Toward a More Abundant Energy Future: New Nuclear Technology

This article is cross-posted from Al Fin Energy

Intriguing developments in fusion:

Brian Westenhaus takes a fascinating look at Tri-Alpha Energy's approach to Boron fusion:fission. Brian's article complements an earlier piece by Brian Wang on the Tri-Alpha approach.

Tri-Alpha's approach is a hybrid form of fusion:fission, where high energy protons are forced into Boron 11, converting it to Carbon 12 in a highly energetic state. The Carbon 12 decays -- or fissions -- emitting up to 3 high energy alpha particles.

Tri-Alpha’s position is, “We want to know the energy and location of every outgoing alpha particle.” This is important because in a pB11 reaction the harvest is high energy Helium that can be used to directly generate electricity.

The news from Tri-Alpha is the discovery of two high-energy α-particles (alphas) – that will have a huge impact on pB11 fueled reactor designs because the alphas are much easier to extract and convert more efficiently into electricity.

This is quite significant news and powerful information that may apply to the other two leading pB11 fueled efforts, the Lerner Focus Fusion effort and the Bussard Wiffle Ball work. _Brian Westenhaus

79 page PDF document explaining this approach more thoroughly

Brian Wang has more recently discussed a report by Kachan & Co. on new nuclear technologies. Here is the executive summary of the report (PDF).

Kachan & Co. Nuclear Report Exec Summary PDF


In the excellent video below, Mark Halper discusses the future innovations in fusion and fission which he detailed in the full Kachan report. (via Brian Wang):

Advanced fission can provide humans with abundant electricity and heat for tens of thousands of years. Fusion can provide a further abundance of energy and heat for additional hundreds of thousands of years and beyond.

We have barely learned to extract energy from basic matter. It will take us a number of decades to perfect most of the technologies discussed in the video and at the links above. Will current energy technologies give us that much time? That depends upon the energy policies that our governments pursue.

Ideological green faux environmentalists -- who have achieved dominance in the US government, the EU government, the Australian government, etc. -- want us to reject advanced energy technologies, and to rely on intermittent unreliables such as the wind and the sun. Such policies would eventually cause modern societies to revert to primitivist quasi-feudal societies of a subsistence nature. Such an approach, if enacted, would result in the deaths of billions of humans across the planet.

It can be assumed that most intelligent humans -- if properly informed -- would choose an advanced technology approach to a future of abundant energy.

More: How energy from shale can help humans bridge the gap between modern technologies and future technologies...

America's Energy, Economic, and Industrial resurgence

Europe's governments choosing the darkness as the continent grows older and more feeble

North American shale bonanza promises stable global energy prices over intermediate term