Boeing is apparently working on an aircraft engine that will use lasers and nuclear fusion instead of standard fuel, and I’m not sure whether that sounds incredibly badass or incredibly frightening, probably a little bit of both. While the new engine only exists on patent documents at the moment, Boeing hopes that the technology will be used to power aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft in the near future.
Boeing has had a patent approved for an aircraft engine that uses laser generated nuclear fusion as a power source, according to a Friday story in Business Insider. The idea is already generating a great deal of controversy, according to the left leaning website Counter Punch. The patent has generated fears of what might happen if an aircraft containing radioactive material as fuel were to crash, spreading such fuel across the crash site. The engine works by using laser beams focused on a series of pellets made of deuterium or tritium. The result is a miniature nuclear explosion that sprays hydrogen or helium through a nozzle, thus creating thrust. The explosion also creates neutrons that bombard an inner wall of the combustion chamber coated with Uranium 238, creating heat that is harnessed by coolant on the other side of the inner wall that runs a turbine and a generator that powers the lasers. The bombardment of the Uranium 238 has the unhappy side effect of turning part of it into Plutonium 239, a fissile material.
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