Index

UNDERSTANDING NUCLEAR FUSION

We shall briefly consider the deuteron-deuteron reaction to form an alpha particle (helium nucleus). A deuteron is the name that has been given to an atom of hydrogen that contains one neutron (besides the one proton, which makes the atom a hydrogen atom) in the nucleus. The neutron possesses a net charge of zero, while the proton possesses a net charge of plus one (+1). To fuse, two deuterons must bind together at the nuclear level creating a single atomic nucleus that contains two protons and two neutrons. This new nucleus is now a helium nucleus that only requires the acquisition of two free electrons to become an atom of helium. Prior to the capture of the two electrons, the nucleus is properly referred to as an alpha particle and possesses a net charge of plus two (+2). Whenever two deuterium nuclei fuse into an alpha particle, there is a net decrease in mass. For example: A single deuteron nucleus has a mass of 2.01355 Atomic Mass Units (amu), where 1 amu is equal to 1.6605 x 10-27 kg., so that the fusion of two such particles yields a particle (an alpha particle) whose mass is 4.00150 amu instead of 4.0271 amu. There has been a disappearance of .02560 amu! This loss of mass, called a mass decrement, is the binding energy of the alpha particle from the two deuterium nuclei. Put another way, to split an alpha particle into two deuterium nuclei would require that the alpha particle absorb 23.8464 MeV (million electron volts), which is the energy evolved from the conversion of .02560 amu into energy. This mass does not simply disappear, in the sense that it has vanished into nothingness, but is converted into the kinetic energy of the newly created nucleus. Thus, the alpha particle leaves the point of fusion at over 11% of the velocity of light! The kinetic energy of the charged particle can, in the SKYBOLTTM reactor, be converted almost entirely into usable electricity. Normally, the creation of an alpha particle by the fusion of two deuterons would lead to an instability in the new nucleus. This instability arises as a result of fundamental laws of interaction in the universe. Newton's third law must be satisfied that expresses that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The newly created particle with excess energy cannot simply accelerate away from an arbitrary point in space but must share its energy with another bit of matter. Normally, the nucleus would break down either into a (1) a proton and tritium nucleus pair (Fig. 1) or (2) neutron and a helium-3 nucleus pair (Fig. 2). In either case each daughter product particle would accelerate away from the other at the moment of breakdown with the same amount of momentum. If the reaction produced a helium-3 nucleus and a neutron the neutron's energy must be captured by a neutron absorbing material where the energy is converted to heat. If the reaction produces a proton and a triton (Tritium nucleus) the proton gets most of the energy and must also impart its energy to some heat conversion scheme in order for it to be useful. In either secondary reaction the neutron or the proton would carry away the lion's share of the energy because of its lower mass. The SKYBOLTTM Reactor, however, because of its design and operating principles prevents the spontaneous breakdown of the newly created alpha particle by providing a means to share its momentum with a new or rather previously unrecognized state of matter that can be described as a macroscale standing wave boson that we call a fundamental electromagnetotoroid (EMT) singularity that exists and is maintained in stabilize equilibrium at the core of the reactor. This allows the SKYBOLTTM reactor to catalyze reactions that are aneutronic (not producing neutrons) and permits a high energy conversion efficiency.

Fig 1

Tritium /Proton Production from Fusion

Fig 2

Helium-3 with Neutron Production from Fusion

Fig 3

Fusion of Two Deuterons Into An Alpha Particle (Helium Nucleus)


One deuteron has a mass of 2.01355 amu (Atomic Mass Units)
1 amu = 931.5 MeV. Also 1 amu = 1.6605 x 10-27 kg.

Thus the combined amu of 2 deuterons should be 2(2.01355) = 4.0271 amu
The mass of the resultant helium nucleus of alpha particle = 4.0015 amu
The mass loss or mass decrement or binding energy = 0.0256 amu

This decrement will be .0064 grams per gram of reactant. This mass converted into energy is equal to 5.760 x 1018 ergs and is equal to 159,996 kilowatt hours. This energy can be bought for approximately $9.73, which is the market price for one gram of deuterium gas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


CLASSICAL CONCEPTS

 

It would be beneficial, in an informative sense at least, to briefly describe mainstream science's understanding and explanation of the fusion process.

Since two like charged particles repel each other (according to Coulomb's Law), why does fusion take place at all?

Current concepts hold that if two like charged nuclei (such as our previously-mentioned deuterium nuclei) can be brought close enough together (approx. one nuclear diameter-about 5 x 10-13 cm), that a short range nuclear 'strong force' will take over and bind the two nuclei into a single new nucleus. Enough energy must be supplied to the interacting nuclei to enable or allow them to come close enough together so that fusion can take place. According to the classical theory, the energy that must be supplied to the interacting nuclei to overcome the force of electrostatic repulsion (known as the Coulomb barrier) so that the nuclei can fuse, is given by:

Energy required to surmount the Coulomb barrier 

= (ZlZ2e2 )/Ro


where Zl and Z2 are the respective charges (or atomic numbers) of the interacting nuclei, 'e' is the unit (or electronic) charge, and Ro is the distance between the centers of the nuclei at which the attractive 'strong force' can dominate or overcome the repulsive Coulomb force. For light nuclei, that are of interest in controlled nuclear fusion research Ro may be taken to be approximately equal to a nuclear diameter (5 x 10-13 cm), and since 'e' is 4.8 x 10-10 esu (statcoulomb) it follows from the equation that the energy required to surmount the Coulomb barrier is:

= 4.6 x 10-7 Zl Z2 erg

= .28 Zl Z2MeV (million electron volts)

Where 1 MeV = 1.6 x 10-6 erg.

It can be seen that the energy that must be acquired by the nuclei before they can undergo fusion increases with the atomic numbers Zl and Z2 For reactions among hydrogen isotope nuclei (deuterium, for example) for which Zl=Z2=l, the minimum energy according to classical theory is about .28 MeV. Larger energies would be required for reactions involving nuclei of higher atomic numbers because of the increased electrostatic repulsion.

These large energies that, according to popular theory, must be supplied to fuel nuclei, imply extremely high temperatures for the fuel gases. Achieving these high temperatures and containing the gases has consumed the mental efforts and research budgets of more than an entire generation of physicists. Even though billions of dollars have been spent to support the research and development of thousands of scientists over the span of the last fifty years, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) admits they are no closer to a solution than they were when they started. They were predicting 'ignition' (a reactor going to the initial self sustaining burn state) for the year 2025. DOE estimates that it will be many years after that before a fusion reactor can be made commercially viable. They have since backed away from estimating 'ignition' will be achieved by 2025. In 1995, Martha A. Krebs, then Director of the Office of Energy Research wrote to Dr. Robert W. Conn, Chair of the Fusion Energy Advisory Committee, School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego: "In 1991, the National Energy Strategy (NES), following a recommendation of the Fusion Power Advisory Committee, defined the principal goal of the fusion energy program as "Prove fusion energy to be a technically and economically credible energy source, with an operating demonstration plant by about 2025 and an operating commercial plant by about 2040." Having been advised that Congress has seen through this scam and has reduced funding for fusion, she then presented a draft to Dr. Conn where she stated: "In this revised program strategy, the focus of the U.S. fusion program has shifted from the operation of a demonstration power plant in 2025 to fostering improvements in confinement concepts and the underlying science and enabling technology of fusion." I think it entirely appropriate that she turns for advice to Dr. Conn since the whole fusion engineering program has been a tremendous con job foisted upon the U.S. Congress. Their continuous pitch is 'If you give us enough money we can make it work'. Well, the facts are that fusion researchers have been given obscene amounts of money and still don't really have a clue as to how to build a working 'ignited state' net energy producing nuclear fusion reactor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


LOW ENERGY FUSION CLUES

Glasstone and Loveberg in 'Controlled Thermonuclear Reactions', a paper they wrote for the Atomic Energy Commission in 1960, stated:

"Although energies of the order of magnitude indicated by (the) equation must be supplied to nuclei to cause them to combine fairly rapidly, experiments made with accelerated nuclei have shown that nuclear reactions can take place at detectable rates even when the energies are considerably below those corresponding to the top of the Coulomb barrier. In other words, there is no threshold energy, determined by the maximum electrostatic repulsion of the interacting nuclei, below which the fusion reaction will not occur. Such behavior, which cannot be explained by classical mechanics, can be interpreted by means of wave mechanics. It can be shown that there is a certain probability that two nuclei will combine even though they do not have sufficient energy to surmount the Coulomb barrier. This effect is commonly referred to as barrier penetration." It is also known as wave mechanical tunneling, or quantum tunneling.

So, as far back as the late 1950's, fusion researchers had evidence that fusion reactions were not necessarily catalyzed by extreme temperature conditions. The quantum mechanical interpretation of fusion does not deal with discrete real states of particles but only with probabilistic states. The clues were pointing to the idea that real pair-wise relationships developed between fusion fuel nuclei that allowed them to combine and that such relationships did not require high energy collisions. The fusion community had already developed the anti-thesis concept that pair-wise relationships that involved extreme energies led to nuclear fusion reactions. The success of the H-bomb bolstered confidence in this by suggesting that fusion fuel absorbed the energy of soft x-rays, which gave them considerable kinetic energy, and that, then, led to fusion. The problem with this is that there is no clear understanding of how a atom can absorb a soft x-ray and then from that absorption somehow have that converted to kinetic energy. The closest thing we have is the Compton Effect where heavy elements obtain some recoil but such recoil does not impart sufficient kinetic energy to surmount the supposed Coulombic barrier. When an atom absorbs a photon it is not the nucleus that is aborbing it but rather electrons may be boosted to higher energy levels and since the electron is thousands of times less massive than the nucleus it gets almost all of the kinetic energy so there is no real clearly understood method by which fusion fuel nuclei can really obtain as much energy as would be needed if the proposed mechanism of collisional fusion were to be true.

The weapons community at Los Alamos that designed the hydrogen bomb and made the hydrogen bomb work certainly would not be willing to accept the idea that their technology worked as well as it did without them understanding exactly how it worked. Consequently, when Project Sherwood, under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission was given the mission of harnessing thermonuclear fusion for peaceful energy purposes even the mission bore the taint of the prejudice. The prejudice was that fusion was derived from the high thermal energies of interacting nuclei. However, when it was found that nuclei would combine in spite of their lack of relative energy, the physics community merely believed that there were at least two ways to induce fusion reactions between nuclei. The first was to slam them into each other with considerable energy and the other, well, the 'other' way took place probabilistically and was of little interest. This is where they dropped the ball.

 












 

 

 

 



 


A NEW CONCEPT OF FUSION

This is where SingTech has come in to provide a new or additional insight into the tunnel effect mechanism. Current theories have all indicated that quantum tunneling, as it is sometimes called, takes place in accordance with certain mathematical probability functions. To date there has been no real viable theory that has provided a concrete reason why quantum tunneling takes place at all. In fact, researchers have been puzzled because the fusion cross-section of low energy deuterons have been higher than theory predicts. Current theories have permitted no mechanical or physical explanation for this behavior. That is, tunneling appears to occur, and the why's are hidden in the statistical maze provided by probability mathematics. Quantum mechanics whose principle of complementarity implies that nothing can be known about particles between acts of measurement also sets artificial limits to human knowledge of the basic structure of and interaction of matter. SingTech, however, has taken a new approach to the problem and can show that what has been interpreted as wave mechanical tunneling takes place as a result of specific dynamic relationships that develop and exist between the interacting nuclei. It is obvious that when two nuclei undergo fusion to a bound state they are in a more ordered state than they were in previously as individual particles. Rationale demands and dictates that the particles were in and passed through antecedent states or relationships of progressively greater and greater order. SingTech's advances are a direct result of understanding the character and nature of those relationships and conditions, and in knowing how to provide an environment conducive to the massive catalyzation of such relationships. We have demonstrated in modeling using only basic rules of quantum relative motion and Maxwell's equations and by experimental data that like charged particles in fact will display what appears to be very strong attractive interactions when they enter a common rest frame. That is, we have demonstrated that when like charged particles have little or no relative motion, that contrary to Coulomb's Law, there is actually a very strong attractive interaction between them. Quantum scale particles can be said to be occupying a common rest frame when they have a common de Broglie wavelength, lambdac, (calculated from a center of momentum frame) that is equal to or greater than the interparticle distance; in that situation they are overlapping in the same momentum space.  Bose and Einstein, in 1925, both predicted the condensation of bosonic atoms (the combined spin states of the nuclei and electrons of a bosonic atom is an integral number) into super dense states that correspond to these conditions. Any number of identical boson particles can occupy the same quantum state.  Seventy years after their predictions, evidence of such attractive interactions were demonstrated by scientists at several universities in widely publicized experiments conducted in 1995 and 1996. Cornell and Wieman at Univ. of Colorado shared the 2001 Nobel prize in physics for their work in this field. SingTech's innovation in this area is a patent pending means to induce overlapping momentum states in virtually all of the ionized fusion fuel nuclei by providing the means to organize them into state that is similar to a monoenergetic beam state. This has permitted the design of a reactor that not only accomplishes nuclear fusion but also can catalyze fusion reactions at any rate at that the reaction zone is supplied with fuel. This means that the SKYBOLTTM Reactor System will have a variable power output that can continuously be tailored to changing load conditions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 


MODERN APPROACHES AND FAILURES

Virtually all reputable modern scientifically engineered approaches to controlling nuclear fusion have stemmed from the successes of the fusion weapons program. Since the immediate ionized gas state environment of a detonated hydrogen bomb is over one hundred million degrees Celsius, and since such weapons do work and since it appears that they do derive the bulk of their energy release from fusion reactions produced in such an environment, it seemed a pretty safe bet to concentrate engineering efforts toward 'hot gas' devices. The assumption has always been, and it seemed to make sense, that to get a fusion reaction to take place between two nuclei, all one must do is to cause them to collide with each other with enough energy. Confident of early success, physicists in the richer nations of the world over began asking their governments to invest heavily into fusion related technology so that they could investigate ways to heat up and contain fusion fuel gases. The problem before them (as they have seen it) was to raise the temperature high enough (the greater the temperature of a confined gas, the greater the average energy of the atoms in that gas) so that a certain percentage of the nuclei would undergo fusion. They have believed that only if the temperature of a gas is raised to many tens of millions of degrees Celsius would the nuclei have enough energy to provide an acceptable rate of fusion reactions. Obviously, solid containers could not hold anything that hot without themselves vaporizing or at least without dissipating the energy of the gas below the desired and necessary temperature. When the temperature of a gas is raised up anywhere near the temperatures they believed was necessary for fusion, the gas no longer consists of neutral atoms or molecules, but is in a state where the outer electrons have been stripped away so that all molecular bonds are broken, and the gas consists, in large measure, of charged particles. This is called the 'fourth state of matter' or the 'plasma state'. Charged particles in motion can be directed and contained by magnetic fields. This is just one of the many engineering tasks yet to be fully solved by the traditional approach to fusion.

The ideal case, in mainstream modern science's eyes, would be to raise the temperature of a magnetically confined gas (plasma) to the point where enough fusion reactions could occur so that the energy released by those reactions would provide sufficient energy to initiate more reactions so that the energy produced overall would exceed the energy originally required to start the first reactions. Thus, after having brought the plasma to what is called the 'ignited state', one could shut off the external energy source, continue to supply fuel to the reactor and somehow utilize the excess energy produced. The principles as thus articulated sound straightforward, but no one has ever come close to producing a sustained stable nuclear fusion reaction system from which usable energy could be extracted.

Currently, there are about a dozen nuclear fusion reactors or test facilities in the world and not one of them has produced a single kilowatt second of usable power from a so-called ignited state. Not a penny's worth of excess usable energy has been extracted from any Tokamak, Shiva, Elmo Bumpy Torus, or Magnetic Mirror Device.  In fact, an ignited state has never been produced in any of the devices engineered and built to harness fusion for peaceful purposes. Now, the community of fusion scientists are loath to be weaned from the steady flow of taxpayer dollars and so have changed their goals to producing what they call a 'breakeven' state. Breakeven merely means that the amount of energy flux (flow) produced by nuclear fusion reactions out of the reaction zone or chamber is equal to the amount of energy put in to induce those fusion reactions. So, put simply, breakeven is when the fusion power produced equals the power required to create and heat the plasma. Ignition (concerning which they admit they are a factor of ten away from) is when the fusion energy produced is sufficient to maintain the plasma in a hot state without external heating. The idea is that scientists have sufficiently sophisticated instruments as to inable them to differentiate the energy invested from the energy extracted so that they can get a true measure of breakeven status. The big push now is to invest more tax dollars into a scheme called International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). So, the fusion scientists have gotten desperate because now they are essentially trying the ploy that "if U.S. Congress is too cheap to give us the money we need then we will rope the Japanese and the European communities into putting up the money for ITER and will work to politically embarrass the U.S. into kicking into this scheme". It seems they will do anything to keep this whole army of welfare queens in white coats employed. But not only do they strive to keep themselves employed in an area where they have shown no real success that would be indicative of their expertise but they have created a bureaucracy within and without the Department of Energy that is funded by tax dollars that does nothing but lobby for money and direct the funds so obtained to those who pass their own internal peer review processes. So the deal is that if one wants to be able to obtain funding for a fusion research program that the program must conform to the standards of the peer review process. The problem is that the so-called 'peers' have proven themselves incompetent in the field of fusion. Such a fox watching the hen house process works to insure that no real innovation that sharply departs from the status quo can get funding. Instead it merely works to keep money flowing to the same people; and those people have demonstrated a talent for spending tax payer's money within a system that has no real accountability process for performance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


COLD FUSION CONFUSION

In March of 1989, two chemists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, at the University of Utah announced that they had achieved a new type of nuclear fusion reaction in experiments involving electrochemical cells and deuterium loaded samples of palladium. Researchers the world over, despite thousands of experiments costing millions of dollars, have failed to duplicate their results. These failures over the last twelve years of the best labs in the world to produce positive results have been the source of much controversy in the world of science. The term 'cold fusion' has since become a synonym for 'bad' or 'pathological' science. Notwithstanding that SingTech's SKYBOLTTM system has no relationship to 'cold fusion' per any Pons and Fleischmann related process it should be pointed out that the SingTech's principle investigator was promoting low temperature nuclear fusion processes (verifiable via newspaper articles) at least as early as 1980, fully nine years before the Pons and Fleischmann debacle.  Nevertheless, the process associated with the SKYBOLTTM reactor design is related to a means to directly induce fusion fuel nuclei to obtain to a common momentum space by means of the use of an artificially created monolithic gravitational field.

The primary reason for failure in the field of controlled nuclear fusion energy has not been a lack of funds for research and development but rather by the fact that the mainstream particle physics community has not been in possession of a correct and comprehensive model of the interactive behavior of elementary charged particles. Because of this basic lack of knowledge, the community of physicists and engineers involved in nuclear fusion research and development have never had a correct understanding of the fusion process itself. SingTech, however, because of advances in these areas of knowledge, expects to begin, through licensees, delivering reactors to consumers and industry sometime between 2007 and 2009.

 

 





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

A MILLENNIAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

FOUNDATION STONE

 

We at SingTech are confident that understanding the 'General Case' (with regard to the interactive behavior of elementary charged particles) will lead to a major revolution in most of the sciences including physics, chemistry, geology, and cosmology and we look forward with excitement to see it expressed in numerous disciplines, and implemented in a great variety of technological innovations. We also believe that Singularity Technologies, Inc.'s SKYBOLTTM nuclear fusion reactor systems, when implemented around the world, will begin to have a major positive impact on human society. We also believe that distributed power systems present, in the long run, an extreme danger to the populations that depend upon them. In the event of a large scale natural catastrophe, such as a very violent earthquake, millions of people could be without power for extended periods. This would lead to social breakdown and to anarchy in major metropolitan areas. We also believe that the destruction of the power distribution infrastructure throughout the world is imminent. We at SingTech know that the SKYBOLTTM technology will contribute not only to the alleviation of much human suffering by providing power to people at a critical time in history but also by the production of inexpensive clean energy will also afford an opportunity for mankind to reduce the inexorable lethal pressure that traditional energy systems have inflicted upon the biosphere. This is the appropriate energy technology for the Millennial Age. We can all do the world an immense favor by doing everything that we can to insure that this radically new but exciting technology is implemented world wide as soon as possible. It is expected that SingTech and this technology will meet with a great deal of criticism and resistance from many quarters. Therefore, we encourage each person we meet to assist, by whatever means they are able, to help bring this technology to full realization. It seems most likely that those who support the development of this technology will be the first to benefit from it.