fears the device isn't working.
Nagel says E-Cat has brought enthusiasm and hope to the NLNR field. He argued in 2012 that he believed Rossi was not a fraud, "but I don't like some of his approaches to testing." Nagel believed that Rossi should have acted more carefully and transparently. But at that time, Nagel himself believed that devices based on the LENR principle would appear on sale by 2013.
Rossi continues his research and has announced the development of other prototypes. But he doesn't say much about his work. He says 1 MW units are already in production and he has received the “necessary certifications” to sell them. Home devices, he said, are still awaiting certification.
Nagel says that after the elation surrounding Rossi's announcements subsided, the status quo has returned to NLNR. The availability of commercial LENR generators has been delayed by several years. And even if the device survives reproducibility issues and is useful, its developers face a tough battle with regulators and user acceptance.
But he remains optimistic. “LENR may become commercially available before it is fully understood, just like X-rays were,” he says. He has already equipped a laboratory at the University. George Washington for new experiments with nickel and hydrogen.
Scientific heritage
Many researchers who continue to work on LENR are already accomplished retired scientists. This is not easy for them, since for years their work has been returned unreviewed from mainstream journals, and their proposals for presentations at scientific conferences were not accepted. They are increasingly worried about the status of this area of research as their time runs out. They either want to record their heritage in scientific history NEYAR, or at least take comfort in the fact that their instincts did not let them down.“It was unfortunate when cold fusion was first published in 1989 as a new source of fusion energy, rather than just some new scientific curiosity,” says electrochemist Melvin Miles. “Perhaps the research could proceed as usual, with more careful and precise study.”
A former researcher at the China Lake Air and Maritime Research Center, Miles sometimes worked with Fleischman, who died in 2012. Miles believes Fleischman and Pons were right. But to this day he does not know how to make a commercial energy source for a system of palladium and deuterium, despite many experiments in which excess heat was obtained that correlated with the production of helium.
“Why would anyone continue to research or be interested in a topic that was declared a mistake 27 years ago? – asks Miles. “I am convinced that cold fusion will one day be recognized as another important discovery that has been long accepted, and that a theoretical platform will emerge to explain the experimental results.”
Nuclear physicist Ludwik Kowalski, professor emeritus at Montclair State University, agrees that cold fusion was the victim of a bad start. "I'm old enough to remember the effect the first announcement had on the scientific community and the public," Kowalski says. At times he collaborated with NLNR researchers, “but my three attempts to confirm the sensational claims were unsuccessful.”
Kowalski believes that the initial disgrace earned by the research resulted in bigger problem unsuitable for the scientific method. Whether the LENR researchers are fair or not, Kowalski still believes it is worth getting to the bottom of a clear yes or no verdict. But it won't be found as long as cold fusion researchers are considered "eccentric pseudoscientists," Kowalski says. “Progress is impossible and no one benefits when the results of honest research are not published and independently verified by other laboratories.”
Time will show
Even if Kowalski gets a definite answer to his question and the statements of the LENR researchers are confirmed, the road to commercialization of the technology will be full of obstacles. Many startups, even with solid technology, fail for reasons unrelated to science: capitalization, liquidity flow, cost, production, insurance, uncompetitive prices, etc.Take Sun Catalytix for example. The company emerged from MIT with the backing of solid science, but fell victim to commercial attacks before it hit the market. It was created to commercialize artificial photosynthesis, developed by chemist Daniel G. Nocera, now at Harvard, to efficiently convert water into hydrogen fuel using sunlight and an inexpensive catalyst.
Nocera dreamed that the hydrogen produced in this way could power simple fuel cells and give energy to homes and villages in underdeveloped regions of the world without access to energy grids, giving them the opportunity to enjoy modern amenities, improving the standard of living. But it took a lot to develop more money and time than it seemed at first. After four years, Sun Catalytix gave up trying to commercialize the technology, started making flow batteries, and then in 2014 it was bought by Lockheed Martin.
It is unknown whether the same obstacles hinder the development of companies involved in LENR. For example, Wilk, an organic chemist who has been following Mills' progress, is concerned about whether attempts to commercialize BLP are based on something real. He just needs to know if hydrino exists.
In 2014, Wilk asked Mills if he had isolated hydrino, and although Mills had already written in papers and patents that he had succeeded, he replied that such a thing had not yet been done and that it would be “a very big task.” But Wilk thinks differently. If the process creates liters of hydrine gas, it should be obvious. “Show us the hydrino!” Wilk demands.
Wilk says that Mills' world, and with it the world of other people involved in LENR, reminds him of one of Zeno's paradoxes, which speaks of the illusory nature of movement. “Every year they get halfway to commercialization, but will they ever get there?” Wilk came up with four explanations for the BLP: Mills' calculations are correct; This is a fraud; This is bad science; this is pathological science, as he called it Nobel laureate in physics Irving Langmuir.
Langmuir invented the term more than 50 years ago to describe the psychological process in which a scientist subconsciously withdraws from the scientific method and becomes so immersed in his or her pursuit that he develops an inability to look at things objectively and see what is real and what is not. Pathological science is “the science of things not being what they seem,” said Langmuir. In some cases, it develops in areas such as cold fusion/LENR, and does not give up, despite the fact that it is recognized as false by the majority of scientists.
"I hope they're right," Wilk says of Mills and the BLP. "Indeed. I don’t want to refute them, I’m just looking for the truth.” But if "pigs could fly," as Wilkes says, he would accept their data, theory, and other predictions that follow from it. But he was never a believer. “I think if hydrinos existed, they would have been discovered in other laboratories or in nature many years ago.”
All discussions of cold fusion and LENR end exactly like this: they always come to the conclusion that no one has brought a working device to the market, and none of the prototypes can be commercialized in the near future. So time will be the final judge.
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