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We are less than 20 years away from putting the power of the sun on the back of a truck.
Just, keep Dr. Octo away from it this time, mmkay?
What we call, "nuclear power" today is really nuclear fission.
Fission involves splitting heavy isotopes of uranium or plutonium resulting in radioactive,
unstable elements.
It's the same as a nuclear bomb, except we're harnessing the energy.
We can do better!
Fusion power, takes isotopes of hydrogen and fuses them to create helium.
Fusion power is the promise of the future!
It's what our sun uses to keep alight and humans have been working to create fusion
for 60 years.
Now, this week, a secret project at Lockheed's Advanced Development Program called Skunk
Works believes they may have solved the riddle… and could have a working model in FIVE YEARS.
Most fusion plans involve a Tokamak toroidal plasma confinement system, I talked about
one such reactor plan a year ago, check it out.
The standard model is a torus chamber lined with powerful electromagnets.
Torus is a shape…
like a… doughnut.
Only the traditional designs are in excess of 5000 TONS and as huge as a building.
A coalition of countries is working on one in Europe now, slated to open in 2019.
But Lockheed's little beauty is supposedly only 10 meters by seven meters.
That's big-rig sized!
Fusion reactions work by turning isotopes of hydrogen into s superheated plasma of ions
and electrons inside of a torus chamber lined with SUPER powerful electromagnets.
The electromagnets are there to keep the hot plasma from touching the walls, because if
they do, the heat will flow from the plasma into the walls of the torus and it won't work.
Once the reactor gets the plasma hot enough -- hundreds of millions of degrees -- the
ions will overcome their electrically charged repulsion and smash into each other, fusing
and releasing MASSIVE amounts of energy with little radioactive waste.
The U.S. Department of Energy says if we can figure this out, the energy in 6 liters of
water will be equal to one TON of coal.
Lockheed says their compact reactor will be ready for military use in 10 years, and personal
use in 20, with no worries about nuclear proliferation (because fusion doesn't need bomb style materials)
and will be compact enough to ship anywhere and everywhere…
but critics are…
well critical, or skeptical… both.
They say they've done 200 firings of the reactor, and the lead researcher at Skunk Works said
that "it looks like it's doing what it's supposed to do," but no one else, as of yet, has been
shown any data.
Needless to say, without proof, things smell a little off.
If this DOES work and Lockheed Martin can finally created a stable fusion reaction,
then the world will be forever changed.
In the next 50 years, we could see virtually unlimited energy for everyone who needed it
and if it's compact enough, airplanes, ships, cars and spacecraft that could fly with zero
emissions for months or years at a time.
It could mean the end of fossil fuel pollution and mining.
And if the energy is as abundant as some fusion models predict, wireless power could be realized…
Which makes me think of the Protoss… you must construct additional pylons.[a]
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energy business.
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Want to know more about fusion?