The Lightbulb that lit the future.
Occasionally through history, the introduction of game-changing technologies brought quantum leaps to civilization. The fashionable, high-technology modern world of the 1880s was dominated with steam power, kerosene, whale oil, and candle illumination. High-speed trains and passenger ships allowed circumnavigation of the globe in only 80 days.
Edison invented the electric lamp in 1879. Some prominent scientific leaders felt that it would never amount to much. But the light bulb changed the world in ways unimagined back then. Ironically, the lowly taken for granted lightbulb is more responsible for our modern society than most people understand.
Early light bulbs were frail and plagued with operational difficulties. In 1883, Edison discovered current flowing between an incandescent filament and an enclosed element, calling it the Edison effect. Twenty-one years later, Sir John Fleming used this Edison effect to form the first radio tube, the Fleming oscillation valve. Two years later, Lee de Forest added another element, making the first electronic amplifier in history.
Humanity took a huge quantum leap, going from electricity to electronics. We went from the age of steam to the age of electronics. Common things today would've been unimaginable 146 years ago. Around the world in 90 minutes. Jet travel. Space travel. Advanced communications and medicine. All dependent on electronics. And electronics stands on the lowly lightbulb of 1879. Few then and today realize the staggering game changer that the lowly, ubiquitous lightbulb represents.
The quantum leap fusion power brings will change our world even more over the next hundred years than the change the lightbulb brought over the last hundred and thirty-five years, seemingly unimaginable, impossible changes. Unlimited, sustainable, clean energy. Clean fresh water. Carbon dioxide recycling. Elimination of radioactive wastes. Recycling and mediation of all wastes. Environmentally friendly transportation. Rapid solar system and interstellar spaceflight. Please watch our videos on these topics.
We are pleased to inform you that after more than 10 years of scrutiny, the U.S. patent office (USPTO) has granted a patent on our hot hydrogen fusion nuclear reactor. It is the eighth since 1976. The first fusion patent was granted in 1947 to Sir George Paget Thomson of Britain. This invention is a unique and patented means of efficiently providing sustainable energy in significant amounts. This reactor fuses hydrogen from water into helium. One pound of hydrogen from about one gallon of water produces the energy equivalent of burning 50,000 barrels of oil or 10,000 tons of coal. Carbon-free, safe, environmentally friendly, sustainable, and virtually unlimited energy for as long as we will need it.
Large-scale reactors using fusion reactive fuels and thermal power production (turbine-based) are the most comparable to fission power plants from an engineering and economic viewpoint. Both fission and fusion power plants involve relatively compact heat sources powering a conventional steam turbine-based power plant. Some fusion reactions produce tritium as a radioactive byproduct. This tritium can be separated from the waste and then used as fuel. Both fission and fusion may produce enough neutron radiation to make activation of the plant materials an issue (there are some fusion reactions with no neutron flux). Other than the low-level radiation of materials exposed to neutron flux, there will be no radioactive wastes with fusion. The main advantages are that fusion power produces no high-level, dangerous radioactive wastes and the fuel supply on Earth is virtually unlimited. There are no more than a few centuries of fission fuel reserves.
Fusion power proponents commonly propose the use of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, and/or lithium as fuel. As an illustration, consider a fusion energy output equal to the 1995 global power output of about 100 EJ/yr (= 1 × 10²⁰ J/yr), and that this rate of consumption does not increase in the future. The known current land-based lithium reserves will last about 3000 years. Lithium from seawater will last about 60 million years. A more complicated fusion process using only deuterium from seawater will have fuel for about 150 billion years. An advanced fusion process using light hydrogen from seawater will have fuel for about 1005 trillion years. Putting this in context, 150 billion years is close to 30 times the remaining life span of the sun and more than 10 times the estimated age of the universe. One 1005 trillion years is close to 201,000 times the remaining life-span of the sun, and more than 67,000 times the estimated age of the universe.
Our reactor will power a pressurized water reactor power plant. A conventional nuclear plant has a fission reactor within a reactor vessel indicated by its control rods.
In a fusion power plant, our fusion reactor will replace the fission reactor with a pressurized water reactor vessel. All remaining processes are unchanged. High-pressure water circulates around the reactor, absorbing emitted radiation and transforming it into heat. This heated water now circulates through a steam generator, producing steam to power the turbine. Cooling water circulates through a condenser, precipitating spent steam for reuse. Generated electricity is distributed to customers.
For the entire year of 2010, the US produced about 3,886 million MW hours of electricity. This would require burning 1,943 million tons of coal or 9,715 million barrels of oil. Our fusion reactors allow replacing all of this fuel with only 195,000 gallons of water, the amount in 10 16’ x 32’ backyard swimming pools. All this electricity could be produced with no carbon dioxide emissions or dangerous radioactive waste.