Fusion goes forward from the fringe - Alan Boyle's Cosmiclog

[bananas]

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/10/6619613-fusion-goes-forward-from-the-fringe

Fusion goes forward from the fringe
By Alan Boyle

A Navy-funded effort to harness nuclear fusion power reports that its unconventional plasma device is operating as designed and generating "positive results" more than halfway through the project.

The latest quarterly update from EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. comes amid other signs that seemingly oddball approaches to fusion research may not be all that oddball after all. Just last week, General Fusion announced that Amazon.com's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, was part of a $19.5 million investment round to further the company's plan to take advantage of a technology called magnetized target fusion. Another billionaire, Paul Allen, is an investor in Tri Alpha Energy, which is working on its own hush-hush fusion project (and occasionally publishing its research).

<snip>

Some of the leading team members went on leave from Los Alamos National Laboratory to work on EMC2. Rick Nebel, the Los Alamos engineer who led the company since Bussard's death in 2007, retired from the company last November. Taking his place as acting chief executive officer is Jaeyoung Park. The 41-year-old physicist says he's given up his position at Los Alamos to focus fully on EMC2.

<snip>

Park said that the WB-8 experiment was about 60 percent complete, which roughly matches how much of the $7.9 million has been spent so far. He acknowledged that EMC2 was originally aiming to finish the experiment by this time, but said the realities of government funding — including continuing resolutions, shutdown threats and other budgetary snags — have dictated a slower pace.

<snip>

Discussion at http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=3062&start=0
Via http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/2011/05/polywell-positive-results.html

[Newest Reality]

1. Yes!

A more powerful, powered military-industrial-complex. More juice to blow the fuck out of anybody our Master's choose too. Team America has the technology and will create a heaven on Earth for the owners.

Meanwhile, you have powerful, vested interests who are the most important, Status Quo, demanding their due at the gas pumps, at your heating-oil tank, and via your electric meter. Vampires would be jealous at how consistently and efficiently the corporate fangs and mouth can suck you dry while the public relations gets you all submissive and erotic about being drained.

You must pay unto Cesar what is his! That's the fact right now! Throw it off, or stop complaining about how bad you think it is getting. It is actually worse than you think and will get so bad that it is far beyond your capacity to imagine it right now.

[TheWraith]

2. Damn, people will find a way to threadcrap any sort of good news, won't they?

A sneak preview of what the future of clean energy looks like, and all someone can do is turn it into moaning.

[Posteritatis]

8. Pretty much, yep

That self-martyring outrage you're reacting to in that other post is more addictive than oil ever would be.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

Less caffeine, trust me it works. n/t

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Dupe

[Occulus]

7. You're exactly opposite the purpose of the project.

Bussard was very clear, and Nebel et al have been quite determined, that the technology was intended to bring an end to the oil era. The only reason they applied for, received, and are continuing with Navy funding is because the Navy will fund the entire project. This is a long-shot idea which, if it pans out (which it thus far has), will immediately and forever transform humanity as a whole.

That was their stated purpose going into the project. The end of the oil era. Bringing our addiction to oil as a fuel source to an end will end wars, not start them. If the Polywell project works as Bussard was certain it would, we will be able to pull all our military forces out of the entire Middle East, as we will no longer have any compelling need o "secure our interests" in the region. This is because, if we have fusion power, we will have no interests in the Middle East. Oil, after all, is what all these wars and conflicts have really been about.

Not Arab vs. Jew, not Christian vs. Muslim, but West vs. East, with oil as the prize.

Fusion power will bring all that to an end. We will be able to gleefully tell the Saudis to go pound sand, and oh, by the way, you'll have to build it yourself, thanks. Electricity will literally be too cheap to meter because we will be producing far, far more power than we actually need. Furthermore, unlike nuclear reactors, a Polywell reactor will be small enough, cheap enough, and safe enough to be built by medium-size cities and up. Even large hospital complexes and universities will have these reactors because the power output and gain scale with the size of the device.

I think you should learn more about the Polywell project and what might be possible if (should I start saying "when"?) it works. We're on the brink of fusion power, and it will do nothing but good for all mankind when we finally figure it out.

[montanto]

5. "The $7.9 million contract covers work to see whether

Bussard's fusion concept can be scaled up to a size capable of putting out more power than it consumes." Sounds like where cold fusion was about thirty years ago to me.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. No, more like where toroidal fusion reactors were

and, unlike cold fusion, this is not contradicting accepted science. They've done it with a far smaller budget than toroidal fusion reactors have needed, too. It's possible, of course, that, like the toroidal reactors, it won't manage to produce more power than it consumes in future experiments, but it seems a worthwhile research project.