NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

A Dry Run For Fusion Power

The reality of fusion power the same energy that powers the sun remains outside of our reach. Although scientists have figured out how to split atoms and attain nuclear reactions, they have yet to find an efficient way to fuse atoms. So far, techniques require more energy than what's produced.

But at Sandia labs, researchers are getting closer. Recent experiments led by plasma physicist Ryan McBride show that it's possible to reach a "break even" point, where the energy that goes into running a fusion reactor is equal to energy produced. That's a big step toward an alternative energy that produces emission-free energy without the nuclear waste.

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The fusion method at Sandia is called magnetized inertial fusion. Doing it requires a system of coils at each end of a beryllium cylinder just under seven millimeters across. Inside the cylinder is a small amount of deuterium, which is an abundant molecule in the ocean made of hydrogen with an extra neutron.

Here's how the reactor works: First the two coils generate a magnetic field. A few milliseconds later, an accelerator called the Z machine fires a 25-million-ampere current. That current generates a magnetic field that crushes the cylinder in 100 billionths of a second. In that short space of time a laser fires at the cylinder, heating the deuterium gas inside and turning it into a plasma. The two coils at the end, meanwhile, are generating a magnetic field that contains the plasma to allow it to fuse.

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In this experiment, the compression part of that system was tested. The current was run through the coils and the beryllium cylinder was compressed, and retained its shape. This is important because if the cylinder deforms too much, there isn't enough pressure on the whole sample deuterium to initiate fusion.

One of the factors that Sandia labs was trying to determine was how thick and large the cylinder should be. Too big, and the magnetic fields can't crush it. Too small and the electrical current will simply vaporize it completely before it can crush the plasma inside. They found the optimum proportion seems to be a cylinder with a wall about one sixth the radius.   

The experiment is an extension of simulations performed in March. The next step is to try pre-heating the deuterium with the laser, and after that -- possibly some time in late 2013 -- testing it with nuclear fuel inside. The fuel will be deuterium, and it won't be powerful enough to get past the "break even" point and produce energy. But McBride told Discovery News that the output should tell the researhers whether or not using tritium -- hydrogen with two neutrons -- will work when mixed with deuterium.

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So will this lead directly to fusion reactors? Not really, because the amount of current needed to get to "high gain" fusion -- which would mean energy output more than 1,000 times that applied to the fuel -- is more than twice what the Z machine can produce, some 60 million amperes. That said, if the proof-of-concept works, then there isn't any technical barrier to building such a machine. 

The experiment will be presented in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters.

Top Photo: Sandia researcher Ryan McBride pays close attention to the tiny central beryllium liner to be imploded by the powerful magnetic field generated by Sandia’s Z machine. The larger cylinders forming a circle on the exterior of the base plate measure Z’s load current by picking up the generated magnetic field.

Image: Sandia National Laboratories

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Iran's Nuclear Facilities Are 'Thunderstuck'

In 2005, as head of Iran's Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad banned all forms of Western and "indecent" music from radio and television stations controlled by the state.

Considering such a drastic move, ole' boy can't be too happy about this: Iran's nuclear facilities have allegedly been infiltrated and hacked, causing nuclear plant workstation speakers to blast AC/DC's "Thunderstuck" at top volume.

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Back in 2010, the computer systems that ran Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities were cyber-attacked by malware called Stuxnet that was developed by the U.S. and Israel. The mission, code-named 'Olympic Games,' started during the Bush administration and was carried out by President Obama, unabashed lover of Al Green.

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While I could see him being a little more tolerant if, from his nuclear workstation speakers, piped the sweet, soulful vocals of the the Good Reverend, but I can't imagine Ahmadinejad is too thrilled with the aural assault of naughty-school-boy Angus Young and company stomping all over his ear drums.

Word of the attack came from Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish computer security firm F-Secure, who said he received emails from a nuclear scientist working at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) as follows:

I am writing you to inform you that our nuclear program has once again been compromised and attacked by a new worm with exploits which have shut down our automation network at Natanz and another facility Fordo near Qom.

According to the email our cyber experts sent to our teams, they believe a hacker tool Metasploit was used. The hackers had access to our VPN. The automation network and Siemens hardware were attacked and shut down. I only know very little about these cyber issues as I am scientist not a computer expert.

There was also some music playing randomly on several of the workstations during the middle of the night with the volume maxed out. I believe it was playing 'Thunderstruck' by AC/DC.

While Hypponen didn't give the scientist's name and said that none of the details can be confirmed, he did write, "We can confirm that the researcher was sending and receiving emails from within the AEOI."

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While I'm no fan of heavy metal being used to torture potentially innocent and wrongly-imprisoned detainess, I am a fan of heavy metal. And since the scientists who work at Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities are likely more annoyed than they are tortured, I'm going to give a slow clap for this pranky AC/DC cyber attack...if, in fact, it does exhist.

However, as fan of lacerating guitar riffs, I can only think of the tunes I would unleash. For now, here's my set list: Death Grip's "Beware," Black Sabbath's "Supernaut" and Pentagram's "Forever My Queen."

Big question is, what song(s) would you choose? They don't have to be heavy metal, either. Let me know in the comment's below. While you're racking your brain, here's a "Whole Lotta Rosie" to get you in the mood.

via NewScientist

Credit: David Boutard/Kipa/Corbis

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You Dropped a Bomb on Me: Gotta-See Videos

In June of 1957 the United States was hip deep in the Cold War. Nuclear fears were high. To help alleviate fears and practice a bit of propaganda, the Air Force got five volunteers to stand under a two-kiloton nuclear explosion and describe LIVE what they felt. The purpose was to show such a small amount of nuclear material wouldn't be as destructive as the bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. It may seem crazy, but these men were trying to teach us about science, sort of. via DVice and NPR

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Want to recommend a video? Tweet it to @Discovery_News with the hashtag #GottaSeeVideos.

Don't miss today's Must-Read News Nuggets too!

Watch Discovery Curiosity video!

Cold Fusion Gets Cold Shoulder (and $200,000 Challenge)

Just over a year ago, two Italian researchers claimed to have found one of the Holy Grails of physics: They said they fused atomic nuclei at room temperature -- essentially what is known as cold fusion.

If what researchers Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna claim is true, they have found a cheap, clean, and limitless energy source -- possibly even something that could revolutionize space travel.

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They claimed their device produced 12,400 Watts of heat power with an input of just 400 W. In a move that raised eyebrows among research physicists, Rossi and Focardi initially declined to publish their results in a peer-reviewed science journal and instead took their discovery directly to the public. They also claimed that they would be starting mass production of their cold fusion devices by the end of last year; that failed to happen, and the chorus of skeptics has grown louder.

Among the most prominent skeptics is Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith, who has offered $200,000 for proof that the Rossi "energy catalyzer" (e-CAT) actually works.

Smith, patron of Australian Skeptics, says, "It would be great if it's true, but it's more likely just a misconnection of the power lead. If one of the wires in the three-core power lead was accidentally misconnected, the actual measurements of current witnessed by two Swedish scientists would not be the total power going into the reactor, and there would be an apparent power gain. One of the scientists who observed an earlier test has now agreed this could be so."

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Smith and a colleague, aerospace engineer Ian Bryce, found that in all six published tests up to July, a misconnected earth lead could funnel in up to 3 kilowatts, thus bypassing the power meters used and accounting for all the measured output power in the form of steam.

Smith issued a simple challenge to the researchers that should settle the mater: They should "recreate the March 2011 demonstration -- surely it would only take a couple of hours and have an independent person actually measure the current in each of the wires in the three-wire power cord."

David E. Thomas is a physicist who has examined free energy and cold fusion claims for years as head of the organization New Mexicans for Science and Reason. Thomas told Discovery News, "Given the background surrounding the dramatic claims for the Rossi e-CAT, and given knowledge of basic physics and thermodynamics, caution about investing in this device is indeed warranted.

"Claims of nuclear reactions, where the only evidence proffered is an increase in power, and not objective data like increased neutron flux, should be treated with caution."

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Thomas said that Smith's suggested test to rule out error or fraud in the e-CAT device was a good idea: "The Australian Skeptics' approach of metering all power leads independently is an excellent method for addressing the question of where the 'extra' power is coming from.

"The only reason for Rossi e-CAT to refuse such a test is the knowledge that it will reveal fraud in their alleged over-unity system. If they do not agree to this reasonable verification, investors should become alarmed."

Will these latest claims of cold fusion hold up under better-controlled tests and revolutionize world energy production? Or will they be just another false promise? Time will tell.

Image credit: Getty Images

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Small May Be Beautiful For Nuclear Power

Small Is Beautiful is the title of a book often cited by environmentalists, but it could the concept also be applied to nuclear power plants?

A study by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute says that small, modular reactors may be the future of the nuclear power industry in the United States.

Small, modular reactors (SMRs in industry parlance) are designed to generate 600 megawatts or less; by contrast the smallest current designs from nuclear power plant builders start in the 1100-megawatt range.

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Nuclear plants generally require a huge up-front financial investment, which is one reason that only regulated utilities or government-owned monopolies have built them. The big costs involved incentivize owners to build big plants in order to get a better return on investment. More power equals more revenue.

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However, the EPI study says it might be worth rethinking that assumption, and looking at what would happen if nuclear plants could be built smaller, with standardized parts that would be mass-produced. The report claims that the costs of electricity per kilowatt-hour from the SMRs compare favorably to those of wind and solar, coming in at about 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. That's about half the cost of solar photovoltaic (18 cents) and 36 percent that of solar thermal (25 cents). Wind energy would cost about the same, and biomass ranges from 9 to 18 cents.

The cost savings would be from the efficiencies gained by standardizing the manufacturing of parts (something similar to this was done in France, which generates 76 percent of its electricity with nuclear).  

Another big advantage would be the lead time. A new nuclear power plant can take a decade to come on-line, between the construction and regulatory approvals. A smaller-scale facility with simpler parts could be built much more quickly, on the order of a few years.

Smaller reactors could also be built to be safer. Robert Rosner, the EPI’s director and one of the report’s authors, said in a statement that many of the new designs allow the reactor to be passively air-cooled, via convection, rather than with pumping water. That simplifies the design. Some, he said, could even go through an accident with no human intervention because they would be able to throw off their heat load before melting down.

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The nuclear accident at Fukushima, as well as that at Three Mile Island in 1979 and the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl were all caused by failures of the cooling systems, which allowed the nuclear fuel in the reactor cores to overheat. In the case of Fukushima the result was water with radioactive contamination being released into the ocean.

Building a whole lot of small reactors will still run into challenges. Besides the safety concerns with new designs, there are the economics. The report admits that for a full-on program of building nuclear plants to replace coal, for example, government subsidies would likely be needed. Probably the government would end up being an early customer. There is also the waste disposal, which remains a hot-button issue.

A copy of the study is available here.

Image: Felix König / Wikimedia Commons

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Will You Survive A Nuclear Attack?

Nabokov once described the region where I'm from in the Midwest as the three states beginning with "I." My adopted home state, Missouri, is widely regarded as a "fly-over state." And if you're erudite New York Times columnist, David Carr, the only waltz we know is the "dance of the low-sloping foreheads."

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But I've got news for you jet-setting city-slickers looking down on us from the first class cabins of your coast-to-coast red-eyes. Once the nukes start dropping on metropolis, you just might find yourself knocking on the doors of us milquetoast Midwesterners. How come? Why not take gander at Google Maps-inspired website, Would I Survive A Nuke, and see how you and your fellow metropolitans will fair perhaps a 50 megaton Tsar Bomba detonates downtown.

If you survived, congratulations. If not, how about considering a move to my neck of the woods in Columbia, Missouri? Sure the website says I "live in the middle of nowhere," but at least I survived the Tsar Bomba attack on St Louis. However, with the oncoming nuclear winter, I'll need to brush up on my skiing techniques.

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Bad news, though, should a dinosaur-ending meteor score a direct hit. In that scenario, we're pretty much all toast.

[Via Gizmodo]

 

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Particle Accelerators Defend United States, Do Physics

Sandia National Labs is celebrating a milestone for two pulsed-energy generators that have contributed much to both basic science -- and the defense of the United States. Combined, the two particle accelerators, called Saturn and HERMES (for High-Energy Radiation Megavolt Electron Source), have fired some 4,000 and 9,000 times. respectively. Both were designed to last a decade or so, but they have proven so useful that Sandia has kept them running.

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During the Cold War, defense against nuclear attack -- such as it was -- included hardening electronics against electromagnetic pulses from nuclear explosions. A nuclear explosion releases huge amounts of gamma radiation, which knocks the electrons off of atoms in the atmosphere and generates a current that fries every electronic device within hundreds of miles. By the 1970s it was clear to both the United States and Soviet governments that either country could knock out the other's electronic communications at a stroke.

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The U.S. government needed machines that generated gigantic pulses of energy. That meant particle accelerators. Saturn was first fired in 1987, and about a year later HERMES was turned on. Saturn has more raw power -- for X-ray studies it generates pulses of about 100 terawatts. HERMES is for generating gamma rays, and generates pulses of 13 terawatts. That's a lot of energy -- Saturn is firing pulses equal to 2 percent of all the electricity generated in the United States in the space of nanoseconds.

Saturn and HERMES were used initially to test the ability of electronics and other materials to stand up to the huge pulses of energy that nuclear weapons generate. But they also did a lot of basic science and still provide data that physicists use.

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Saturn, for instance, helped point the way to practical fusion. One experiment involved firing millions of amperes through tiny wires. The wires were vaporized, turned into metal ions. The powerful magnetic field that large electric currents generate pulled the ions together at high speeds, releasing X-rays. The X-rays intense enough that they could be used to compress a tiny hydrogen capsule, initiating fusion reactions. Later research has focused on getting that reaction to work constantly (as would be necessary in a power plant), but Saturn set the stage.

Meanwhile HERMES was used to show the effects of gamma rays on electronic hardware. It was first fired in 1988, but hasn't lost its place as the world's most powerful gamma ray producer. HERMES also generates lots of data for physicists, and is often used in experiments studying Bremsstrahlung radiation, which is produced when charged particles are accelerated or decelerated.

Credit: Sandia National Labs

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Volunteers Report Radiation Levels Online

More than a week after a 46-foot tsunami devastated parts of northeast Japan, engineers are still working to regain control of a damaged nuclear reactor facility. Reports of higher-than-normal levels of radiation in milk and some vegetables are popping up in areas not far from the Fukushima reactor, and meteorologists have measured small levels of radiation wafting over the United States on very high altitude winds.

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So far, it doesn't appear that anyone living in the United States is in danger. An announcement from the Food and Drug Administration yesterday reported that no products are being exported from the affected region of Japan, since people there are still dealing with the heavy damage from the quake and tsunami. Nonetheless, the agency says it's paying special attention to any shipments that may arrive from companies in the affected area.

But how can you know if any radiated particles are in your local air?

You can watch the winds on the University of Maryland's website, which uses information from NOAA to calculate the movement of hazardous material through the atmosphere.

Or you can visit the website Radiation Network, which reports to the public the radiation levels in most locations throughout the 48 contiguous United States. It's a grass-roots effort managed by backyard radiation watchers equipped with hand-held Geiger counters.  Volunteers who sign up for monitoring download a software program developed by Tim Flanegin, who runs the site, and then use the radiation detectors, which are connected to laptops, to upload information in near real time. Read more about do-it-yourself radiation monitoring in this article from the Washington Post.

So far, measured levels over the United States are being reported as very low and harmless, since any radiation gets diluted in the air by wind and rain as it travels across the globe.

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U.S. Nuclear Waste Never Sees Its Full Potential

Spent nuclear fuel rods are more Energizer Bunny than sloth. In fact, says Dale Klein, associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Texas System, in this news release, 95 percent of the energy in a spent rod is reusable. But in the United States, it's often just called waste and treated as such.

Reprocessing fuel rods to save energy also cuts down on the ultimate amount of radioactive waste, and makes what is left less toxic. Countries in Europe and Asia, including France, the United Kingdom, India, Japan, China and Russia, have all put time and effort into this goal. But in the United States, where about 2,000 metric tons of radioactive waste are produced each year, development of reprocessing methods stopped in the 1970's. That makes the nation nearly forty years behind the world's other nuclear energy users and, according to Klein, “the underlying technological capability and intellectual capital needed to compete internationally have diminished to near irrelevance.” Yikes.

Those concerned about the safety of nuclear power insist that we don't know how to dispose of it correctly, or that radioactive materials are bad in any amount and hence plants pose environmental or health threats. Discovery News producer Tracy Staedter wrote an article which delves into this question more deeply; you can read it here.

Klein says otherwise, that we can safely handle and take care of nuclear detritus without reason to panic. He also refutes concerns about rod reprocessing as a security issue due to recycled fuel being a source of plutonium, which could potentially be used in nuclear weapons. His exact words, all of which were reported from the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this past week, were:

"While it is true that the plutonium in recycled nuclear fuel is fissionable, no country in the world has ever made a nuclear weapon out of low-grade plutonium from recycled high burn-up nuclear fuel," he said. "It just doesn't work for a strategic or a tactical nuclear weapon."

Still, the decades-long disadvantage in technological innovation is discouraging.

Photo: Matthias Kulka/Corbis

 

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Homemade Nuclear Reactor Built in NYC

Don't look now, but your neighbor might be building a fusion reactor, and it's perfectly legal. Check out this story by Matthew Danzico writing for the BBC. It's got to be one of the craziest and coolest pieces I've read in a while.

A gentleman by the name of Mark Suppes, a 32-year-old software developer, spent $35,000 on parts he bought legally on eBay and is building a fusion reactor in a warehouse in Brooklyn.

Now, let's just pause here a moment to remind ourselves the difference between nuclear fusion and fission. Fission is the splitting apart of atoms. City-annihilating bombs are based on the technology as are nuclear power plants -- both of which produce radioactive waste.

Fusion is the joining of atoms to produce energy (it's how the sun works) and so far, no one's really figured out how to do it efficiently. Oh, many-a scientist have tried, and for good reason. Fusion energy is not made with nuclear materials, such as uranium or plutonium, it does not produce CO2 or other emissions and it could make virtually unlimited energy relatively inexpensive.  

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But success remains elusive.

The author of this piece on Gizmodo about Suppes sums up nicely.

The problem with fusion has always been that we don't know how to get more energy out of it than we put into it. We know the energy is there. We know effective fusion is likely to take a lot of energy to jumpstart, but we don't know how (or if) we can ever get fusion going well enough to capture as much energy out as we put into it -- the elusive break even point. We can't control how the energy likes to leave the reaction, and it's in forms we can't use. We can't keep the reaction self-sustaining like it is in the sun, since we don't have gravity on our side. Also, we're talking about plasma, the star-hot fourth state of matter. It tends to destroy the equipment.

Enter Suppes and other amateur physicists like him, who call themselves "fusioneers." They have a website, Fusor.net, an open-source research consortium, where people gather to share experiences and swap techniques. What Suppes is trying to do is build a Bussard Polywell fusion reactor, named after Robert W. Bussard, a physicist from Los Alamos.

Whether they have a shot at it or not is a big question, since millions of dollars is already being spent to fund fusion research in different labs around the world, not to mention ITER, the large-scale scientific experiment being built to demonstrate that producing energy from fusion is possible. And these efforts have yet to turn out a commercially viable technique that produces more energy than it uses.

But visit the Fusor website, and immediately its inspirational and motivational tone makes you believe that you can.

It says that building a reactor based on one invented in the 1950s by a Philo T. Farnsworth is "relatively simple" and employs "all the multidisciplinary techniques that fusion requires: vacuum pumping, stainless steel machining, power supply management, etc. Believe it or not, some of these devices, which really do produce fusion reactions, have been built for 'less than the cost of a set of used golf-clubs.'"

It goes on to say: "Who knows, perhaps one of the people who visit this site will learn a thing or two and go on to do what 'the experts' have been unable to accomplish."

Perhaps that person will be Suppes. Perhaps that person will be you.