There is a huge amount of private sector activity taking place right now at small companies working on Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) devices. There is likely something real and important going on here with so many different companies claiming they are close to having commercial products ready. Some, like Andrea Rossi’s E-cat, are supposed to be available this year. Once in the public domain people can start tearing them apart and reverse engineering them. Yep, 2013 should be the year that LENR devices make their debut. We should all hope these devices live up to the hype because the potential benefits to the human race are enormous.
I found this short descriptive text added on Andrea Rossi’s website that nicely summarizes the processes and promise of LENR technology:
“The process that makes this possible is called Cold Fusion or Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR). Nickel is fused with Hydrogen and transmutes into copper. This is an exothermal nuclear process that releases energy at around 10MeV per atomic reaction compared to the burning of Hydrogen which only releases 1.5eV per atomic reaction (Burning H2 in O2). Per atom, the exothermal process has an energy content of more than a million times the energy content of the most energetic (per weight) chemical process. The higher weight of Nickel and the fact one usually disregard Oxygen’s weight due to its presence in air makes the net factor around 200 000 when compared to oil.
The abundance of Nickel in the earth’s crust and the low price of Nickel make the ECAT one of the cheapest energy producers around. The ECAT does not pollute or release any carbon dioxide.”
If these devices work, the potential applications are vast. And as I said before, I think the evidence to date likely points to LENR technology being real.
A key point is that these Cold Fusion-reborn devices are claimed to produce nuclear reactions that give off orders of magnitude more energy per unit mass of fuel than chemical reactions. In fact – this is exactly why the Gen1 Enterprise will use electric propulsion engines powered by a nuclear power system. Using chemical rocket engines instead would require extremely large tanks for holding rocket fuel and the the Enterprise would not make sense.
And these LENR devices appear capable of running really hot. This is important because this means that they can efficiently be used in power plants on Earth to drive steam turbines. In theory, LENR devices could begin replacing coal furnaces in conventional power plants over the next decade.
And then there is the Enterprise, our spaceship. LENR technology could give a much safer nuclear power system for the Gen1 Enterprise. Concerns about a plutonium-filled Enterprise crashing back to Earth would be alleviated. Also, having a very hot heat source at the center of the nuclear power system is essential for helping to keep the size of the radiators within reason. Could the LENR devices run hot enough for the Enterprise, like the 1500 degrees C I assumed here? LENR researcher Dr. Luca Gamberale said recently:
“We can say that the technology Defkalion is now ready to face the market. reactor R5, using as active elements nickel and hydrogen treated properly, it can produce about 4.5 kW of heat energy in a volume of a few cubic centimeters with temperatures that in principle may get to the melting temperature of the nickel (1453 ° C). The limitation in temperature is given by the materials that make up the reactor, which have a certain degree of complexity and which will focus the effort of engineering.”
In 2013, I say bring on the LENR technologies! And I look forward to beginning to assume that the Gen1 Enterprise – the Really Big E – will be powered by LENR reactors instead of conventional fission-based reactors.
There was never an issue of a plutonium filled spaceship in my mind. My concern was the old nuclear fission technology that would have turned the enterprise into a Space Lightbulb rather than a Spaceship. I have been an advocate of cold fusion as the basis for the Enterprise power core. I can’t ever see a nuclear fission reactor being viable. This is really good news if the first LENR will be available this year. =D
Quick back of the envelope calculation suggests 7 MeV per reaction, so that sounds about right. Seems odd to start with nickel as it’s the most stable element available, if you could get the process to work with iron you would get at least an extra 2 MeV per reaction. I guess that might be relative costs of materials (pretty sure iron is more abundant in the earth’s crust than nickel, but then again, it gets used for a lot more things), or possibly he’s thinking of selling the copper, as that’s been getting more expensive over the years?
Still, it’s interesting, trying to think why it would be so much easier to get a nickel nucleus to capture an extra proton than a hydrogen, though there has to be tables of cross-sections for this sort of thing somewhere. Can’t believe no one has measured that before (considering all the other weird things we have data for)
Did a quick calculation to work out how viable this would be as a power supply. Back of the envelope calculation sugests a value of about 9 million MJ per kg (give or take 1 million, compare this to uranium, at 79 million MJ per kg). Estimated world reserves of uranium are 5.5 million tonnes, and for nickel this is 80 million tonnes. Assuming at some point we perfect fast breeder reactors (shouldn’t be hard, given investment), this means that energy reserves for both these are roughly equal (within an order of magnitude at least)
Nickel is used for a lot of other things too, so I doubt we’d want to use more than a reasonably small fraction for energy though. We don’t really have to worry about amount of water needed for this, as it’s incredibly small compared to that on the earth.
It’s incredible to think we’re on the brink of solving so many of the Earth’s problems with this one technology. If it does work out, not only would it make the Gen1 much more viable technology-wise, it would also take some of the pressure off the energy industry and make funding the Enterprise project much more likely.
Would such reactor be small enough to fit into places ? Could it be used to bring stuff into space ?
Correction : Would such reactor be small enough to fit into planes ? Could it be used to bring stuff into space ?
Potentially. See slide 27 and later slides below.
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government/NASA/20110922NASA-Zawodny-GRC-LENR-Workshop.pdf
Cold fusion has still to prove itself that it work. It doesn’t even have a theory on how that would work.
I never read anything on your website about using a thorium reactor.something from the late 60. It seems to have a lot of interesting property for a space ship.
I agree that thorium reactors need looking into.
And I think the concept it older; it was one of three considered for the nuclear power program.
U-235 was, of course, one of them and that won. I don’t recall the other. Maybe it was U-233.
U-235 won because it allowed for material for the nuclear stockpile to be produced.
Thorium ought to be the next logical step. Trouble it, we must make a switch from uranium. And that won’t be easy. But it’s worth it, IMO.
I’m still waiting to hear of peer reviewed reports that validate the idea.
That’s what killed the original “cold fusion” concept: it failed peer review.
If this can’t pass peer review, it’s back to the drawing board.
My skepticism comes from this: if this is a nuclear reaction taking place, then the photographer of what I presume to be the reactor shouldn’t be there, because of the release of gamma rays that is the result of a nuclear reaction.
That’s what you get with either a fission or fusion reaction: the release of gamma rays.
If what was really going on was fusion, then the thing ought to be putting out so much gamma rays, you couldn’t be in the same room, unless you had shielding surrounding it.
So I’ll hold off on cheering for this until it passes the peer review process.
Rossi is an entrepreneurial inventor, not a scientist. A useful product trumps academia. The wheel, fire, paper clip, rivet, screw, lever, hammer, slinky, and the Wright Brothers never got peer review.
To be fair, most of those were pretty basic inventions (except the Wright Flyer).
Those items you list didn’t require new physics to work. For example, the Wright Flyer only needed to apply what was already known about air pressure and how it’s effected traveling over a certain surface.
Cold fusion, on the other hand, does require new physics.
Without sound physics to base your product on, you simply have snake oil.
It’s little different than homeopathic medicine.
Not sure much radiation will be detected. From this site: http://coldfusionnow.org/no-fear-of-radiation-from-cold-fusion/
“Nobody knows for certain why the primary signature of cold fusion is excess heat, not deadly radiation. Nevertheless, many LENR theorists have put forth very intriguing proposals for the mechanism of these reactions. There are, in fact, many dozens of competing theories smaller number of which are very well fleshed out. The exact nature of the LENR reactions is one of the many unsolved scientific mysteries surrounding them. Some scientists think that because the effect does not produce intense radiation, it cannot be a nuclear process. Others say the energy is produced, but then somehow absorbed by the metal lattice either as high frequency vibrations, or through coherent processes in which many delocalized vibrations are involved.”
Like any other greatly problem solving solution / invention, cold fusion is way too efficient and “good” to be accepted by the market and big business. As far as the society is structured today, the Enterprise could be powered by gasoline as far as they care.
Once technology has been developed, it’s pretty hard to suppress it. If a company or business refuses to cash in on it, that decision will bite them in the butt for years to come.
Yes, if the old line businesses ignore a new technology, other smaller companies will quickly capitalize on it.
UTILITY COMPANIES will reap the rewards immensely
As will consumers in lower cost energy bills and lower air pollution. It’s a win-win situation.
I remember Spock saying in Star Trek 4 about the Fusion era finally replacing current nuclear energy needs along with the waste products. Could we now be now heading down that road even if loads more research will be needed to find out?.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/space-firm-plans-mine-asteroids-172307587.html
That’s pretty cool. I can see some of what is learned from those missions begin used during the design process of the Enterprise.
These are two asteroid mining companies to follow closely. Nuclear dense energy is required for long term manned space missions of the size and scope these folks propose. NASA states the energetics of LENR is the solution to missions planned yet unrealized.
During the past year these two competitors have emerged, my hunch is they are each licensees of NASA LENR technology. The LENR NASA Series makes for a good read.
http://coldfusionnow.org/lenr-nasa-series-cold-fusion-now/
Planetary Resources – The Asteroid Mining Company
http://www.planetaryresources.com/
Planetary Resources is establishing a new paradigm for resource discovery and utilization that will bring the solar system into humanity’s sphere of influence.
Deep Space Industries Inc.
http://deepspaceindustries.com/mission/
Mission: It is time to begin the harvest of space.
The Earth is but a tiny and precious world floating in a sea of natural resources. The riches of the solar system offer humanity both unprecedented prosperity and an improved environment. The resource potential of space outstrips that of any previous frontier – without the environmental impacts.
Asteroids are plentiful throughout the solar system. Many orbit close to the Earth and many of these carry vast deposits of resources ranging from water to metals such as iron, gold and platinum – everything we need to expand our civilization into space, to provide for our needs here at home and to increase the wealth of our planetary economy.
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