Fusion Reactor To Melt Through Europa's Ice [NIAC 2023]
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- čas přidán 3. 06. 2024
- In this interview, I'm talking with Theresa Benyo and Lawrence Forsley from NASA. They are authors of a Lattice Confinement Fusion Reactor that got a NIAC award this year. A reactor like this could help us melt through the ice on Europa and Enceladus and have other interesting applications in space missions.
The extended version also includes additional questions from Matt Williams:
• [EXTENDED CUT] Fusion ...
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👉 More about the NIAC project; www.nasa.gov/directorates/spa...
00:00 Intro
02:30 How tough is Europa's ice
04:31 Lattice confinement fusion
14:43 How the probe will look like
22:54 What's next for the NIAC project
25:57 Other applications for the reactor
31:55 Where's the upper limit for the project
37:15 Going interstellar
41:10 Behind the scenes and additional questions
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You are free to use my work for any purpose you like, just mention me as the source and link back to this video. - Věda a technologie
It is not cold fusion or the ponds-fleisch experiment as many comments are saying. The researchers could have done a better job explaining it but if you google lattice confinement fusion you will find the details (mentioned in the video but easy to miss).
My own short explanation is that although deuterium gets confined inside of a metal lattice, unlike in cold fusion it also gets bombarded with gamma rays tuned to be adsorbed by deuterium giving the particular atom that adsorbs it very high energies and being confined near other deuterium atoms the likelihood of fusion is high.
Also the fusion is not there to produce net energy (this kind of fusion has been shown to happen without net energy production) but to produce neutrons that are used to cause fission in a controlled way.
That is very cool because you can use fissile materials that won't sustain a chain reaction or at masses that won't. As they mentioned it also allows using safer and cheaper fuels like thorium and it would also allow "burning" that fuel way more completely than a regular nuclear fission reactor.
It should also be extremely throtleable and could be almost completely off during the travel time which is quite useful for this application: Off during travel, max throttle while melting through the ice and a low setting once down there to just power the instruments and communications for longer.
I really hope they succeed, cant wait to see the Europa space wales.
Great addendum to the interview, thank you.
Interesting... my AI sensor went off.
@@Energine1 I think your AI sensors _are_ off. The style is way too human and there are typos.
Why don't they ever mention fissile material in the video or did I miss something?
@@unvergebeneid They did mention it but briefly at the beginning and then later too giving a bit more of detail but without really insisting on it.
If you blink you miss the mentions of fission so missing it is understandable.
Once again proving this is one of the most underrated channels of all time. Thanks for all you do Fraser and Universe Today team! And of course the researchers and everyone involved at NASA etc
You always bring the best, down to earth interviews. Make these fascinating topics accessable to folks like me 😊
Dudes claiming magical coffee can nuclear fusion, what is down to earth about that?
@@seditt5146 it made sense to me 🤷🏿♂️
If the water is freezing behind the prode, how do you transmit through 30 km of ice?
I'd be curious to see how big the cracks are near the geysers. We could probably get a small probe through there.
This is the first I've heard of Lattice Confiment Fusion. Can't say I understand it but it's intriguing and I'm looking forward to delving deeper. Thanks!
It was aliens I tell you 👽👽👽
Great show! I felt like Theresa Benyo was able to explain some of these technical ideas in a very understandable way.
Plot twist: Intelligent life exists under the ice. They view this as an act of war and wipe out humanity. I say we do it.
Just for the lols
Ok. You first. 😄😄
Plot twist - the aquatic aliens there worship an immortal tentacled deity they then claim to be asleep on Earth in the deep pacific crust. And the aliens speak a gutteral english with a very strong massachusets accent and they are completely xenophobically racist towards humanity. And they hurl a constant stream of superlatives and adjectives at us.
They would be like dolphins most likely, due to living in an ocean. Intelligent and sentient, but not industrial
@@ericv738 'twas a joke. 😏 Logic isn't necessary. 😉
Another excellent interview! You do these so well. Thanks for all you do. 😊
❤❤
I like the background you picked for the green screen!
Well, if we had a Fusion Reactor space exploration would be child's play.
Love your interviews.
Always conversed so well ❤❤❤
9:45 itws amazing how chill this awesome dude is as he reveals simple fusion(functional)
1:23 GladOS confinement is very necessary indeed
Following power generation, cable shear seems like the real challenge for exploring under the ice of worlds like Enceladus or Europa. EM just doesn't like to propagate through water/ice very far, and any cabling up to the surface is going to have to be tough enough to survive ice shift/shear while being light enough to not totally shoot the mass budget for your mission on its own.
For now, the best alternative to a surface-based transmitter might actually end up being to melt/drill down into the water, do your survey, then melt your way back up to the surface to transmit your data.
Maybe the device could drop relays every meter or so depending on how far you could transmit through the ice.
@@alien1162 As you're melting through the ice it could drop relay pucks behind it that would be frozen in place that would give you a "line" to the surface.
Superb interview. I loved the questions about other application and scaling up of the design.
Fantastic interview! I learned a lot about different ways to propel craft in space and also how to try to melt through kilometers of shifting ice on Enceladus. There goes my idea of sending three Nuclear missiles to bust open the ice to get to the water. I will go back into my cave now. lol.
I thought dig a hole. Drop a nuke in it and repeat! Say 300 nukes.
What a great interview! Thank you.
Wonderful power concept, had never thought of it and it could have other long term applications. ** BUT ** as a probe? HOW do you communicate through 30km of ice? Any cable would be frozen in situ, any transmission killed by the water. Do we hope we could use some kind of sonic link?
9:00 i think she said we can use an 'ice VI' variant to host a dueteride infusion , and use it a a simple elegant fusion source
Thank you Fraser. I really enjoy the content, though only recently discovered your channel.
This is great - more NIAC interviews please!!!
Very interesting. Thanks Fraser
Great guests and conversation 👌 👏
What an exciting technology. Can't wait to see the followups!
Great topic and interview.
That was awesome!!!! Thank you!
Agreed
A probe could melt its way down but as the ice refreezes behind the probe, so then comes the problem of communication with the device, perhaps unwind a very thin cable but then any geological movement would sever the line. Many problems here but any problem can be overcome but imagine the pressure at 30KM below the surface.
The pressure is actually a lot less than you'd think due to the lower gravity. I don't recall the exact estimates but IIRC it's something like the same pressure under 10km on Europa as it is on Earth at 1000 feet below sea level.
@@stuartreed37 The gravitational acceleration on Europa is 1.3 m/s2
(Compared with 9.8 m/s2
on Earth). But on Europa there is 20/30km of ice floating on the water. Your statement is true but the scale of depth we are talking about on Europa brings us to nearly the same challenges as you would have going down to the Challenger deep here on Earth plus going to Europa and down through 20/30 KM of ice.
Don't forget about the triple point of water. No atmospheric pressure on Europa or Enceladus means adding even a modest amount of heat would instantly transition the ice to a vapor without any liquid state inbetween. It should make a hole straight through the ice, with all that steam expelled into space. Granted, that water vapor would recrystallize on the shaft once it cools down again and the probe is deep enough. The probe might also need serrated wheels on all sides to dig into the ice to apply counterpressure for all that steam. They have also used certain radio frequencies to map the ground kilometers beneath Antarctica's ice, so not all radio signals would be blocked if there were surface or relay probes.
I published a hard sci-fi short story in a Baen books anthology (Robosoldiers) a year or so ago about a scientist testing a NASA fast-reactor prototype in Antarctica (before the US military repurposes it to melt it's way beneath a Russian base). I didn't know NASA was working on something somewhat similar when I wrote it. I chose HESTIA as my traditionally forced acronym, Hexahedral Enceladus Surveyor with Thermal Ice Ablation.
@@PheedPhil I'm a ham radio operator and was an electronics technician in the Navy we had some VLF equipment that could communicate at that depth but the issue with that would be problematic, antennas need to be very long and use a lot of power, then after you got the info to the surface, you would need to convert that signal to frequencies for transmission home. I wonder if you could use low frequency sound like whales do? Just trying to exercise my 74-year-old brain but someone younger than I will certainly figure this out.
Loved the video, and NIAC series?
Could we distill deuterium from the water ice on Europa to re-fuel in situ if the Genie reactor works??
16:50 OMG!! self igniting?! amazing
This also seems amazing for district heating and other heating needs on earth
Great video, Frasier...👍
Thinking about all the ice displaced by the drill, wouldn't you want to catch it for rocket fuel? And don't you need the borehole open, for recovery of samples and signal?
So as it melts it's easy down, a communication cable spools out behind. Then on the surface there's some communication equipment.
The cable itself has to be robust against cold temperatures and high pressures and perhaps also shifting ice.
Unless it sends some kind of a radio signal directly through the ice.
Lattice confinement fusion should be getting researched and developed for here on an energy hungry earth as well . ITER looks like it'll be at least 60 years away before it's commercially developed. They both might never work commercially but 1 might and 1 might not.
Cool fusion
lukewarm fusion
Fleischman and Ponns style?
Turgid Fusion
@@Peoples_Republic_of_Cotati except that didn't work. At all.
@@massimookissed1023 neither did the 1st attempts at flight...but the principles were more or less the same. So....the principal here in both cases is an energized metal lattice squeezing Deuterium....needs improvement, but acknowledgement is owed to F&P.
That's exactly the principle behind the first 'H' bombs; very little 'bang' was provided by fusion, but the neutrons massively increased the amount of fissile material that 'fissed'. Surprised they didn't start of with, the whole A-Bomb parentage.
Cool video and concepts! one other challenge is presumably there are embedded meteorites that have accumulated in the ice over time. Are there strategies for a melt probe to avoid or redirect itself if it hits a rock?
That's a good question. We wouldn't want to get stuck after all the time and money spent. I'm sure some interesting science could be done but not what we wanted.
I've personally seen the IC ground when they was trying to excavate an area they dynamited the ice holes they had drilled and it just blew back out the hole you know the dynamite totally incredible what happened that
You would need a lot of dynamite to get through 30km of ice, which would be too heavy for a mission
Great content mate
"Duderate" is the best word. I love it!
Great vid 👍👍👍
Thanks
great stuff
There is an interesting reactor that is rapidly pulsed way into the supercritical where prompt neutrons heat the coolant way hotter than the fuel. That might offer the thrust of a nuclear thermal rocket with an isp of maybe 100,000 seconds.
the europa sub is so interesting, what if there is alien life!
Fraser is a genius for thinking of this NIAC series!
Glad you enjoyed it. The phase II NIAC awards just came out. Time to do it all again.
When specific impulse / ISP starts to get measured in days instead of hundreds of seconds... 🤯
Makes using their form of relatively safe, throttle-able nuclear technology worth it to me. I hope they get plenty of funding.
I personally think Enceladus south pole should be the first place to test this as the ice is way thinner. And the water pressure is less under enceladus ice sheets.
I hope we get some images back from under the ice in my lifetime. That would be amazing
Agreed. I can't wait to meet the Europan Space Whales.
The company Positron Dynamics (PD) also got a NIAC grant and they worked on a similar scheme except that they planned to use positrons produced by beta decay. I guess that the positron annihilation in the lattice produced gamma rays that would induce fusion.
PD never explained why the positrons would induce fusion in the deuterated lattice. So NASA's work could help explaining it.
So NASA has an atmospheric and surface probe for Venus, an octocopter for Titan, and a thermo-boaring submarine for Europa in the works. Of course a manned moon base and expeditions to Mars too.
That's my idea for geothermal with sea water, the lattice confinement part.
These guests probably sounded great on paper.
One of your comment popped a random question in my head: Is it even possible to have a chunky Uranium asteroid, like, a huge piece of Uranium inside it, something bigger than anything we have on Earth? And what would be the consequence of such an oddity to crash on Earth?
Cool stuff. I am beginning to think Space might well be the place where controlled fusion happens first. Once the materials get there or better yet if they can be mined there, the hardest part of nuclear anything can be bypassed. The whole regulatory shuffle that has held back some of the cleanest and safest power we have here on Earth.
POWER. POWER. AND POWER AND SURVIVAL.
I wonder what shape of object would be optimal for this. A long, narrow object with minimal frontal area, or a spherical object with minimal surface area per volume?
neither.
@@bikerfirefarter7280 At the risk of fueling trolling behavior, why do you say that?
@@dustman96 long/narrow probe would waste energy because of the high surface area, and the heat would be wasted on the walls of an already wide enough shaft. A sphere or L/N would both accumulate grit/debris at the bottom of the hole which would halt progress. If you could steer the probe it might be possible to sidestep the debris, but even then the issues/problems of a long tether remains. If an autonomous probe had sufficient energy it might melt its way back up (assuming the old shaft is closed/refrozen) and transmit stored data. Or the 'drill head' could remain as a data transfer and comms port for autonomous drone(s) released at the well bottom.
Wish I could hit that like button more than once. I rarely get a chance to catch your Monday Q&A episodes live (I'm a working man), and I usually catch up on CZcams in the late evenings after 12-hr days, but this interview was worth dragging myself back to the computer (instead on watching on the TV where I cannot hit that like button) and watching this a full 2'nd time through. Thank you Fraser!
I can’t tell you how much I DISLIKE THE IDEAS THESE TWO WEIRDOS COOK UPNHERE…. WHY NOT JUST SEND 500 NUKLEAR BOMBS UP THERE WHILE YOU ARE AT IT - ARROGANT USELESS SCIENTISTS 🤮🤮🤮🤮
Is there a version of the video without music ?
Hard to imagine what kind of design would be the size of a coffee can while also being able to lay a heavily insulated cable in those conditions for 20+ MILES.
The only way I could begin to imagine this working is if the lander was the size of a small house.
There has to be a better way.
They invent a new way of fusion as a side project ?
Reload it like a shotgun or cannon for reactor or bring extra reactor so can reload and prolong the mission not scientist just curious.
How do you keep ice from freezing around the cables to the surface of Europa?
You let the ice freeze the cable in place behind you as you drill down.
How does the probe communicate with the surface once the kilometers of ice have long frozen above it ?
There is a design for a fission fragment engine using plutonium with an isp around 1 million seconds. I reckon it is low thrust probably micronewtons
Doesn't ice in a vacuum sublimate to Gas instantly? would you drill a hole hit liquid and slowly drain evaporate the core?
12:24 A thermonuclear explosion in slow motion? Sorry Fraser but what you are thinking about isn't an explosion, but fire. The gamma ray trigger is like the oxygen that keeps the thermonuclear fire burning at a steady rate.
Doughnut shape lattice reactor with no ends?
The guy being interviewed says Enceladus the same way you say enchiladas
Can't wait till we finally pierce the iceshell worlds, i hope it will be soon so I'm alive to see it
wow, this is a great idea. I hope they succeed
If you want to use electricity to cut or melt the ice wouldn't it make more sense to use a fission reactor seeing that they exist?
I was just going to mention the tidal shifting of the ice would break any cable while ice isn't very transparent to radio signals when those issues were mentioned. Oh well!
Question: What could life in Europa be made of? Wouldn't skeletons sink to immense depths much more often than new material is freed from the ice, meaning the water becomes purer and purer?
Is that the same thing happening to Fukushimas core?
Specific Impulse of 1 MILLION seconds?!. That's 11.5 DAYS...per kilo of fuel? Good lord. I wonder about the thrust and how you could tune that.
If you halved the ISP would that double the thrust?
The mind boggles at the thought.
Great interview!
Question:
Perhaps I missed it... but what if said probe runs into rocks/pebbles etc. embedded in the Ice?
I guess that will be heated as everything else and melt the ice as the "thing"
Melting upwards is easy, downwards just wont work for many reasons.
@@bikerfirefarter7280 😂 whatever you say boss
@@bikerfirefarter7280
Give us one reason
@@gilbertozuniga8063 1) As 'KerryLiv' said, rocks/pebbles will settle in the bottom of the melt-pool and halt progress.
2) Hot water rises, this will dissipate heat mostly upwards, eventually convection currents will take all the heat away/upwards.
3) Even if you could jet the hot water downwards the above two effects would halt progress.
4) The heat capacity of water/ice is so great even a nuclear reactor would struggle with the thermodynamics, plus said NR would heat/irradiate the rest of the probe.
There are several other reasons.
I'm not saying its impossible to penetrate the ice, but just melting straight down wont cut it (scuse pun).
I appreciate this interview very much. Wouldn't a couple of PowerPoint slides go a long way to clarifying an overview and some details of this novel system? Just a politely submitted thought.
I have a question:
Why do we believe/ How do we know that the ice is "x" kilometers deep?
Is this an estimate, or have we calculated it based on observed phenomena?
Estimate. Hopefully JUICE or Clipper will give us more accurate depth info before we try to send a probe like this.
@@stuartreed37
Thanks, man.
Wow talk about burring the Lede. They're developing an interstellar propulsion power source that we could also employ on Earth to balance the renewable power grid!
Fraser how much fuel for this propulsion sustenance could a space x starship carryand how far and fast could you go?
Question: there will be rocks intermixed with the ice, since meteors exists. What are changes of hitting a rock when melting through km's of ice?
Naboo
I don’t know why I took so long but I really enjoy these science fiction space related books
Oh thanks, glad you're enjoying them.
What's the danger of the ice shifting around and snapping the cable?
A sensor network with nodes placed every 100 meters might be able to convey a message down below the ice.
“Power, power, power” and “food, food, food”
Fusion fast fission? Deuterium to make neutrons to fission plutonium?
Why not make entry via the funnels made by the geezers coming out of Europa as seen by the Juno probe. Surely this would provide a more direct route with less issues concerning melting through ice as the fissures would already be there.
Good point but it's most likely too hard for a self propelled robot to get in at the right time. Those geezers would solidify quickly and be more difficult to go through considering their height?
Why not a fusion laser instead? Seems more practical to drill with it from orbit.... if it could be stationary?
Yes powered by a hypermatter reactor. All we need are the giant kyber crystals🤣🤣
Dreaming has led to space long ago, time for dreamers to take us to other galaxies.
Gonna need to perfect a whole new energy tech first ? ETA is 2100 or so?
wouldn't the water pressure push the vehicle back up when it broke through the ice and hit the water?
That is a good question 🤔 but I don't know hope someone does, but I saw this an my brain said "this isn't a good idea" I mean let's say something catastrophic happened we haven't counted on an we irradiated a whole moon we might have lived one day
Unless you are pumping out liquid from the hole onto the surface, material that the probe had melted and passed through would just re-freeze as the probe descended, sealing the hole. Even trying to keep the hole clear might not be possible; the weight of the ice crust would squish frozen material into the gap, so you would have to do some serious reinforcement to have an open void space above the probe as it descended.
Nope, Its supporting the ice. And the water would freeze after the probe passes.
@@defective6811 The buoyancy of the probe would have to be carefully controlled, wouldn't want it trapped under the ice, or to plummet to the bottom. It would be pretty cool to see what's at the bottom though. I wonder how transparent the water is under there.
As long as the probe has higher density than the water around it, it'll sink.
If the fuel source does no need to be enriched could nuclear waste be used. If so would this help solve the problem of what to do with this waste?
It's like they are describing a sub-atomic mayonnaise; mayo is an emulsion of oil-in-water phase - oil molecules suspended in a water lattice.
But instead of being a liquid emulsion, it's sub-atomic particles?
We need a ksp mod for the coffee can / wine barrel drive.
It would be OP
Can we create matterless gravity?
Seems to me it would be best to pump all the water out of the hole as it is melted so it won't refreeze on top
Intrestring interview! Thank you.
yet another fascinating and inspiring interview, thank you.
19:05 what is a coffee can?? a starbucks double shot can or a tin of cafe du monde???
Methinks the latter.
why not design the cable as a conductive chemical trail that will defuse into the ice as it melts?
I doub't that would work but a very interesting idea! Or maybe they could use the conductivity of the water ice somehow.