The Navy's Patent for a Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor
popularmechanics.com
popularmechanics.com
It doesn't seem to have been examined yet.
Only a single inventor is listed, Salvatore Pais[0]. He's also listed as inventor for a "Laser augmented turbojet propulsion system", "Craft using an inertial mass reduction device", "high frequency gravitational wave generator" (which was granted) and "piezoelectricity-induced room temperature superconductor".
All of which would be massive technological breakthroughs. Meaning he's either the 21st century's most brilliant physicist or a crank.
- A compact energy generator;
- A device that generated gravitational waves;
Is the Navy in on the joke?
But yet again... I wouldn't bet on that.
You have plenty of real world scenarios of companies wasting resources on the pursuit of something that looks trivial: like electric vehicles. Yet a lot of them are pulling the plug on something that looked easy, after dumping millions into it, right? "It's just electric motors, a battery and wheels".
If any government goes on a spiral to pursuit these devices it surely is a money furnace.
On the other side, if this is clearly non-sense... don't they have smart people in Russia, China, etc, claiming the same?
Maybe that's the genius of it all: it's so obviously propaganda non-sense that's too much obvious to be propaganda.
I mean, if I worked on secret stuff for years, maybe I would develop that kind of humor, and file a patent application for a Flux Capacitor, just to tease my friends about the time machine we are building...
I'm apparently not familiar enough with the patent system. It seems like a pretty enormous flaw in the system if the first person to request a patent on the subject could completely redefine terms that have pretty unambiguous scientific meanings.
Yup patent trolls make millions through this flaw they get the most vague patents they can and then sue everyone they see, they only need to win one case with a sleepy judge to make their money back.
Really, everyone should be patenting everything in science fiction. We can do the "doing X on the internet" thing with drones. Why hasn't someone patented the idea of "delivery of bags of dogfood ... via drone", that was a classic of dotcom 1.0.
1. The assignee is the US Navy. He won't personally profit.
2. Protection is given for the claims, not for the abstract, diagrams or specification. The claims have to describe something relatively concrete or they'll be rejected. You can't obtain patents for titles or elevator pitches.
3. Even if it's granted and you think GE infringes, they might disagree. Welcome to patent litigation, which is super expensive.
4. Even if it's not granted, it might be successfully cited as prior art against GE's application. You won't get royalties on nothing.
5. Patents expire. If you're patenting science fiction, yours might expire decades before it's actually possible.
I have filed a patent on my own time and dime. It is much harder than it looks. ~$50,000 USD and hundreds of hours of work over 5+ years.
Did it cost you ~$50k to file your patent?
There will be more expenses. $50k was the get as far as the US patent. I've spent another $3k since then on costs arising from other paperwork around it.
Also is that typical for supposedly cutting edge things from a defense perspective to get patented before a functional use case is demonstrated?
I’ve no idea if this is actually possible within the rules of the patent system, though.
And there are criminal penalties for knowingly supplying the patent office with false information[1]:
>1) All statements made therein of the party’s own knowledge are true, all statements made therein on information and belief are believed to be true, and all statements made therein are made with the knowledge that whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the Office, knowingly and willfully falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact, or knowingly and willfully makes any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations, or knowingly and willfully makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry, shall be subject to the penalties set forth under 18 U.S.C. 1001 and any other applicable criminal statute, and violations of the provisions of this section may jeopardize the probative value of the paper; and ...
[0] https://www.dhuelaw.com/blog/2017/february/is-it-possible-to...
Nominative determinism?
The tech could have been operational for twenty years and this is how they’re declassifying it.
Maybe they think world security will be better with this public, maybe the secret is already leaked, maybe they think a bigger advantage will come from having this commercially available, maybe this is useless for defense because it is trivially detectable, or maybe they’re filing patents to mislead adversaries on operational details and delay them, or maybe knowing how it works is unimportant because there is some impossible to acquire secret sauce . There are lots of ways to think about it, and obsessive grabs on technology secrets is not the only one.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion...
Uh, no. Even a horrifically expensive to build but working fusion reactor would have been released in that time frame. The military in the US is secretive, but not that much... there's a strategic advantage to having more advanced tech than your enemies, but there's a much bigger one from your whole country having large amounts of cheap, clean power.
Not to mention that such a discovery would have been worth trillions of dollars to the energy industry, and the Navy has plenty of civilian firms working with them that would have pushed hard for this tech to be exclusively licensed to them if it worked.
AND it's unlikely that the tech wouldn't have been stolen in that time frame. It would be a major, major coup for whatever country got it, and in the past 20 years almost every secret military tech the US has created has ended up in the hands of the Chinese or others... the US military just isn't that good at security, and you can't keep all the docs needed for development of something like this offline or in paper form.
The Glomar Explorer is an example of the US Military doing exactly that, they made a boat specifically for recovering a sunk sub and told every one it was a research vessel they kept it a secret for over 20 years.
There are countless other examples of this like the black bird.
They were only able to keep the project secret for less than 5 years - the operation leaked and details were published in the LA Times and other newspapers in Feb. 1975, which forced them to cancel plans for a second attempt to recover the rest of K-129.
There's no corresponding big advantage to the US for having the Glomar Explorer be public.
BTW, the CIA has paramilitary forces, but is not formally part of the military/armed forces.
Not to go tinfoil hat here but... if we had a relatively small fusion reactor, lobbyists would do all they could to make sure they never became operational for connection to the grid.
- Fossil fuel lobbyists
- Power company lobbyists
- Fossil fuel worker union lobbyists
- Ship, train and semi industry/union lobbyists (that transport the insane amounts of coal and oil-related products)
You'd also possibly see the unions that cover anyone working with power lines as you'd be able to set up a bunch of independent grids and stop servicing/repairing, and start removing, high transmission lines that blanket the country which also could get various metal worker unions lobbying against it as production of these massive amounts of cable (if done domestically) would drastically be reduced as why bother crossing vast stretches of land when you can just drop a reactor in a rural area and just serve the region.
When/if we develop fusion reactors that are economically viable, you will remove thousands to hundreds of thousands of jobs in a relatively short period in the United States alone. Voters aren't too found of losing their jobs and the lobbyists of their industries have lots of money to burn fighting such changes (this is why you'll never see the IRS thrown out in exchange for something like a federal income tax only, it would cut 75,000 federal jobs over night and their union + the voting power of them and ever tax preparer, CPA etc would fight hard to prevent it).
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AS far as secrets, there are very few people that know where the United States keeps any of it's various strategic stock piles. Those remain extremely closely guarded secrets where a very small number of people know at any given time where that stuff is stored/warehoused, how much, what variety etc. That's not conspiracy, that's just cold hard fact, and that's stuff like vaccines/medicine/fuel etc.
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A hypothetical stretgic use:
The strategic value of keeping such a reactor/technology secret. If you can power your known underground bases/alleged DUMBs (deep underground military base), without needing any energy input from the surface you'd want to keep that very hush hush because it gives you far longer backup power capabilities than generators and fossil fuels stored onsite could provide.
Having such a technology also allows you to actually create DUMBs. You can make an electrically powdered tunnel boring machine, go to something like a known cave or mine site, point it in a direction and go for mile after mile if you felt so inclined. If you're doing this in an area with known caverns/an old mine you never even need to bring what you bore out up to the surface, you just fill caverns/mine shafts. Such tunnels and bases have been alleged to exist since the cold war days and they may or may not exist, but if you had a compact fusion reactor technology that was classified from the start, the longer you keep it a secret the longer you have to exploit it for such hypothetical situations as this.
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Edit: Previous HN comment about him/his work
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229721
Looks like he's previously worked on systems for 'Hybrid Aerospace-Undersea Craft' for something to operate both underwater and as an aircraft a compact fusion reactor would probably be what took it from being a novelty (like the various goofy boat-cars and car-planes) to an effective vehicle.
That's an interesting idea on its own. You could travel fast distances, presumably quite rapidly, through the air and drop below radar, slow down to enter the water and submerge, then proceed to whatever. Or you could act as a sub, if you're detected launch out of the water and accelerate away in the seconds of confusion you create when you suddenly go from a water target to an air target.
Similarly, it could simply be an awesome power source for a rather large seaplane. Rapid troop/cargo transport, even better if you could submerge for travelling in deep water then pop up in coastal water and seaplane in the rest of the way.
loses the rest of his afternoon to daydreaming about a compact fusion reactor.
Increasing productivity means more resources are needed though. During previous expansions, this wasn't much of an issue however now it could be the genesis for a new world war so 'the powers that be' whether our known governments and militaries or some 'secret shadow government' both would likely be hesitant to unleash really cheap and bountiful energy.
It would be great for powering our homes sure, but you'd suddenly get every major automotive manufacturer seriously looking at EVs because who wants to pay 2.85 a gallon of gas when the equivalent in electricity is ten cents? So great, EVs for everyone... but where do you get the precious metals and the lithium and other rare earths from when you suddenly increase the demand one or more orders of magnitude?
Then electronics developers stop worrying about being as energy efficient as possible, so you start generating a ton more waste heat and you've got people being more liberal with their air con or heating at their homes which goes through refrigerants faster and goes through heating elements faster.
And with cheaper energy people start driving more for road trips, even with EVs, you start to see more and more rubber going into the environment via the tires. And with that cheaper energy, fuel prices go down and more people start flying places and further disrupting resource allocation/logistics globally.
And with that cheaper electricity, those autonomous EV delivery vehicles become the norm and you're always 30 minutes away from Uber eats or Amazon Prime Now and "oh man, I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet, well I'll order another and it should be here while I shower" and that's 20 miles more of rubber deposited onto the roads, another cardboard box, another insulated container because once you got out of the shower you decided you wanted some ice cream and placed a second order which is another 20 miles worth of rubber and an insulated container into your trash...
Dirt cheap, clean, unlimited energy would be the greatest thing ever to happen to humanity and quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to humanity as it would be a genesis for even greater amounts of disposable goods.
The impact it would have on mining alone could be incredibly damaging to the planet. A lot of mining equipment is still fossil fuel powered which severely restricts how deep/far/etc you can go and at what concentrations mining a given location stops being worth it. When you effectively remove the energy costs, you can mine much lower concentrations and go much deeper and even mine far more remote (and pristine) areas because you could fly in a reactor in cargo containers and assemble it on site.
I'm all for fusion, for space exploration alone it would be monumental. We could send probes to nearby stars and have return missions within a decade or two if you spend the bulk of the first half accelerating with ion propulsion, then flip and start reversing thrust, get some data in system, slingshot around the local star and start accelerating back...
But I see a lot of potential bad that would come from affordable and scalable fusion (or magical zero point energy for the sake of argument) as we've become a "use my phone for 18 months and throw it away for a new one" and "let's fly to see the pandas/tigers/whales/elephants/penguins next week for our third international exotic animal trip this year" society.
We're generally pretty poor stewards of our planet as a species and while unlimited clean energy would certainly get us off fossil fuels, it wouldn't stop the many other ways we harm our natural and man made environment.
We can terraform this planet by greatly reducing our generation of greenhouse gases, plastics, and other materials. This sort of terraforming does not require magnitudes cheaper energy.
We can look at other projects, like Bussard's Polywell. Either all of these lobbyists could figure out that it wouldn't work out, so didn't fight the development, or there isn't a major lobbyist effort as you describe it. I strongly suspect the latter.
Or, consider nuclear power during the 1950s, when the fossil fuel worker union was far more powerful than now. What lobbying effort was there, and it doesn't seem that effective.
Or, consider whale oil, which once a major industrial oil. Despite the number of people involved in whaling, and the money involved, it was replaced with other oils. (Wikipedia says it was used in transmission oil until the 1970s!)
The strategic effort you mentioned are essentially the same as those used in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program . Mining requires more than just electricity - look at how much work the Gotthard Base Tunnel took, and those were all electrically powered. Where do the spoils go? Where are the ventilation shafts?
As for "there are very few people that know where the United States keeps any of it's various strategic stock piles" - what are you talking about? The strategic oil reserve locations are located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(U... , the National Helium Reserve is listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve with lat/long even.
Again, the benefits of secrecy you mention are far, far outweighed by the benefits of it being public.
In a situations here this is rolled out for use to replace power plants and not for classified military applications, thus the various civilian industries and their lobbyists mentioned. I thought this was pretty obvious given I mention a laundry list of civilian industries that the bulk of which are comprised of private and publicly traded companies that are not defense related industries.
>As for "there are very few people that know where the United States keeps any of it's various strategic stock piles" - what are you talking about?
Stuff like the SNS which is 1 (more likely than not there are multiple locations with only public acknowledgement that 1 warehouse exists given a natural disaster or nuclear attack to a single region could effectively destroy the only stockpile) plain, unmarked, warehouse that the location to is a closely guarded secret due to the fact that someone simply driving a tanker full of a flammable material, then igniting it, through one of the doors of the warehouse could destroy the government's strategic stockpile of antibiotics, vaccines, chemical antidotes, antitoxins, PPE equipment, respirators and other critical medical supplies making it a highly valuable target to both foreign governments and terrorists.
And the things that simply aren't public knowledge at all.
I mean, every few years someone stumbles upon Cold War stockpiles that had been forgotten like back in 2006 when stockpiles of rations and medical supplies were found in the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge.
But I'm happy for you that you can google 'strategic stockpile' and link me to a helium supply that the government has already order shut down and sold off (which has been covered by podcasts like Planet Money this year).
Your statement was only "if we had a relatively small fusion reactor".
Nothing in what you wrote marked the transition from having a highly secretive small fusion reactor to one which was being 'rolled out for use to replace power plants'.
Please don't be so snide. I'm not completely ignorant.
I mentioned those strategic stockpiles because they were the ones I knew about, from years ago. I also know about Quebec's maple syrup reserves because of the theft a few years back.
And, the "any" in your statement "any of it's various strategic stock piles" typically means all of them, not some of them. Which is why I asked for clarification. And the National Helium Reserve is still around, making it is a valid example.
Thorium reactor's are supposed to deliver more cleaner energy than uranium reactors but the technology was ditched because you cant fit a thorium reactor in a sub.
When it comes to nuclear power the needs of the country have always been second place over giving the military an advantage, there is no reason to believe this has changed.
A comment from r/fusion: "I read through the patent application and it seems like total bullshit to me. It's filled with technobabble and unimportant details while explaining nothing about the proposed fields and ion motion."
https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/dga6yc/the_navys_pa...
Id like to see something more than random internet people saying it looks like nonsense without much for selling why.
Getting to the bottom of if this guy is really working on these things in the Navy for example
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190295733A1/en?invento...
My point being that I haven't seen any criticism that seems credible or any at all outside people treating fusion like it's fairy technology or armchair physicists. The same could be said about praise, to be fair.
I agree it'd be nice to see commentary from a non-anonymous fusion researcher. But it's possible to be skeptical of vague claims from people who've "invented" both working fusion and inertia manipulation, without thinking fusion is fairy technology. There are lots of fusion projects with real experiments and clear publicly-known details on their physical principles. Here are some:
ITER (the big dog, a giant tokamak)
Wendelstein 7-X (stellerator)
Tokamak Energy (high field tokamak)
Commonwealth (same, from MIT)
First Light Fusion (inertial confinement with fast projectile)
HB11 Energy (petawatt picosecond laser for boron fusion)
TAE (formerly Tri Alpha, boron fusion with magnetic confinement)
Helion (deuterium/he3 fusion, with funding from YCombinator)
General Fusion (compression by acoustic shockwave from steam-driven pistons)
LPP's focus fusion (uses a plasma configuration that collapses itself into high compression)
Sandia's Z-pinch
ZAP Energy (a private z-pinch effort)
Ummm... Isn't it more important to say that current reactors don't even work (at least not yet)? A working one would be a game-changer, never mind how big or small it was.
* Keeping the reaction going indefinitely in a controlled way
* Doing so without the system power input being greater than the power output
They don't work as in produce power.
Teenagers build "working" fusion reactors.
No one has built a fusion reactor that produces useful power.
It's amazing to me that the ET/UFO cranks would take the publication of these patents at face value.
As others have posited, likely another explanation is warranted: 1) luring foreign militaries down blind alley's of expensive research, 2) putting out these patents to only later debunk them and thereby possibly muddying the waters for some legitimate revelations, 3) a simple prank, etc. etc.
Is it possible to verify that the filer is legitimately the U.S. Navy, or could anyone just file a patent and list the Navy as the assignee?
The answer is they want to.
There are factions within the US government and it seems that the "tell them, but take it real slow" faction is presently in the ascendant.
You seem to be leaning toward an extraterrestrial explanation. I'm not saying you are definitely wrong, but it seems like a very low probability explanation and one that defies the principle of parsimony.
They have been sitting on this stuff. They still are sitting on 99.9999% of it, is a reasonable assumption. They are choosing, deliberately, to gradually change attitudes. Part of the gradualness is maintaining intentional levels of ambiguity that can be slowly, slowly dialled down.
All of this is kind of orthogonal to what they are sitting on. Doesn't have to be ET.
Link? Who are these people? Are they credible? Do they seem rational, reasonable, and (highly) skeptical?
> They still are sitting on 99.9999% of it, is a reasonable assumption
There is nothing reasonable about this assumption.
> All of this is kind of orthogonal to what they are sitting on
Huh? How? Why?
This is all veering into conspiracy-theorist-cum-crackpot territory. You are doing some extreme extrapolation from very thin and inconclusive evidence.
Decommission the internalized cover up ("If you see a UFO you are a kook and will lose your job"). This gets in the way of receiving useful intelligence reports.
(Partially) decommission the external cover up, at least enough that the public sees UFOs as a known but unexplained phenomenon. And as military business.
Paradoxically, cover up the cover up itself, by acting like all this stuff is new to them and hasn't been under observation since the 1940s.
Obtain funding due to the public not liking UFOs poking into their airspace without permission.
Bring technologies out into the mainstream, commercially or militarily. Looots of funding.
It feels looking in from outside, as if there are "pro continued cover up" and "pro managed disclosure" factions, and they are in a bit of a stand-off. The recent disclosure that the videos were genuine, for example, felt like the one faction had bought the release of that shocking information with the apologetic concession that "but they were never meant to be released to the public" which was included in the same statement.
That somebody on the internet (or an organization full of cranks like TTSA) can say they watched the "full video", and you don't even question it, is telling. Unfortunately this, like the entire recent narrative of some sort of a "disclosure", seems more like a fantasy invented by UFO enthusiasts that really wish it to be true, than something based on reality.
And by reigniting the UFO narrative, they are more likely to receive reports and data from the public who may be looking for Aliens.
Interestingly, if this were true, it might imply that there is some pretty funky military tech out there, not owned by the US, that might have some interesting capabilities.
Things drones can't do: go fast enough to cross the sky in a blink, stop on a dime or turn sharp corners at jet speeds, travel at jet speeds at all - without an obvious and loud model jet engine, create slabs of light or opaque surfaces, block the stars behind them like a solid object, be eerily silent.
Eh, if you have an LED screen in the sky, you can create the appearance of a lot of things.
* https://www.metabunk.org/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-navy-jet-en...
* https://www.metabunk.org/are-the-navy-ufos-real-or-just-in-t...
* https://www.metabunk.org/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-navy-jet-en...
* https://www.metabunk.org/ttsa-videos-declassification-email-...
This echoes the 2013 Aguadilla Puerto Rico UAP/USO incident:
* Aguadilla Infrared Footage of 'UFOs' - Hot Air Wedding Lanterns
https://www.metabunk.org/aguadilla-infrared-footage-of-ufos-...
... While "real," those videos in fact show (as the Navy must be well-aware) easily explained FLIR artefacts; e.g. distant jet fighter exhaust ports. Wittingly or unwittingly, the US Navy / TTSA / Elizondo et al. apparently are part of an elaborate, ongoing disinformation campaign.
----------------------------------------------------
* $21 Trillion Missing From US Federal Budget
https://www.globalresearch.ca/21-trillion-missing-from-us-fe...
Military-industrial complex / "threats" / USAP black budget funding:
Communism | Cold War >> asteroids (SDI) >> war on terror >> AATIP (Advanced Aerospace THREAT Identification Program): unexplained aerial phenomena? >> Oh no! ETI threat!! >> $$$$
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ&t=35m50s
[A cube floating into a spherical force field]
It made me thought of Salvatore Pais other patents on the subject.
At the end of the day, they're either trying to convince other world powers that we have tech we don't, or they're warning others that we do. The only other possibility is, as you suggested, some kind of hoax or prank.
Who knows where the truth really is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
Which, with how it panned out, does fit: "1) luring foreign militaries down blind alleys of expensive research" most aptly, albeit not put into the wild via a patent and more case of funky CGI graphics pushing a dream as reality.
Remember this was still with the whole Moon landing era fresh in mind for so many, that was also a President's speech dream, that seemed equally as wild and fantasy at the time. Yet that happened. SDI was, given the media mindsets of that era, easily to latch onto as - it's going to happen.
Today, we are more cynical/pragmatic/realistic in mindset and with that, do question things and able to do so en-mass more easily with the internet than ever before.
But 30 years later, and only starting to see lasers deployed upon very large ships - shows how long it can take from feasible towards practical and dare say, still kinda in the flintlock stage of it's evolutionary cycle. But then, we may well see power generating inventions born out of the need to power these things, trickling down into consumer hands, which would tie in with the title most aptly.
(See: Alstom purchase by GE)
To protect the invention from commercial patents?
Sounds sensible to me.
prior art.
Prior art is only difficult to prove if you're relying on something along the lines of folk knowledge among the indigenous peoples of the lands where the Jumblies live.
It's non-obviousness that is notoriously difficult to prove.
Can you elaborate on this? Japan, for example, requires you to disclose any prior art during application similar to the U.S. Israel recently adopted similar rules. These disclosures frequently include US and foreign (WO, EP, etc) patents and patent publications.
> A country that is first-to-file can file the patent then stop your domestic company from using the tech.
Assuming you filed first in your domestic country, then you just apply in the foreign country and claim priority from your domestic application - thereby granting your application an even earlier effective filing date.
If you publish a design, it becomes prior act, and nobody can patent it. You can even do that in the patent office without filling a patent, making them the registration of your design, without patenting it.
It seems clear to me that what they want is to appropriate someone else design because I do not believe they have a working prototype of this.
If they wanted it, they would get it, no?
We're talking about bending gravity powered by a small fusion reactor.
I would assume or at like to believe this is true with federal government patents, but it's not true for state governments, government-funded universities, etc. It would be nice to have a law or official policy to point to that states outright that the federal government can't or won't sue anyone for using the technology in those patents (or the opposite).
It is quite rare that government R&D is sufficient to demonstrate that a particular technology is commercially viable. Without a patent to license to a private entity there is little changc such an entity will invest the time/money to perform this R&D. They need that patent protection to raise funds.
I have personal experience with this process.
It's really either papers or patents, and patents are generally counted equivalent to two papers.
I'm not sure what other metrics could be used.
If I invent something and don't patent it, Bob might come along and patent it instead.
Alternatively I can file it as a trade secret, where there's documentation I invented it, but no public disclosure. So I don't get patent monopoly protection, but I can prove prior art if someone else tries to patent it. This wouldn't work for public research that isn't a secret.
Government research filings mean that someone else who didn't invent it won't be able to patent it, or at least as easily.
Patent examiners rely quite a bit on earlier patents to determine if something is new. They are not experts in all unpatented but invented research taking place in all fields, so filing this patent helps the PTO block similar patents filed later by other parties.
Also, having a patent portfolio of impressive things as the inventor of record, even if some other entity owns the patent, is very useful to your career. It's comparable to having a track record of published papers in prestigious journals. So allowing inventors to document their inventions with patents is likely useful in terms of attracting talent. A government agency, as employer, being owner of the patent, also prevents the inventor from going off and patenting it on his own after no longer working for that agency and thus privatizing the invention.
[1] https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/execu...
[2] https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9004.h...
I was under the impression there isn't a fusion reactor of any size anywhere yet, am I wrong?
Barring some random research breakthrough by a small team somewhere, ITER is probably the best bet for reaching positive net energy first: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
The problem is none of those reactors produce more energy than they consume.
There's are also bioreactors and chemical reactors. It seems to me the term reactor is just used for a device that induces reactions.
The definition of “reactor” doesn’t require generating net positive power.
Most of these devices use hydrogren most of the time, meaning the cross section of fusion even in high temperatures and densities will be low. If the goal of these devices was fusion energy they would all be using deuterium, at the very least.
The fields of plasma physics and materials have progressed to the point where a future reactor likely wouldn’t be a failure. Just look at W7-X and (in 10 years) ITER. Q=10 operation will likely be a very stressful test on ITER and it will likely only happen towards the end of its life (2035). Q=1 shots should be pretty early into tritium operation.
Seems like the HN community expressed scepticism/doubt about the science behind patents filed by this guy? (Also commented in the posts regarding the ufo sightings by us navy pilots).
> According to the patent, Pais’ plasma chamber contains several pairs of these dynamic fusors, which rapidly spin and vibrate within the chamber in order to create a “concentrated magnetic energy flux” that can squish the gases together.
If you will excuse the analogy, this sounds a bit like an electromagnetic equivalent to a Lagrange point. Is that a reasonable comparison for me to make?
Well, the Newtonian gravitational potential is far more simple to deal with than something like super hot plasma confined by a strong magnetic field. But yeah, you typically do not want that moving around the place, so I presume it's a stable equilibrium.
Also, it’s a patent application, not an issued patent.
Another idea is that by filing a patent, Congress could give that kind of patent extra long protection, extending the amount of time it could only be used by the US Navy.
> Related Videos XXXXXX YYYY Dash Cam Captures Accident
Seems popularmechanics.com needs to tune their what-is-related algorithm a bit. Or is it a subtle jab at "yes my boss says I need to publish this even though it's an obvious crank and it's just clickbait"?
See Google talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhKB-VxJWpg
Is it just an experiment to see who's dumb enough to give them their credit card information?