The fusion-fission hybrid will use high-energy neutrons produced by a fusion reaction to trigger fission in surrounding materials thereby boosting energy output and potentially reducing long-lived nuclear waste.

    • endofline@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      This is uncontrolled reaction. Chinese and other countries plan to be able to conduct the controlled reaction

      • eleitl@lemm.ee
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        7 hours ago

        Yes, the uranium tamper in a fusion weapon. Half of the energy in a fusion weapon comes from fast neutron fission, mostly in U-238. It’s not a chain reaction.

  • Singletona082@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    OK. Here’s the real question.

    Are they sharing that research? I ask because if we can all get our heads out of our asses on energy production that kinda… wipes out a major reason for wars. Oh sure there are lots of OTHER reasons, but getting that off the table of excuses would be nice.

    Also using fission materials as a way to shield the fusion reaction is a damned interesting way of getting around the spalling problem of the fusion reaction destroying its containment walls.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I’m pretty sure they aren’t doing the design part of the research. A lot of the “new” designs that China has been testing recently, have been sitting on US and European shelves for decades, like since the late '60s and early '70s. There’s just not really a way, in the West, to legally set up a test reactor. China can just ignore things like permits and zoning.

      • cynar@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        This is one of the biggest frustrations with nuclear power. The first power plants had issues (mostly due to them being bomb factory designs). We learnt from that, and designed better ones. They never got built. They were swamped in red tape and delays until they died.

        Decades later, China comes in and just asks nicely. The designs work fine. China now leads the way, built on research we left to rot.

        It’s also worth noting that there is a big difference between a fusion power plant and a fission one. China is doing active research on it, as is the west. There’s quite a friendly rivalry going on. We have also basically cracked fusion now. We just need to scale it up. The only big problem left is the tokamakite issue. The neutron radiation put off by the reaction transmutes the walls. Using radioactive materials as a buffer is an idea I’ve not heard of. I’m curious about the end products. A big selling point of fusion is the lack of long term waste. Putting a fission reaction in there too might lose that benefit.

    • MangoCats@feddit.it
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      1 day ago

      I’d like to see a followup story published sometime other than the first of April.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Well you see. Mega projects in authoritarian countries rarely solve actual problem or serve a purpose. They‘re just there to make good headlines and be forgotten because the next mega project or innovation just made the news!

      • Wobble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        Are we saying things like the three gorges dam, china canals, and rail, are all just for show and don’t serve a purpose?

        • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Partially yes absolutely. Some regions with more and more dams have recently experienced devastating floods, suggesting they‘ve tempered with nature a little too much. And yes, some of those new highspeed rails are barely ever used and mainly serve a symbolic purpose, namely connecting outer regions to the central power in Beijing in some way or form. Nearly nobody uses those and the best case scenario for them would be a war so they can transport masses of troops quickly.

          • Match!!@pawb.social
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            1 day ago

            i had no opinion and minimal knowledge about high speed rail in China going into this comment section, but it looks like the outer cities experience real estate growth in the wake of being connected by high speed rail, and reportedly the rail lines are some of the safest in the world. i can’t imagine criticizing a country for building too much high efficiency mass transit in advance

            • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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              8 hours ago

              i can’t imagine criticizing a country for building too much high efficiency mass transit in advance

              I mean the Nazis did that in preparation for their Blitzkrieg and the Holocaust so there are real examples why building seemingly overengineered and overly excessive infrastructure can be problematic. And besides a demonstration of power, I think some of those railways are exactly that. To transport troops or masses of prisoners quickly and efficiently. God knows they have enough of those.

      • Balder@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        It’s more accurate to say they might be, but not necessarily. China is very aware of the benefits of keeping ahead technologically.

  • Badabinski@kbin.earth
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    1 day ago

    Huh, sounds like a neat twist on the accelerator driven subcritical reactor. I’ve no idea what the viability will be, but it also seems like a nice way to generate useful isotopes for nuclear medicine and shit.

    EDIT: ah, it’s actually a pretty old idea, it predates the accelerator reactor concept by quite a bit.

  • troed@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    In the sense that it does use more of the fuel, like a breeder reactor, that’s good. We need to stop claiming 95% good fuel to be “waste” that needs to be stored for a long time and instead just use it all up.

    • Fermion@feddit.nl
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      1 day ago

      The other benefit I can think of is keeping the fissile materials always sub critical. You don’t have to worry about a meltdown if the reaction is not self-sustaining. It’s an odd marrying of technologies, but I think people are being too dismissive.

      Although, I wonder if the true purpose of such a device would be high output breeding of fuel for weapons use.

    • eleitl@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      No, we do this in a fusion weapon. Half of its energy output is from fast neutron fission of the uranium tamper.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Not that I’m aware of. All our nuclear commercial power plants are just plain old nuclear energy boiling water. We’re gonna use a damn Dyson Sphere to boil water…

      We have bombs that use a similar starting mechanism, but they aren’t exactly useful energy production.

      • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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        1 day ago

        I meant that we use neutron breeders to turn certain fuel rod waste into fissile plutonium I think.

        The difference with the Chinese invention is that you don’t need to transport the waste to a separate breeder.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        24 hours ago

        Isn’t a Dyson Sphere supposed to use solar panels? I don’t know how you would find enough water to cover the interior of an object with the radius of the Earth

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          It was a joke. We have invented fission and fusion, but the reactors are still attached it to a Rankine Cycle.

          Also, the radius would be considerably larger than the sun. Perhaps not encapsulating The Earth, but that seems like a potential death sentence, if we built a Dyson Sphere rather than a Dyson Swarm

    • Allero
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      2 days ago

      Essentially yes.

      Normally, the amount of neutrons generated in a fusion reactor is an issue. Here it is an asset.

  • Dzso@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This seems like a good step on the way to developing the technology necessary to build a fission plant in the future.