Defkalion offers independent testing of cold fusion reactors

[djzombie]

This is a pretty big story if these reactors actually work.

http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energ...cle3391463.ece

In a press release on January 23, Defkalion has invited "internationally recognized and reputable scientific and business organizations" from now and two months ahead, to do independent testing with their own instruments on the reactors used in the Defkalion's forthvcoming energy device, "Hyperion".

The apparatus is according to Defkalion based on "Chemically Assisted Low Energy Nuclear Reactions caused by Nickel and Hydrogen Nuclei", a technology supposedly developed by the company after the termination of the agreement on production and distribution of Andrea Rossi's "E-cat" last summer.

Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, or LENR, is the term used in recent years instead of the more controversial "cold fusion", a new type of nuclear reactions that there is still little knowledge about.

Measurements will be made on the "bare" reactor without cooling, and according to Defkalion temperatures above 650°C will be reached, and also a power development that is far more than 20 times the input electrical power required to start the reaction (COP).

You can find the technical specs for the Hyperion reactor here.

http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/arti...2011+%28pdf%29

[Kaylia]

It's hard to take this kind of news seriously, especially when they are asking for attention. There is enough journal that would accept a serious paper on the topic if it was science done properly..but it's not.

The reason they are releasing this information is most likely because they are hoping that some crazy millionaires will fund them.

[Mazmaz]

Should fund this guy's stuff instead


edit: WHY WON'T THIS FUCKING EMBED?
edit2: what the shit finally

[Kryssan]

Sorry, but all I heard was Fleischmann and Pons. This doesn't seem like normal scientific process, more like people trying to get attention. If it works, more power to it... but F&P made me one sketical bastard where this subject is involved.

[Zilong]

There is enough journal that would accept a serious paper on the topic if it was science done properly..but it's not.

I thought even the mention of it is equivalent to an academical career suicide.

[Kaylia]

I thought even the mention of it is equivalent to an academical career suicide.

It could be time traveling, perpetual motion or ESP research!


And yes, it would be an academical career suicide (if they still had one), but only because it's not possible to approach this topic seriously. Basics thermodynamics/statistics show that it's not practicable, and even if it's not "impossible" (like a perpetual motion machine"), it's just not going to happen. I mean, even if you had a catalyst, the nuclear reaction would destroy it in no times.

Hell, I'm working on similar material right now, and the imperfection created by the passage of hydrogen are issue..and there is no fusion.

[djzombie]

I've never studied the subject at hand so I'm not competent enough to look at something like that and determine up front whether or not its bullshit. Just seemed interesting.

The thorium video looked like it actually has the potential to change the way we create and use energy though - what is stopping us from using that as an energy source? Has the equipment simply not been machined? Or are there working thorium reactors somewhere?

[Kaylia]

I wasn't blaming you for citing this, I just get mad whenever I see shit like this in the media. It shouldn't be posted anywhere serious in the first place.


I checked the thorium video quickly, but there was far too little information. Rule of thumb in science is, whenever it looks like a huge leap in technology, there is a catch somewhere. I can't tell you what it is in this case, I would need to spend more than 3 minutes reading on the topic, but there is probably a fundamental issues or it's way too hypothetical to make any guess.

[Coren]

Well do it fast before I have to go try to make a thorium reactor in my garage. Power for life, (yes please).

[BaneTheBrawler]

I'm not sure why, but this reminded me of something funny from my childhood.

When I was little, like about 7, after watching Star Wars or some other sci-fi movie, I was thinking about how to make a ship go faster than light. So I told my parents how to do it. You build a spaceship, then on the back, where all the engines go, you also install a bunch of lightbulb sockets (with reflector cones to direct the light backward, of course!). You haul ass through space, then when you need to go FTL, you flip the light-switch and all the lights come on, pushing you even faster. FTL.

[Pirian]

I'm not sure why, but this reminded me of something funny from my childhood.

When I was little, like about 7, after watching Star Wars or some other sci-fi movie, I was thinking about how to make a ship go faster than light. So I told my parents how to do it. You build a spaceship, then on the back, where all the engines go, you also install a bunch of lightbulb sockets (with reflector cones to direct the light backward, of course!). You haul ass through space, then when you need to go FTL, you flip the light-switch and all the lights come on, pushing you even faster. FTL.

Photons have no mass, but not bad for 7

[kuronosan]

Photons have no mass, but not bad for 7

Oh?

[Kaylia]

I challenge you to find a photon at rest!


But yeah, photons can transfer momentum when they hit something. It's actually used already. Good luck surfing photon to high speed tho!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail

[Kryssan]

For the photon conversation.

[Mazmaz]

Here's a 2 hour movie on the Thorium stuff if you're interested.

[Kaelan?]

I don't like reviving dead threads, but this is important, so I figured I'd get it out there a bit more since it didn't seem to get much attention.

I checked the thorium video quickly, but there was far too little information.

The TED Talk is horrible, because this subject is way too big to be properly educated on in 10 minutes, even at a basic layman level where you can understand why this is so huge and how it works. This goes a lot more in-depth into it (and justifies everything that was relegated to a brief mention in the TED video):



Skip the intro, lecture starts at ~5:00. Goes over pretty much everything, from the research history, to the actual technology, to how it compares with existing reactors in safety/efficiency/output/environmental impact. I won't bother to explain any of it because you really should just watch the video (and he explains it better than I could anyway), but the main difference to take away from this compared to other "huge technology leap" solutions is that this isn't actually new. It's already been done decades ago and already been shown to work; it was stopped mostly for political reasons. It just needs to be modernized and continued to be worked on so it can actually be put to commercial use.

It's currently being seriously pursued by China. And they will probably actually manage to do it, given their energy needs and their lack of a political history with it to get in the way, unlike the U.S. See:
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...h-thorium.html
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/williamp...fire-possibly/

The guy who's been trying to publicize this in the U.S. (in the video above) started a company last year, with the intent to make the first one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flibe_Energy

The main issue with this is mostly publicity. Most people, like almost everyone who posted here in this thread, don't really know anything about it and inherently mistrust anything with "nuclear" attached to it. There's been nearly no media coverage of it at all - you'd have to look very hard to find anything serious (and well informed).

None of the existing companies will ever pick it up since it completely undermines all the existing nuclear technology they've invested in (and most of their money comes from selling more fuel which, as you might expect, wouldn't be that useful if LFTRs were around), and it's hard to expect a government initiative when there's little public knowledge of (and thus public support for) it and obviously existing energy interests (especially oil/coal) would be completely against it.

Apparently, there's currently an indie movie/documentary in the works to try to get the word out a bit more:
http://www.thoriumdocumentary.com/ab...-good-reactor/

If you want to see more, there's been several Google Talks on it in the last few years, just look it up on youtube.

[Purrrfect]

Interesting video. Hope what he says at least gets put into a trial phase, at the very least it deserves that. Also makes me wish I could go back 10 years to when I was in college... much rather be doing that now than this now.

[Kryssan]

The TED Talk is horrible, because this subject is way too big to be properly educated on in 10 minutes, even at a basic layman level where you can understand why this is so huge and how it works. This goes a lot more in-depth into it (and justifies everything that was relegated to a brief mention in the TED video):

[[Removed from quote, just view above]]

Skip the intro, lecture starts at ~5:00. Goes over pretty much everything, from the research history, to the actual technology, to how it compares with existing reactors in safety/efficiency/output/environmental impact. I won't bother to explain any of it because you really should just watch the video (and he explains it better than I could anyway), but the main difference to take away from this compared to other "huge technology leap" solutions is that this isn't actually new. It's already been done decades ago and already been shown to work; it was stopped mostly for political reasons. It just needs to be modernized and continued to be worked on so it can actually be put to commercial use.

I didn't comment on it because the thread was initially about something else, and generally speaking most people don't show interest in nuclear power beyond the 'ooh' and 'aah' stage unless it is part of something that breaks. But hey, since it is now in more detail....

It's currently being seriously pursued by China. And they will probably actually manage to do it, given their energy needs and their lack of a political history with it to get in the way, unlike the U.S. See:
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...h-thorium.html
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/williamp...fire-possibly/

Ugh, just FYI, those articles were horrible. Particularly, the first. The Forbes one wasn't so bad, but it was more than overshadowed by the first's badness. You can compare any reactor on the drawing board today with today's currently operating reactors and go "wow, these things suck" - it should be noted however that this is a comparison point. We have been making the technology better over time, and one cannot say that the designs we currently use are unsafe and / or should be immediately shutdown. Just that they are lacking when you compare them to what we could have instead. This statement in particular had me gnawing and gnashing:

They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don’t have the sort of hydrogen explosions we’ve seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release.

Right, except, the hydrogen has nothing to do with pressure of the reactor, and everything to do with the cladding material. Japan didn't experience steam explosions, it experienced hydrogen explosions - which again, have nothing to do with pressure. Bah. Also not related to the fuel being used. Then they talk about photon beams somehow related to fission and neutron reactions with self-sustaining reactors, and don't even get me started on the piss poor grammar of the article either... who was proofreading this? They ought to be shot. But anyway, I digress. Article was horribad.

The guy who's been trying to publicize this in the U.S. (in the video above) started a company last year, with the intent to make the first one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flibe_Energy

The main issue with this is mostly publicity. Most people, like almost everyone who posted here in this thread, don't really know anything about it and inherently mistrust anything with "nuclear" attached to it. There's been nearly no media coverage of it at all - you'd have to look very hard to find anything serious (and well informed).

None of the existing companies will ever pick it up since it completely undermines all the existing nuclear technology they've invested in (and most of their money comes from selling more fuel which, as you might expect, wouldn't be that useful if LFTRs were around), and it's hard to expect a government initiative when there's little public knowledge of (and thus public support for) it and obviously existing energy interests (especially oil/coal) would be completely against it.

Apparently, there's currently an indie movie/documentary in the works to try to get the word out a bit more:
http://www.thoriumdocumentary.com/ab...-good-reactor/

If you want to see more, there's been several Google Talks on it in the last few years, just look it up on youtube.

Actually, most of it is still political and monetary than publicity. Go ask how many people know what ITER, JET, NiF, AP-1000, Wendelstein 7-X, etc are and I assure you you'll get the same response if you bring up LFTRs.

LFTR provides many of the same safety features as gas-cooled or liquid-metal cooled solid-fuel reactor designs and you'll note that most comparison points made in favor of LFTR are made against BWR/PWR designs, not against fast reactor designs. The real benefits LFTR has over the fast reactor designs is waste products / excess fuel generation for disposal / proliferation concerns and the benefit of not using chemically reactive coolants (in the case of liquid-metal-solid-fuel designs) (yes, liquid fluoride is reactive too but it definitely isn't sodium). These benefits are certainly not to be sold short.

The fact that it falls within the 'small modular design' principle is also a big plus, at least in my book.

[guartz]

I was helping build AP-1000 fuel bridges earlier this year. I'll make a side note, all of the upper management in GE, W, Areva etc know about thorium and LFTR, they just either don't care or don't think the market is there.

[Kaelan?]

Ugh, just FYI, those articles were horrible. Particularly, the first. The Forbes one wasn't so bad, but it was more than overshadowed by the first's badness.

Yeah, I get that. The only reason I linked to them was to make the point that "hey this isn't pie in the sky technology", as there's others who have the power/funds to make it work (like China) seriously looking into it. It's hard to find any media coverage on this at all, let alone anything good.

they just either don't care or don't think the market is there

Well, yeah, that's part of the problem. From my understanding (and I by no means have any real scientific education on the subject, so correct me if I'm wrong on the details here) one reason any large company doesn't take this is it would essentially require a huge R&D investment up front because it's so different from what's actually done today in the existing reactors.

Only then you'd start factoring in construction/operation/maintenance costs and what not. And since technically nobody's actually ran with it before, you could call it unproven technology (though if other countries do make it work, that would change). So to them it makes economic sense to stick with what they're currently doing, even if it might not be anywhere near as good as it could be.