New method of power generation is landmark use of fusion

I currently have a patent application for a method of energy generation involving pre cutting a monolithic piece of the earth above an underground fusion explosive. The explosive then'pops' the piece of pre cut material from the ground where the large piece of land sort of rolls away from a cavity it creates. Once a cavity is made this way the method further includes operating a turbine/generator by lowering the weight removed or other weight back into the cavity. This method of pre-cutting the surface area of a cube of earth several thousand feet in depth and width and removing it with an explosive may be around 5% efficient to the killowatt power of the explosive which could range into the billions of kwh for a fusion explosive. This method of removing a pre cut piece of the earth with an explosive sounds like a big task but the explosive does all the work, only the sides and bottom of the cube need to be done in preparation. If it costs less to do the pre cutting and the refining and raw materials for the explosive then it would be a valuable use of fusion fuel. I already did experiments with a brick in a shaped cavity dug in the ground and fireworks and the pre cutting method removed 10 times the amount of weight displaced by the same fireworks surface blast. Anyone interested in looking up the patent application can do it by searching Trevor Hawthorne and patentscope. This is the 'cleanest' method for power generation in my patent capable of using the highest percentage of fusion. It is also a fairly safe method when considering contamination. It also is a safe method because a billion dollar business would only need several to ten cavity's created from the dimensions suggested so there would be a limited use of explosives. The use of fission in this method is 8 times more efficient then in current nuclear power plants. The use of fusion is not seen in any other power plants.

So can anyone who is a knowledgeable engineer if you could , try to answer if their is a way to pre cut a cube of land while it still remains in the earth on all sides of the cube if it is 4,000 ft wide and the cost of doing so (remember only the surface area of the cube needs to be cut or removed)?


My main concerns are moving the experimental stage up to larger explosives through government authority, finding investors, and becoming a landmark use of billions of kwh of fusion fuel converted to kinetic energy in weight, converted to electricity by refilling the cavity created.

I think the very first hurdle in this scenario might be the fusion explosion. Have they invented it yet?

T.B.-J. : Welcome to Permies.com and our sister site Richsoil.com, I grasp the idea you are putting forward ! You certainly think outside the box, and we like that ability here!

I am looking forward to many more contributions here from you ! Question why would this be a better way to store/use potential energy than a similar use of a weight system

used with a "Sky Elevator"? For the Good of the Crafts ! Big AL

Burra Maluca wrote:I think the very first hurdle in this scenario might be the fusion explosion. Have they invented it yet?

Yes it's called a thermonuclear bomb

The fusion part isn't the hard part. We call it a hydrogen bomb. Perfected decades ago.

The problem will be how to convert the potential energy of the raised hunk of the earth, to useful (probably electrical) energy.

That's a hell of a machine that can hold up a big cube of the earth, and then use the harnessed gravity (potential energy) through a big transmission to make electricity at a steady rate as the big chunk of the earth settles back into place.


No one has ever made a machine that big (of any kind) ever. I have no idea if it's even possible...

It will also be a little tricky to design a hyrdogen bomb that will -raise- the designated chunk of the earth a certain height, without blowing it to smithereens...

trevor borocz-johnson wrote:a way to pre cut a cube of land while it still remains in the earth

You might be able to do this with smaller explosives similar to used at mine faces. Or you could possibly search for something with naturally occurring faultlines or something already shaped by prior mining.

I think you have come up with an effective way to increase the potential energy of a large amount of mass, but your engineering problem is going to be converting that potential energy into kinetic then electrical energy. Maybe your H bomb could be used to move a volume of water or gas instead, which could be better harnessed through conventional turbines?

Trevor,

Immense technical challenges aside, you're proposing to nuke the planet repeatedly in the name of 'clean' energy. For me, and I suspect (and hope) the great majority of people, that's already a nonstarter. Not to mention that it would violate the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Around here, we have mountains that are around 6000 feet tall, or valleys that are 6000 feet deep, depending on how you want to look at it. So the same principal would apply if we cut off the tops of the mountains and dumped them into the valleys...

Hmm. I suppose that the same principals would apply as for hydro-electirc, except that rock is about 2.5 times as dense....

Suppose that we set up a tram to lower rock into the valley, and capture the energy from it on the way down. With 6000 feet of head, and 12 cubic feet of rock per second, we could expect about 7 megawatts from our generator. Lets say that we cut off the top 1000 feet of my favorite moutain range and drop it into the valley below... There are about 126 billion cubit feet of rock available on the top of the mountain. So the mountain top could provide power for 300 years.

The tramway would need to be about 1.5 miles long.

Or, I could install one 7 megawatt wind turbine.

Immense technical challenges aside, you're proposing to nuke the planet repeatedly in the name of 'clean' energy. For me, and I suspect (and hope) the great majority of people, that's already a nonstarter. Not to mention that it would violate the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Yeah but these are methods of energy generation that will be in use long into the future from now when fusion lasers are regular. I'm just writing about the possibility with what we have of using fusion as a fuel. The pre-cutting method can have numerous uses once the method is perfected through experiments. Yes there is a test ban on explosives but this is a peaceful use for them which to date there hasn't been any successful uses just experiments with building canals and measurements of different sorts seismic and such. Project plowshare from the 1950's to the 1980's performed thousands of underground tests to attempt to develop peaceful marketable uses of explosives. The the disapointing efficiency's in there testing ended those programs in large part. This would be a new theoretical experiment to try along the lines of that program.

I'm going to lock this thread.

Fusion isn't yet a feasible reality, and I don't think that this idea fits in any way with the earth-care aspect of permaculture, so it's not really a suitable topic for discussion here.