HB11 Energy Might Be Bringing Fusion Energy Into Reality
Massive breakthrough in fusion technologies may just be happening. HB11 Energy and their aneutronic hydrogen-boron fusion just keeps rolling in simulations. Tokamaks might just be hanging on their last threads.
Image by Daniel Reche from Pixabay
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It sounds awesome. According to Warren McKenzie from the HB11 Energy start-up that was created with the University of New South Wales, their company managed to circumvent all the key obstacles that are standing in the way of fusion energy for more than half of a century. HB11 Energy just shocked the whole world by saying that their hydrogen-boron fusion works about a billion times better than anyone expected.
The thing is – people at HB11 Energy are no crazies. They hold many patents in fusion technologies in Japan, China, and the United States. At the same time – similar declarations from smaller projects need to be taken with a grain of salt and we will need to wait for the opinions of independent experts. Also, the fact that the webpage with the press statement of UNSW isn't working at the time of writing this isn't encouraging. But still, let's hope it is true as having fusion energy would be truly awesome.
No Tokamak And No Extreme Heat
Nowadays the majority of attention that is given to fusion energy is given to multi-billion dollar projects that are slowly moving forward such as the German stellarator Wendelstein 7-X or the ITER Tokamak. Usually, these monstrous projects use deuterium-tritium based thermonuclear fusion that requires temperatures higher than those that can be found on the surface of the Sun – around 15 million degrees Celsius.
HB11 Energy decided to take a different approach. Their technology does not use fuel that is rare, radioactive or complicated in any way such as tritium and at the same time, it does not even need extreme temperatures. Instead, it uses hydrogen and boron-11 – both common elements. This is a type of so-called aneutronic fusion – fusion during which most of the energy is released in the form of electrically charged particles.
The fusion reactions in HB11 Energy is being started by two lasers in a sophisticated way. At the core of the fusion experiment is a large and mostly hollow ball with a small pallet of fusion fuel at the center. The ball also has a few holes that allow lasers to get to the fuel. One of the laser beams creates a field that magnetically holds plasma and the second starts the fusion chain reaction. Alpha-particles get created during this reaction and those create electricity. The electricity can be practically immediately sent out into the energy grid and you do not even need any heat exchangers or a steam-based generator.
As Warren McKenzie says – their technology uses hydrogen as a dart that hits the boron. When it hits it can start the fusion reaction. It should be much more precise and effective compared to starting a fusion reaction by increasing the temperature as that is just waiting for random atoms to hit each other. During a hydrogen-boron fusion alpha particles get created. These are essentially the cores of helium atoms without the electrons so they carry a positive electric charge. This is being used HB11 Energy to create electricity.
Lasers in this hydrogen-boron fusion use a technology called chirped pulse amplification. Thanks to this the fusion electricity generators should be much smaller and simpler than any high-temperature fusion reactors. HB11 Energy claims that these generators will be small, environmentally friendly, and secure enough to be run even inside of a city. No radioactive waste, no overheated steam, and no risk of a meltdown of anything.
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