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Article Claims Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion

It would be interesting to use that method, as the absurd red tape on normal nuclear reactors could probably be completely bypassed if it's 'just' a radioisotope producer, which likely has far saner standards for waste disposal.
 
Yeah!

And.

And they could also easily get the device made without any contest by those in power who depend on Oil for their profits.

Damn. This could be the plot to a really cool suspense thriller film!

:)
 
Cloak&Dagger said:
It would be interesting to use that method, as the absurd red tape on normal nuclear reactors could probably be completely bypassed if it's 'just' a radioisotope producer, which likely has far saner standards for waste disposal.
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That part basically, uh, doesn't matter.

Something like 80% of medical isotopes used are Technetium-99; they're created by bombarding Uranium-235 with neutrons and forcing the Uranium to decay into Molybdenium-99, which is the intermediate stage that is actually distributed and transmuted into Technetium for medical use.

Here's an explainer of the supply chain produced by the USA NCBI, aimed at doctors / med techs.

The part they're talking about replacing with their fancy Tokamak here, is basically the gun that shoots neutrons at Uranium. You still need to use Uranium, and it's still gotta be the scary-and-fissile 235 stuff, instead of the boring-and-NOT-fissile 238 stuff. And it's still gonna produce all the weird Uranium-based hot metals, and be bombarding and irradiating equipment and making that stufff hot, and all that.

Like, is there really any point in needing to build and maintain this complicated piece of equipment doing crazy things with plasma, which consumes deuterium (which by the way is kindof a pain in the ass to get ahold of itself), all just to be... a neutron source? A neutron source when you're already mucking around with 235, which by the way you can't pile up together too much because it... produces too many neutrons. Like yeah if you need them to be colossally fast then using a Tokamak to blast these things off at most of the way to c might make sense, but these ain't that.

The economics of using this particular thing for medical applications sounds like a money-pit to me.
 
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daniel_gudman said:
That part basically, uh, doesn't matter.

Something like 80% of medical isotopes used are Technetium-99; they're created by bombarding Uranium-235 with neutrons and forcing the Uranium to decay into Molybdenium-99, which is the intermediate stage that is actually distributed and transmuted into Technetium for medical use.

Here's an explainer of the supply chain produced by the USA NCBI, aimed at doctors / med techs.

The part they're talking about replacing with their fancy Tokamak here, is basically the gun that shoots neutrons at Uranium. You still need to use Uranium, and it's still gotta be the scary-and-fissile 235 stuff, instead of the boring-and-NOT-fissile 238 stuff. And it's still gonna produce all the weird Uranium-based hot metals, and be bombarding and irradiating equipment and making that stufff hot, and all that.

Like, is there really any point in needing to build and maintain this complicated piece of equipment doing crazy things with plasma, which consumes deuterium (which by the way is kindof a pain in the ass to get ahold of itself), all just to be... a neutron source? A neutron source when you're already mucking around with 235, which by the way you can't pile up together too much because it... produces too many neutrons. Like yeah if you need them to be colossally fast then using a Tokamak to blast these things off at most of the way to c might make sense, but these ain't that.

The economics of using this particular thing for medical applications sounds like a money-pit to me.
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The big thing here is that some reactors are currently being sundowned, leading to a projected medical isotope shortfall. These people stepped into their gap with a shiny new fusion machine.
 
Depending on the neutron flux and cost of the machine it might be possible to use the machine as a neutron source for diffraction. AFAIK the two main sources used for neutron diffraction are thermal neutrons from research fission reactors and spallation sources, which AFAIK require LINACs. Both of those are very expensive and require large infrastructure, so a more compact source could be useful, if it provides high enough fluxes.

That's a fairly niche market, but it could support some future development of the method.
 
The article implied that the use of uranium was not required for the production of nuclear medicines with sufficient neutron flux, it's just that U-235 fission is the most frequently used source.

"In the second half of last year we did what nobody else has ever been able to do. Not even the big government projects. We made history by generating Neutron Flux in excess of 1010 from fusion power using an isotope of hydrogen from seawater instead of radioactive enriched uranium. This proves beyond any doubt that our machine can make the isotopes used in nuclear medicine (i.e. Mo-99, Tc-99m, cobalt 60, iodine, etc.). It is only a matter now of simply scaling the power or electric current flow of our machine up so we can achieve the greater Neutron Flux of 1012+.
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Wikipedia says the following about Mo-99:

99Mo can be obtained by the neutron activation (n,γ reaction) of 98Mo in a high neutron flux reactor. However, the most frequently used method is through fission of uranium-235 in a nuclear reactor. While most reactors currently engaged in 99Mo production use highly enriched uranium-235 targets, proliferation concerns have prompted some producers to transition to low-enriched uranium targets.[2] The target is irradiated with neutrons to form 99Mo as a fission product (with 6.1% yield).[3] Molybdenum-99 is then separated from unreacted uranium and other fission products in a hot cell.[4]
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This implies that you can make Mo-99 from naturally occuring Mo-98 with sufficient neutron flux, without the need for Uranium.
 
foamy said:
I'm not. My skepticism here is boundless. I'm old enough to've lived through cold fusion.
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Goddamn, what a time we live in.

Just hark back to the 50s and 60s, where people learned to just not bat an eye at the newest wonder technology (nuclear power? Sure. Supersonic flight? Huh. Microwave ovens? Cool. Going into space? Awesome. Landing on the moon? Wow!).

Nowadays, it's "it's just something someone did in a lab somewhere on a very tiny scale; I won't believe it will really happen until it's so prevalent that I see it with my own eyes". And that kind of mentality is being proven right more often than not.
 
You know, it took more than a century for photovaultaic panels to go from being invented, to actually being viable as a power source.
We've only been going after fusion (a much harder project most likely) for what, 50 years?
 
Okay, I looked at it, and it's bullshit. Not the development, but the spin from the first article. Here's the headers for hte first article:

  • PATENTED NEW CLEAN ENERGY SOURCE is UNLIMITED and EXTREMELY LOW COST.
  • The FUEL is derived from SEAWATER.
  • Amazing but true: 1 GALLON OF SEAWATER PRODUCES SAME ENERGY AS 300 GALLONS OF GASOLINE
  • No Fossil Fuels – 100% CARBON FREE.
  • NO LONG TERM hazardous radioactive waste.
  • Technology recently PROVEN AND PUBLISHED in world leading Fusion Energy Journal.
  • ULTIMATE Clean Energy Solution for Multi-Trillion-Dollar Electric Power Grid market.
  • Can generate BILLIONS IN EARLY HIGH MARGIN REVENUES with revolutionary new way to make Medical Scanning & Cancer Treatment radioisotopes at HALF THE CURRENT COST.
  • DESIGN PLANS for the first commercial generators are COMPLETED now.
  • US Nuclear will build the Fusion Generators and is an established manufacturer of high-tech products purchased by NASA, the EPA, Department of Energy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, MIT, Pacific Gas & Electric, General Electric, Lawrence Livermore, Oakridge National Lab and more.
  • With a market cap of $14 Million, US Nuclear shares are expected to revalue sharply as word of the MIFTI/MIFTEC Fusion Energy breakthrough becomes known.
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Yeah. Way to make me think you're being honest guys. All caps always screams legitimate science.

Now, let's visit the land of reality and look at the paper--remembering that these days "peer reviewed" depending on who puts it out, may mean, "my friend in Junior College physics faculty looked at it."

Recent experiments on the 1 MA, 100 ns Zebra driver at the Nevada Terawatt Facility at the University of Nevada, Reno, investigated the compression of a deuterium target by a high-atomic-number (Ar or Kr) gas-puff liner. Pinch stability improved with axial premagnetization of 1–2 kG observed as a decrease in magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth. Implosion dynamics and stagnation conditions were studied computationally with the radiation-MHD code MACH2 using initial conditions that approximate those in the experiment. Typical average
and peak implosion velocities exceeded 300 and 400 km/s, respectively, which raised the target adiabat by shock heating as the front converges on axis, at which time the target is adiabatically compressed to stagnation. Experimental fusion yields of up to 2109 for Ar liner on
D target implosions were measured, while with a Kr liner yields up to 11010 were measured. Higher yields in Kr compared to Ar were also calculated in 2-D MACH2 simulations. These observations will be further tested with other radiation-MHD codes, and experiments on the 1 MA LTD-III machine at UC San Diego.
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And the conclusion:

These advantages will enable us to perform SZP experiments with a higher shot rate and more extended machine time than on Zebra, allowing higher statistics, more diverse configurations, and reduced risk of damaging components. We will also use a more complete set of diagnostics to better measure the pinch
conditions.
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Notice what is missing? No FUSION POWER NOW! MORE POWER IN A GALLON OF WATER THAN A BAZILLION GALLONS OF GASOLINE! INVEST IN ME! INVEST IN MEEEEEEE!!!!

So yeah, first article? Typical "Fusion is happening now, and our start up is the only one who can do it!" bullshit.
 
Fusion always being 20 years off is mostly a result of funding:

The USA's spending on fusion is pathetic compared to other energy R&D, let alone 10s in billions of subsidies on fossil fuel industries or corn ethanol, let alone all the other wasteful boondoggles like trillions on wars and tax cuts. While increasing R&D spending by an order of magnitude or two wouldn't result in a 1 to 1 increase in how fast fusion takes to reach the finish line, it would be significantly faster than the current timetable which after over half a century has plodded its way to maybe producing a 10 to 1 reactor in another decade or two.

The issue is its hard to convince states to lay down serious bucks for a technology that is ultimately unproven. Nations are willing to spend billions on R&D for fission plants because its iterative improvements for a technology that we already know works and can be profitable. We're only willing to spend that kind of money for an important cause, like bombing foreigners or ensuring super-rich people are even richer.
 
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