THE FUSOR REACTOR: Philo Farnsworth
But perhaps we may cite a general ignorance of the scientific community to their own treasures once again. Those fusion researchers, who made the most recent demands for federal funding, dared to project their promise of practical success out toward the year 2050! Never before has such an outrageous demand for monies been poised on such a precarious pinpoint. This bombastic announcement sounded more like a technological bribe, from individuals who wished to secure salaries and eventual pensions from government sources! Most skeptical individuals, themselves academes, would guess the obvious. While drawing heavy salaries, hot fusion researchers have nothing real to give. The modern charlatans at court. But, an historical shredding open of the technical evidence concerning hot fusion projects will prove most illuminating; the revelation being that controlled hot fusion was actually achieved … thirty years ago.
FUSION
Fusion Energy. What is “Fusion” energy? The atomic bomb operates when uranium atoms are split to release their binding energy. The controlled splitting of atoms in fission reactors produces heat and waste products.. Fission reactors need highly toxic uranium or plutonium and pose environmentally problematic waste disposal.
In his theoretical approach to the “problem” of solar energy, Hans Bethe proposed that the sun uses another kind of atomic process. Dr. Bethe claimed that the fission process, but the fusion of nuclei results in the huge release of energy in the sun. According to Bethe, hydrogen is the fuel for the solar fusion process; a gas which almost entirely occupies the solar atmosphere. In the solar fusion reaction, hydrogen nuclei are drawn together in ever tightening collisions. The gravitational force of the solar mass providing the “compression” power.
Increased collision among hydrogen atoms first produces heating, ionization, and finally nuclear fusion. This process requires titanic extremes of compression, which are unknown on earth. Nuclei, at a given radius, repel one another through electrostatic force. Within a specific radius however, the nuclear forces become prominent. With greater numbers of collisions, in ever-dense collision radii, free nuclei begin to “merge” on collision. Energy is released when the nuclei weld. Many readers often question how this is possible. While it is easier to imagine the release of excess energy in fission reactions, many have difficulty understanding how an “excess” energy can be released through a “merger”. In the early days of atomic theory, nuclei were not viewed as static structures of protons and neutrons. They were not seen as “locked” crystals without their own internal dynamics. In fact, nuclei were once viewed as very dynamic systems, having internal gaseous freedoms and particulate “currents” of extraordinary violence (Thomson, Lenard). Nuclei did not have to move in order to acquire this energy. They were possessed of the violent internal motion as part of their own nature. As such, different nuclei interacted as whole systems, each having their own internal kinetic energies. When they approached each other, they did so with great individual powers. Pressures capable of squeezing them together were thus able to cause a blending of the stupendous nuclear dynamics. But, entering thus into nuclear combinations, the internal energies entered into an arena having structural “rules”.
Despite the excessive independent dynamics of each nucleus, the rules of nuclear stability energetically constrain nuclei, which merge together. It is here that we see the great world intelligence at work, evidencing naturally preferred states of structural stability at a nuclear level. The states exist throughout space, manifesting during nuclear reactions. The strong nuclear attraction, which binds nuclei on collision, cannot become a stable form without some changes. Energetic changes. Each nucleus in the meld contains its own internal vibrations. Its own nuclear vibrations and currents. Each enters the fusion state with its own vibrational energy, trying to form a new and more stable nuclear “structure”. But there is a problem, which occurs when the hydrogen nuclei fuse. There is a sudden excess nuclear vibrational energy which each independently brought. If the fusing nuclei do not eject their own vibrational energies, the new structure they have formed will shear apart. What forces them to do this?
Energy states seek spatial geometries, which are “stable” and “secure”. The stability of that new nuclear structure demands that a certain energetic excess be rejected. The vibrational energy, which each nucleus once internally and independently possessed, is thrown outside the new structure, and fusion has fulfilled its operation. Each “new structure” is an helium nucleus. When hydrogen nuclei “fuse” into helium nuclei, they necessarily release neutrons, heat, and light. The process continues until “environmental” changes occur. Changes in the amount of hydrogen nuclei, their collision speeds, the density in which their collisions occur, and the amount of products being ejected will each modify the continual fusion process occurring in the sun.
In nature, the process is controlled by solar mass, heat output, particle output, and subsequent solar volume. The sun acts as an immense “balloon” of gas, expanding when hot and contracting when cold. Too much heat, and it expands. This slows the fusion reaction to a moderate constancy. Too cold, and the mass is pulled back by gravitational forces until the heating and fusing process resumes. In short, the gravitational force is responsible for arranging, maintaining, and governing the solar fusion reaction.
Studying these reactions and the mode of their manifestations, physicists began wondering whether it might be possible to artificially generate “hot” fusion reactions on earth. The idea would be to compress hydrogen artificially, welding nuclei together in a tank. The controlled fusion of hydrogen atoms produces extreme heat, but no radioactive waste products. This latter fact is the most attractive feature of a potential “hot” fusion reactor.
Furthermore, the fuel for a hot fusion reactor would be two heavy hydrogen isotopes. Heavy hydrogens, deuterium and tritium, are both found in seawater. Seawater! There is a world of seawater from which to draw fusion fuel. Uranium industries would collapse overnight. A mixture of deuterium and tritium gases would be the fuel for a hot fusion reactor. A hot fusion reactor would have to heat this gas mixture and contain its colliding nuclei long enough for nuclear hot fusion to occur. And here is precisely where our story begins. The engineering problems accompanying this supposed “simple” reactor proved to be insurmountable for most researchers.