The United States Air Force currently burns through an estimated two billion gallons of aviation fuel per year. It also operates a fleet of 490 refueling tankers that are absolutely vital to the national security enterprise..Most of America’s fighters carry enough fuel to remain in a fight for only about 30 minutes before needing to either head home or to a tanker to top off, and long-duration bombing missions are absolutely reliant on meeting these refueling tankers..But what if not a single drop of fossil fuel was necessary?.In fact, what if aircraft could go their entire service lives without ever needing to refuel? And, it would be limitless clean energy, making even Glum Greta smile.. The introduction of fusion power, could not only change aviation, it could change the world.The introduction of fusion power, could not only change aviation, it could change the world. .Impossible? Not really..According to a report in Sandboxx online, back in 2018 Lockheed Martin filed a patent for something it called a “plasma confinement system” — a device small enough to fit inside the fuselage of an F-16 Fighting Falcon that is capable of managing internal temperatures 10 times hotter than the centre of the sun..This scalable device was designed to play a vital role in containing an approach to power production that some still consider science fiction: nuclear fusion..Today, recent advancements in the field are making fusion power look not just possible, but potentially even feasible, Sandboxx reported..In the coming years, fusion could not only change everything about the way the world fights wars, it could even change the way humanity approaches conflict itself.. FusionFusion . Fission vs fusionFission vs fusion .And it all might start within the shadowy confines of the Pentagon’s black budget — both a blessing and a curse..As soon as mankind realized it could produce huge amounts of power by splitting the atom, efforts began to incorporate this new concept into just about everything, including airplanes..But despite several programs aimed at fielding such an aircraft propulsion system, atom-splitting fission reactors simply offered greater risk than reward when hurtling through the air at 50,000 feet, Sandboxx reported..Fission efforts did find a useful home in naval applications, with programs leading to today’s nuclear-powered submarines and super carriers. But aviation efforts like Project Pluto’s nuclear-powered SLAM missile or Convair’s NB-36 nuclear-powered bomber on the other hand, now come off as a bit crazy.. Air-to-air view of the Convair NB-36H experimental aircraft and a Boeing B-50 Superfortress chase plane during R&D tests at Forth Worth, Texas.Air-to-air view of the Convair NB-36H experimental aircraft and a Boeing B-50 Superfortress chase plane during R&D tests at Forth Worth, Texas. .Clearly, fission and aircraft don’t mix. But fusion could be another story entirely, and its potential is mind-boggling..Nuclear fusion could really be thought of as the opposite of the fission process leveraged by today’s nuclear power plants and weapon systems..Both are physical processes that produce energy from atoms, but while fission produces massive amounts of energy by splitting a larger atom into two or more smaller ones, fusion joins two or more lighter atoms into a larger one..It does however come with a risk: the fission process must be actively cooled in order to prevent a runaway reaction that could lead to a meltdown and environmental catastrophes like those we’ve seen in Chernobyl and Fukushima..Fusion, on the other hand, has no potential for meltdown and while it does produce some radioactive waste, it's radioactive half-life is just 12 years — compared to radioactive waste from fission plants that can remain dangerous for millions of years..It’s also predicted to be three-four times more efficient than even fission. Fusion reactors can be powered by two hydrogen isotopes called deuterium and tritium — the former of which is incredibly common in seawater..In fact, according to the US Department of Energy, the amount of deuterium found in a single gallon of seawater could produce the same amount of energy as 300 gallons of gasoline..But while scientists have been able to create fusion reactions in laboratory settings, it’s hard to maintain the energy required to superheat the reactor’s fuel to temperatures in the millions of degrees Celcius, as well as the means to contain this super-heated reaction..The core of a fusion reactor houses high-temperature plasma that must remain incredibly hot for the fusion process to work, which means having to pump a great deal of energy into keeping the plasma hot enough..To date, it still takes more power to produce a fusion reaction than can be drawn from it — but recent developments suggest the chase for efficient fusion could soon be at an end..According to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, headlines went abuzz in 2021 when researchers from MIT and a privately funded fusion company produced the most potent high-temperature superconducting magnets in the world. With a field strength of 20 Teslas, the magnets could lift more than 400 Boeing 747s!.The news was no less exciting in early 2022 when China’s research facility, dubbed the “Artificial Sun,” held plasma at a temperature five times hotter than the sun for a record 17 minutes..Similarly, in Europe, the thrill was palpable when scientists at Oxford’s JET lab produced a fusion energy output of 59 mega-joules, doubling their previous record..“The record is not only we have produced fusion, measurable fusion, and we have produced about twice as much as we did in 1997,” JET senior manager Fernanda Rimini told Newsweek in September..“But we produced it over five seconds, so it’s quite steady, it’s quite long, it’s as long as we can because the experiment really is not designed to last for much longer.”.The magnetic confinement systems used by most fusion reactors come in at least four forms, the most common of which are tokamaks, based on a design pioneered by Soviet physicists Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov in the 1950s, Sandboxx reported..In 2018, Lockheed Martin was awarded a patent under the somewhat unassuming name of “Encapsulating Magnetic Fields for Plasma Confinement.”.The fusion device it describes would use superconductors to produce a magnetic field that can house super-heated plasma within the confines of its reaction chamber 2,000 times better than any existing fusion system..It serves as the backbone of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works’ Compact Fusion Reactor, or CFR. According to the patent, their design allows for the construction of much smaller fusion reactors than previously thought to be possible..According to the Skunk Works, a single reactor using their confinement system could run continuously for a year on just 25 pounds of fuel while producing roughly 100 megawatts of power — enough to power the homes of 100,000 people.. Skunk Works team members at work on their experimental compact fusion reactor.Skunk Works team members at work on their experimental compact fusion reactor. .But perhaps the most intriguing inclusion in the patent is a reactor made small enough to be housed within the fuselage of an F-16 Fighting Falcon..Modern turbojet engines suck in air from the front of the engine and compress it until it’s usually between three and 12 times the density it started with. Fuel is then added to the compressed air and ignited..Turbofan engines work using a similar premise, but incoming air is split into two different flows: one passes through the fan and continues into a core compressor before being mixed with fuel and ignited before flowing out the nozzle..According to the Lockheed Martin patent, the combustor found in the existing turbojet or turbofan engines could be replaced by heat exchangers to produce the same thrust without the need for fossil fuels..The truth is, fusion power could change everything about everything, and the gateway to huge strides in many industries — from synthetic fuels to medical diagnosis, next-generation magnets to spacecraft propulsion, and transmission lines to cancer treatment devices – many of which are multi-billion-dollar markets..Aircraft could also go their entire service lives without ever needing to refuel, and while that might sound convenient to those who think of refueling in terms of filling our cars up at the local gas station, the truth is, it would be a much bigger deal than that, Sandboxx reported..Asked how long he believed it would be before fusion power was commercially viable, K Atomic Energy Authority’s CEO, Professor Ian Chapman, the man in charge of the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor, said:.“That’s an imponderable question and depends so much on energy dynamics, government policy, and what’s going on with carbon pricing,” he told National Geographic..“I never answer the question. I always quote Lev Artsimovich, one of the founding fathers of the tokamak [a prominent fusion reactor design]. He was asked this question at a press conference in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and his answer was: ‘When mankind needs it, maybe a short time before that.’ I think that’s still true.”.He likens the fusion chase to the Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s, highlighting how inconceivable reaching the moon seemed during Kennedy’s epic 1962 speech, but how allocating 4% of America’s GDP to the enterprise made it feasible..Unfortunately, practical use for it may just manifest first in the shadowy confines of an Area 51 hangar, an exotic submarine propulsion program, or another secret Pentagon initiative..If so, that would rob mankind of a very important technology.. The F-16 Fighting Falcon.The F-16 Fighting Falcon.
