Jeff Bezos Is Backing an Ancient Kind of Nuclear Fusion

[RV_]

We now have at least three fusion companies all saying 2025 they will be demonstrable. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and MIT that I posted about here a few weeks back are all in and predicting 2025. And pay attention to the sentences I bolded in red at the bottom.

Excerpt:

"Smaller fusion reactors could have their breakthrough moment far sooner than large projects.

The Jeff Bezos-backed General Fusion and Commonwealth Fusion Systems both are targeting 2025.

These reactors use extraordinary magnets to pressurize elements into superhot plasma.

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Two competing nuclear fusion companies, each with venture capital superstars as major investors, say we’re approaching the “Kitty Hawk moment” for their technology as early as 2025.

Magnetized target fusion (MTF) dates back to the 1970s, when the U.S. Naval Research Lab first proposed it. But MTF’s proponents say the technology is now bearing down to reach the commercial power market.

What is this tech, and will it be viable before the competing fusion model of tokamaks, like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)?

Like a tokamak, an MTF reactor involves hot plasma contained by a powerful magnetic field. But where a tokamak is heated by extraordinary outside power, the MTF reactor made by Canada’s Jeff Bezos-backed General Fusion is pressurized to superheat the plasma—like a party filled with dancing people where the room continues to shrink around them. This pressure is applied by pistons that coordinate to make a pressure wave.

Smaller companies like General and Commonwealth have made ambitious plans that use the huge international ITER project as a flattering comparison point. ITER plans for first plasma in 2025, with a goal to be online for ignition power in 2035. But the project is also a symbol, bringing together dozens of countries with combined manufacturing and intellectual efforts toward one massive reactor.

Smaller reactors without the heft of international cooperation can behave a little more nimbly, without layers of diplomacy to navigate. It’s easy to see how both approaches are helpful, but the important thing today is that no one, no matter how large or small, has reached plasma fusion that generates more energy than it consumes. Until someone does, all the timeline bickering or posturing in the world means very little."

Source with much more here: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a35276502/magnetized-target-fusion-technology-jeff-bezos/?source=nl&utm_source=nl_pop&utm_medium=email&date=012721&utm_campaign=nl22580510&src=nl&utm_term=AAA -- High Minus Dormant and 90 Day Non Openers

[Twotoes]

So is this going to be a source of energy to replace electricity or a source of heat, or a source of energy to power a vehicle? What gives?

[RV_]

Twotoes if it is done they will be like Hydro and Geo in that it will create steam to turn turbines to create electricity. Some focused solar does the same. Focusing solar energy on pipes to superheat various heat holding liquids. Storage is important with solar and wind but not with Nuclear systems. The problems with Fission plants are runaways, meltdowns, and deadly radiation. Fusion will just stop if there is a problem and the byproduct of fission using isotopes of hydrogen is water and oxygen I believe. All that is missing is a great catalyst to speed up electrolysis of water to get hydrogen instead of using petroleum products to produce the hydrogen as is the method used to produce the majority of hydrogen to make it virtually 100% clean.

Edited February 5, 2021 by RV_