Darpa's Handheld Nuclear Fusion Reactor

reply to post by Kevin_X2


Are you kidding me Kevin? I even got a little annoyed at reading through posts then seeing some stupid ass post belittle the thread starter. I dont want to read that rubbish. If you have a point to make, make it without being an ass.

Anyway back on topic. This is interesting even if it is nowhere near happening. Im not even sure the US has any more funds left to spend. All the money seems to go to funding the war or military industrial estate +black ops! Thanks for the read anyway!

I just had a thought -

Maybe we are looking at this dealio the wrong way... We know that Fusion is combining the atoms (be they Hydrogen, Helium or whatever)... and to do that typically we would be looking at intense heat and pressure like what happens in the sun.

But atoms 'fuse' all the time in chemistry, 2 different things interact to become something else... I guess this would be along the lines of the fabled 'cold fusion' - any who just thinking out loud really, thats the only way I could see chip scaled nuke fusion... Have DARPA figured out cold fusion??? That would be pretty damn huge! (in a small chip scaled way of course)

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

That is not to say that the U.S. does not have black budget inventions which the public doesn't know about, but rather we are a bit more open than some other countries.

Microfusion is still classified in the US. goes by various names. There is a hole in the desert out near area 51 with tons of cables running between a trailer full of supercaps and fastcaps. That was probably from the 1978 Halite/Centurion series of micro fusion tests.

en.wikipedia.org...

Even if there are fusion reactor designs waiting to be built they would probably be more expensive than traditional fission power plants. A fusion plant runs hotter and would probably be built on a larger scale. Confining a plasma hot enough to sustain fusion might even be done more easily as an extra terrestrial application. I could see them replacing fission plants to reduce nuclear waste someday, maybe they are waiting till the world oil supply starts running low?

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

How much radiation exposure/fall out can we expect when one of these blows a gasket ..?

a reply to: junglimogli

Laser ignited fusion is a clean technology but is easier to implement in uncontrolled explosions rather than sustained reactions.
People experience the clean energy from the sun and dream of building a microscale model.
The idea has a lot of romantic appeal and was the subject of more than one popular science cover back in the 1960's.

The technology necessary to ignite a fusion reaction could be used to trigger a bomb so that isn't going to be made available in a small scale application.

Same problem with Graphene Supercapacitors. You can build them with sufficient energy density to power a car but they could short circuit and explode if damaged in a crash.

Well, as much as I hate responding to thread revivals from the prehistoric age........it might be a good idea to sort out nuclear fusion on a normal scale first before announcing any intentions to do it at a microchip level.

originally posted by: Mogget
Well, as much as I hate responding to thread revivals from the prehistoric age.......

Hahahaha! I didn't check when this thread was created, started browsing and came across posts I wrote 5 years ago! - Man that messed with my head a bit, not posted much on ATS in quite a while

Its pretty funny that there is almost a second thread within this one where two posters argue about insulting each other over the Internet. Get over it!!!

On Topic:

There are many Tech Projects that have been "hidden" which actually work. The OP actually had some objective evidence regarding his Post. Whether it is "coo coo" doesn't really matter.

Off Topic:

If you do not have anything to contribute to the thread that either adds upon the original post or has some valid arguments against than your just trolling. ATS at its finest in these times.