Lockheed Claims Fusion Breakthrough

On October 16th 2014, Lockheed Martin announced that it had made a breakthrough in fusion technology that would allow them to create a Compact Fusion Reactor (CFR). The breakthrough is the result of a 10 member team in Lockheed's Sunk Works, or advance technologies division.

Nuclear fission is the process that is used in current reactor technology. It is the process of splitting atoms, and can leave waste products that can contaminate the Earth seemingly forever. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is the process that powers the sun. And, just as it sounds, atoms are fused together to create energy. The resulting wastes products are far less radioactive with a shorter length of decay.

A fusion reactor makes use of a hydrogen isotope known as deuterium, which is found in sea water, and tritium which is derived from lithium. The most notable fusion reactors have so far all been of the Tokamak variety. A tokamak generates energy by fusing ions into a super heated gas known as plasma. The plasma is so hot that it can only be contained by means of magnetic constriction.

The difference between the CFR or T4, as Lockheed has named it, is the design of the magnetic containment vessel. A tokamak uses a toroidal or doughnut shaped containment design, which can only hold so much plasma before reaching its beta limit. This reduces the tokamak's ability to produce as much energy as it consumes. The Lockheed design makes use of magnetic field confinement, but in linear rings, or "cusps."  The CFR also makes use of axisymetric mirrors, which are magnetic fields that reflect any particle that might escape the vessel. This helps the CFR be more efficient.

The size and cost of a tokamak can also be extreme. The current Tokamak project being constructed in France is the ITER, an international effort that costs about $50 billion and when completed will be an estimated 100 feet high and will weigh approximately 23,000 tons. Because the Skunk Works team expects to also use a self tuning feedback system and particle recirculation, Lockheed contends that the CFR will be able to operate at 90% of the size of a tokamak. This means that it will most likely have a physical footprint of no more than 7 feet by 10 feet.

The CFR project is in its early stages, but the Skunk Works team at Lockheed believe that they can have a prototype up and running within the next five years, with use in military applications in 10 years. In twenty years, Lockheed expects to deliver a working fusion reactor to the rest of the world.