Historical research guide · 0031 · 2024
Lattice Confinement Fusion (LCF) Technology Utilized By Astral Systems Ltd
Theresa L Benyo · Lawrence Forsley
In one minute
NASA Glenn’s lattice confinement fusion team — Theresa Benyo as principal investigator, Lawrence Forsley as deputy — wrote this short report to record something new for the field: a company selling a working device built on their physics. Lattice confinement fusion runs fusion inside a metal solid. Deuterium fuel is packed into the gaps between the metal atoms, the lattice’s own electrons screen the repulsion between the nuclei, and a trigger such as a gamma beam sets the reactions off. The lattice holds that fuel indefinitely at about a billion times the density of magnetic confinement fusion, and it does it at ambient temperature. The British firm Astral Systems applied the two Physical Review C papers Glenn published in 2020 and got at least fifty times more deuterium–deuterium fusion neutrons than the commercial generator it replaced, with 99 percent of the reactions coming from the lattice rather than from the plasma. The prototype fits on a desktop. Astral told Glenn it planned to deliver devices in 2025 for the global medical radioisotope market.
Connection
This is chapter 12’s evidence that lattice confinement fusion has left the laboratory — the NASA Glenn result carried into a British company’s product line with a fifty-fold neutron gain and a delivery date, which is what screening physics looks like once it becomes hardware someone can buy.
From the source
Lattice confinement fusion accomplishes fusion reactions in a metal solid: deuterium fuel is confined to the space between metal atoms and, with the electrons in the metal lattice and a trigger such as a gamma beam, fusion reactions are produced.Opening paragraph
Fusion products were observed in an electron-screened, deuterated metal lattice by reacting cold deuterons with hot deuterons produced by elastically scattered neutrons originating from bremsstrahlung photodissociation, giving d-D fusion.Opening paragraph, Fig 2
Lattice confinement fusion indefinitely maintains deuterium fuel at a billion times the density of magnetic confinement fusion, and does so in a lattice at ambient temperature, creating an energetic quantum mechanical environment in which individual atoms reach fusion-level kinetic energies.Paragraph 2
Applying the principles of the two 2020 Physical Review C papers, Astral Systems Ltd boosted d-D fusion neutron output by at least 50 times over a commercially available predecessor generator, and reports that 99 percent of the fusion reactions are produced by lattice confinement fusion within their electrostatic-confinement plasma-based fusion in a single desktop device.Paragraph 4
Astral Systems planned to deliver devices using lattice confinement fusion technology in 2025, generating d-D fusion neutrons and anticipated DT fusion neutrons in quantities that enable new classes of conventional and short-lived radioisotopes to be produced locally for the global medical radioisotope market.Final paragraph
NASA’s stated application path for the energy released by lattice confinement fusion is small, compact, controllable power reactors — power for long-duration exploration missions, in-space propulsion, space-based nuclear medicine, Earth-based electrical power and medical radioisotopes — with the research funded by NASA Headquarters’ Planetary Science Division and the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts programme.Paragraph 3
The way in
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20240014095How to cite it
Theresa L Benyo, Lawrence Forsley (2024) Lattice Confinement Fusion (LCF) Technology Utilized By Astral Systems Ltd https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20240014095