Fusion Reactor from UCLA

[asian1]

There is a report about mini Fusion Reactor from UCLA.
Is this another hoax / scam similar to Pons-Fleischman?

Is it possible to use this technology for generating energy in the future?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4489821.stm

In the Nature study, Brian Naranjo and colleagues, from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), initiated fusion of heavy hydrogen, or deuterium, using the strong electric field generated in a pyroelectric crystal.  Materials like this crystal produce these electric fields when they are heated. The researchers concentrated the field at the tip of a tungsten needle connected to the crystal.  In an atmosphere of deuterium gas, the field generated positively charged deuteron ions and accelerated them to high energy in a beam.  When this beam struck a target of erbium deuteride, the team detected neutrons coming from the target with precisely the energy expected if they were generated by the nuclear fusion of two deuterium nuclei. The neutron emission was about 400 times stronger than the usual background level.
"Although the reported fusion is not useful in the power-producing sense, we anticipate that the system will find application in a simple palm-sized neutron generator," the researchers write in Nature.
Small devices that emit neutrons could be used as microthrusters in miniature spacecraft. Such fine control would be employed in certain experimental set-ups in space where precise positioning of a craft was essential.

[Cymric]

First, most likely not a hoax, although it will have to be comfirmed, of course. The article itself danswers your second question.

[whabang]

Not for power generation. It might lead to future discoveries, though.

[SamuraiCrow]

The problem with fusion is that it takes so much energy to contain the radioactivity that it is not practical as a power source in spite of the powerful reaction. :-(

[blobrana]

Hum,
here one i had made earlier...


The lithium tantalate (LiTaO3) pyroelectric crystal, is bathed in deuterium gas, and one side touches a copper disc. (The setup was then cooled to -33ºC and then heated to about 7 ºC for three and a half minutes.)

Blowup

A tiny tungsten probe (you can just see it as a line in the picture) is placed at the centre of the copper disc.
When the crystal is subsequently heated, a very large electric field is produced at the end of the tungsten tip, about 25 billion volts per metre.
(The crystal is asymmetric and, as a result, heating the material causes positive and negative charges to migrate to opposite ends of the crystal, setting up an electric field. The phenomenon is known as the pyroelectric effect.)

This field gradient is so high (10e7 electron volts) that it strips the electrons from nearby deuterium atoms. The ionised deuterium atoms then accelerated by this field towards a solid target of erbium deuteride (ErD2).
They collide with it at such high energies that some fuse with the target. A measurement of almost 900 neutrons per second was observed. This is 400 times the background count! Although the amount of energy produced in this initial experiment was miniscule (~1e-8 joules).

[Quixote]

SamuraiCrow suggested:

The problem with fusion is that it takes so much energy to contain the radioactivity that it is not practical as a power source in spite of the powerful reaction. :-(

;-) Fusion reactions don't have radioactivity in that sense; you're thinking of fission reactions, the breaking up of heavier nuclei into ligher ones.

Fusion reactions do produce oodles of heat, though.

[SamuraiCrow]

I was referring to tokomak reactors.  They have to contain the ionic particles with a magnetic field to prevent the thing from getting out of control.  It may not be radiation in the nuclear sense but it does have ions in its intermediate stages with helium being the final product.