We Need Two Technological Revolutions

T, Rao Coca, BS, MS, MA, PhD, JD

Admitted in New York, Ohio, Vermont, USPTO, SCOTUS?

Over the last five centuries physics, which builds from observations, made revolutionary progress. Starting from Galileo Galilei physics paved way to Isaac Newton, Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr right up to contemporary physicists such as Stephen Hawkins. Despite this tremendous progress some believe recently this progress has only been only incremental.

The world is yearning for production of clean energy. Humanity would like to wean out of electricity-generating facilities that depend on burning coal, oil, or natural gas which pollute our environment. The world also wants transmission of electricity without waste.?

Two major breakthroughs which were conceived by physicists over seventy years ago but remain technologically elusive would need to be realized to enable this aspiration.

One is nuclear fusion at a practical level. Second is the discovery of a useable room-temperature superconductor.

Nuclear Fusion

In nuclear fusion smaller nuclei are forced together to form larger nuclei. Typically, it involves combining nuclei of hydrogen – the smallest element – to form helium. Such fusion reaction releases more energy than fission (where larger nuclei are broken up into smaller nuclei). Importantly, fusion does not produce any long-term radioactive byproducts unlike fission. This is why nuclear fusion is referred to as the holy grail of energy production.

The roadblock to fusion is that the smaller hydrogen nuclei are resistant to fuse into helium nuclei at a controlled level. It requires tremendous pressure and high temperature to force them to fuse.

The U.S. Department of Energy heavily invested hundreds of billions of dollars over the decades through our National Labs like the Lawrence Livermore National Lab.?At the private level there were fits and false starts in fusion such as the “cold fusion” and outright fraud in reporting false claims of achievement of sustainable fusion.

The breakthrough that was announced last December at LLNL is that for the first time engineers got more energy out of the fusion reaction than they had put in. Previous efforts that had achieved fusion required more energy input than the fusion reaction produced.???

Superconductivity

Physics teaches that most metals conduct electricity. Metals such as copper, aluminum, gold and silver are superior conductors. Electrons in metals facilitate conduction and transmission of electricity. As electrons bounce into atoms in the metal they face resistance which is the main cause of waste of electricity manifested as heat.

Physics also teaches that cooling most metals to temperatures near absolute zero (zero degrees Kelvin which is minus 273 degrees Celsius or minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit) brings about a metamorphosis at a temperature called the critical temperature which varies from one material to another. Below the critical temperature electrons pair up and form a quantum fluid. When this happens, electrons no longer bounce into atoms and conduct electricity without any waste.

In other words superconductors when chilled below the critical temperature permit electrical conduction to take place without any energy loss.

If a superconductor were to be discovered which exhibits this property at useable temperature it would have an enormous technological importance. The discovery of such a material is akin to the finding of the holy grail of sustained energy production like nuclear fusion.

Superconductors hold a special place in the imagination of physicists. Electrical currents once set in motion, flow in perpetuity in a closed loop of superconducting material.?

However like in nuclear fusion finding such a room temperature superconductor has been extremely challenging. In my previous life when I was training to be physicist my efforts to find such a material as the first topic of my doctoral research did not materialize when I studied properties of alloys of lanthanum, strontium, niobium, thallium, lead and others.

Private organizations like IBM heavily invested in superconductivity research in the 1970’s and 1980’s and achieved the discovery of ceramic compounds by researchers George Bednorz and Alex Mueller at the IBM Zurich Research Lab for which they were awarded the 1987 Noble Prize in Physics.??The critical temperature of these ceramic compounds was 30 degrees K (or minus 243 degrees C or minus 406 degrees F).

Today cuprates which are layers of copper oxide separated by spacers of oxides of lanthanum, barium, strontium and others reportedly have demonstrated a critical temperature of minus 135 degrees C. At ambient pressure cuprate semiconductors are reported to be the highest temperature superconductors.

However, there has been a troubled history with the discovery of such high-T superconductors with restricted and non-reproduce able evidence and allegations of research malfeasance against some researchers.

Conclusion

Nuclear fusion is the only viable, clean and sustainable energy source. United Sates should push hard on fusion now that we know is achievable.

What is needed is no less than a whiplash-inducing development timeline by the DOE or industry’s own initiative to accelerate fusion’s practicability.

The social and commercial benefits arising from superconductors are vast and alluring ranging from power grids, electric vehicles, high-speed trains, etc. limited only by the imagination of technologists.

Superconducting electrical transmission will be by far the best for transmission capacity. Pair that with nuclear fusion to produce electricity the next generation will be centuries ahead of the past.

The fusion-superconductivity revolution will truly be a green tech system that will be applied en masse across the planet. Humanity will be able to experience the real energy revolution in energy production and transmission.