Science & Technology

Navy 'UFO-tech' engineer patents fusion reactor

By T.K. Randall
October 10, 2019

Image: Preamplifier at the National Ignition Facility in California
Credit: Damien Jemison / Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory / CC BY-SA 3.0 (adapted) The US Navy's technology labs have certainly been busy over the last few years with all manner of strange and exotic (so-called 'UFO-tech') patents being filed ranging from high-energy 'force fields' to new types of propulsion systems and vehicle designs.

Now the same engineer responsible for patenting most of these is back with another patent - this time for a new type of revolutionary compact nuclear fusion reactor.

Often seen as the Holy Grail of power generation, nuclear fusion is the same process that produces energy in the Sun and works by fusing hydrogen nuclei together to create helium.

Unlike nuclear fission which comes with the inherent risk of a meltdown, fusion is much cleaner and safer while the hydrogen fuel used by the process is so abundant that it is practically limitless.A compact nuclear fusion reactor - one that is small enough to fit on a ship or even a spacecraft - would be particularly revolutionary.

"At present there are few envisioned fusion reactors/devices that come in a small, compact package (ranging from 0.3 to 2 meters in diameter) and typically they use different versions of plasma magnetic confinement," the patent reads.

"Three such devices are the Lockheed Martin (LM) Skunk Works Compact Fusion Reactor (LM-CFR) , the EMC2 Polywell fusion concept, and the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration (PFRC) machine."

Which - if any - of these will ultimately become the basis for the US Navy's compact fusion reactor however remains unclear.

Source: The Drive

Tags: Nuclear Fusion, US Navy