Bussard Gets Navy Funding For Fusion Research

UnreasonableMan writes to let us know that Robert Bussard, the fusion researcher whose talk at Google was discussed here a few months back, has won continued funding from the Navy. The word on this spread from Kent Brewster at the Speculations blog, who reportedly had the word from Bussard himself. (The link is to another blog that reproduces Brewster's post, because Speculations has no permalink.)

Tom Ligon (ex-colleague from Bussard) disagrees

[OeLeWaPpErKe (412765)]

"Evidently somebody got carried away with some fairly routine bookkeeping. The contract still exists, and there is still the same un-spent money on the books. Evidently, what happened is a "no-cost extension". That is, the period of the contract has been extended, but they're not sending any checks."

http://www.fusor.net/board/view.php?site=fusor&bn= fusor_historynews&key=1177038530 [fusor.net]

Anyone have further information ?

Re:

[XNormal (8617)]

IIUC, this means Bussard won't be getting any new money for now but the money already allocated for the project will resume flowing.

Note that the $200 million number is for Phase 2 (full scale 100 MW reactor). Phase 1 (validate and review WB-6 results) was estimated at $3-5 million so "two orders of magnitude below $200 million" is in the ballbark.

Re:

[OeLeWaPpErKe (412765)]

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/04/false- report.html [blogspot.com]

Same site ... same report about this not meaning any money. So this is a fake.

The report was incorrect

[InDi0 (691823)]

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/04/false- report.html [blogspot.com] It was a false report. The only good news I heard in a long time, this guy seemed so promising. But it is incorrect, the guy that posted the news piece took it down.

Cue all the jokes...

[tttonyyy (726776)]

...about the reactor having an "I feel lucky" button, but with a "Do you feel lucky, punk?" Navy twist to them.

Re:

[tttonyyy (726776)]

Ducks are Touring complete. They move across a (theoretically) infinite river in either direction. They have memory. In each step, they can catch fish, take a dump, or quack.

This is the perfect example as to why standing next to an unshielded fusion reactor is Bad News(tm).

Personally I like the idea of starships powered by Bad News. As Douglas Adams points out, it is the only thing that travels faster than light - but wherever you go, you're unpopular when you get there. :)

Re:

[NoMaster (142776)]

As Douglas Adams points out, it is the only thing that travels faster than light

Pratchett would disagree - monarchy also travels faster than light.

(I won't go into the whole theory here, but suffice to say the particles involved are "kingons" and "queeons", the path of which can only be blocked by "republicons"...)

Starcraft quote

[Xel'Naga (673728)]

"Thank God for cold fusion"
-Terran marine, getting a can of beer from a nuclear device

More info

[Johnno74 (252399)]

The international acedemy of science awarded Bussard & team the "Outstanding technology of the year award" last year (linky) [science.edu]

According to that page, Bussard's reactor could be on the market in 6-10 years.

Interestingly the design isn't a "steam kettle" system, like all existing thermal power plants - coal, natural gas or nuclear, which all use a heat source to boil water to spin a steam turbine.

Bussard's Pollywell [wikipedia.org] design generates high-energy alpha particles, which can be used to directly produce an electrical current.

It looks like Bussard is finally getting the attention he deserves, rather than the incredibly expensive magnetic confinement systems like ITER, which has so far spent billions of dollars and needs billions more before anyone can even say for sure if it will work or not...

If Bussard pulls this off, this could be an incredibly disruptive technology. Clean, cheap power... what the nuclear age has so long promised but failed to deliver.

Re:More info

[kestasjk (933987)]

That's a rather huge if, he came across like someone who is desperate to make his idea work long after everyone has realized it won't. I wrote this just after having seen his Google talk so I won't rewrite it:

I watched the whole thing though I'm sad to say; what a waste of time. In a nutshell:

• Fusion is simple and elegant, it powers the stars, just take a look at the sun to see it work!
• The Tomakak is just a problem on top of a problem, it's going nowhere fast.
• So we had this ingenious idea for making charged particles go into the center of a load of magnets oriented in a certain way which would solve all the Tomakak's problems.
• The first one we tried the particles escaped onto the metal welds which bring the magnets together.
• The second one didn't have metal welds, but the particles escaped onto the magnets themselves.
• The third one had insulated magnets, but the particles escaped onto the metal stands.
• For the nth one we insulated everything, and on *the day* before we lost all funding and had to close the lab down we achieved some fusion! We now know exactly what we're going to do!
• It will solve world hunger, create a stable economy, enable space travel, make ethanol viable, stop the oil wars, cure cancer, etc.
• It's all in this paper I wrote, it doesn't actually have any formulas or concrete evidence in it "but it does talk about it".
• Now all we need is $200M funding to build the final thing *cough*and solve the crippling engineering problems*cough*. Questions?

If you want to prove that you're not full of it why not rebuild the last machine you built, which would be relatively cheap, to recreate the results you got the day before you had to close the labs down?
- Well the $200M will build ones which will be 50x better, one of them will be a dodecahedron.

It looks like the military thought exactly the same thing by the way, hence the much smaller amount of funding.

Why is no-one funding you?
- No-one thinks outside the box. If you let me choose who goes on the panel who gets to decide whether it's worthwhile I'll pick some people who can think outside the box. There are lots of people in China and other countries who can think outside the box, and if I don't get funding here in America I'll give my patents to China for free and you wouldn't want that. (I'm not making this up, he literally threatened the audience with giving the tech to China for free)

How do you get the helium waste products out?
- We have a grid on the outside which lets the helium slowly come to a stop, we haven't tried this yet but it's an engineering problem. There are also serious problems with arcing due to the high voltages, but these are merely engineering problems not physics problems.

Re:More info

[Strange Ranger (454494)]

# The Tomakak is just a problem on top of a problem, it's going nowhere fast.
# So we had this ingenious idea for making charged particles go into the center of a load of magnets oriented in a certain way which would solve all the Tomakak's problems.

FYI - it's a tokamak [wikipedia.org]

A big if...

[Flying pig (925874)]

It's interesting how every new energy generating technology that doesn't actually work yet "could" be running in a 10 year time frame, but it never happens. I suspect the world was seduced by the fact that conventional nuclear energy did get up and running fairly quickly - because nobody knew about the dangers at that time, and because the principle of getting a load of radionucleides to get hot and boil a steam kettle wasn't exactly rocket science. Since then we've had fuel cells (over 50 years old and nowhere near large scale commercialisation, plus there may well not be enough catalyst in the world to make it feasible), wave power, bioethanol (fine until you want to power a first world economy) and hydrogen, which might come good in 30-40 years time. Peoppe have been taken in: Mercedes built (in Europe) a small car platform designed to accomodate either fuel cells or efficient batteries, but it's unlikely to happen in the platform's lifetime.

Even wind power, which has been around in rotary form for over 1000 years, is proving slower to adopt than expected. Wind power is very conventional technology, but scaling up is quite hard and taking a lot more than 10 years.

So here we have a process based on a rareish isotope of boron, which will require major engineering developments just in the delivery and manufacturing system alone, along with a novel method of extracting power which has never been used on a commercial scale. A bit different from piling fuel rods and boiling water.

Being practical, let's say three new technologies to be industrially scaled along with the infrastructure, regulatory and planning issues and call it at least 50 years to real commercialisation. It's unsurprising, given the need for real energy output contribution by, say, 2030, that this is not likely to get much funding.

Re:

[FridayBob (619244)]

Interestingly the design isn't a "steam kettle" system, like all existing thermal power plants - coal, natural gas or nuclear, which all use a heat source to boil water to spin a steam turbine. Bussard's Pollywell design generates high-energy alpha particles, which can be used to directly produce an electrical current.

Very interesting indeed. Where did you get that?

I was always wondering how he was planning to produce energy with this device: if he was going to boil water with it, then I couldn't figur

Re:

[DerekLyons (302214)]

The international acedemy of science awarded Bussard & team the "Outstanding technology of the year award" last year

So? The International Academy of Science appears to be a tiny special interest association, mostly concerned with promoting the 'Acellus Learning System'. (And the list [science.edu] of other nominees is impressive with its concentration on consumer electronics.)

This 'award' is about as impressive and meaningful as being the Man of the Year for the East Podunk Elk's Club.

It lo

See the device in action

[192939495969798999 (58312)]

Looks like it works to me:
http://www.emc2fusion.org/ [emc2fusion.org]

I can't believe the gov't doesn't just immediately fund the full-scale reactor, given the fossil fuel crisis we're currently stuck in. 200 million dollars is a handful of days in Iraq, and we could immediately drive the price of oil down to 10 dollars a barrel with fusion as a reliable commercial power source.

Re:

[Ihlosi (895663)]

I can't believe the gov't doesn't just immediately fund the full-scale reactor,

I can't believe any government that has $200M to spare doesn't immediately throw the money at the guy.

Heck. I can't believe any corporation that has $200M to spare doesn't do it. $200M for what amounts to the license to print money ?

Re:

[itlurksbeneath (952654)]

You'd have to go a long way to get oil down to 10 bucks a barrel. After converting all the natural gas and coal fired power plants (which don't have a lot to do with oil, by the way), you'd have to convince everybody to ditch their gas powered cars for electric cars. Then you've still got a whole transportation industry that probably will never convert. I've never heard of an electric airplane, have you? And diesel trucks are designed to drive for hundreds and hundreds of miles pulling huge payloads - n

Re:

[LWATCDR (28044)]

Your argument is actually logical however their are options.
1. Natural gas and not oil is used for a lot of plastic and fertilizer production. It is cheaper and easier to work with. Coal could be used as well but natural gas is the cheapest.
2. If this power system lives up to its billing then yes you could power ships and trains with it. The US built a nuclear powered cargo ship in the 60s so a fusion powered tanker and or container ship wouldn't be that big of a leap. Using electric motors to power large s

Sceptical

[BlueParrot (965239)]

First of all table-top fusion is really simple to do, and devices exist that achieve it using a 9V battery. Such devices are routinely used for various kinds of scanners, as neutron-sources for nuclear experiments, various kinds of material testing... etc Getting D-D fusion or D-T fusion is sufficiently easy for hobbyists to do it in their basement. What is tricky, however, is to generate a controllable plasma that can produce enough energy for it to be practical as a power source, and this is orders of magnitude more difficult. Every month I hear some new plan about how to achieve fusion, the truth is, getting fusion to work is not hard. What would be interesting would be if this device could demonstrate a high triple-product. I.e if it can achieve a high plasma density, high temperature, AND high confinement time simultaneously. In practice THAT is really difficult to do, mainly because for any feasible pressure the temperature required will be in the range of hundreds of millions of degrees, meaning it will radiate A LOT of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation, leading to a low confinement time. ( the sun gets away with "only" ten million centigrades because of the intense pressure in the core ). The only way this could possibly work would be if he has actually reduced bremsstrahlung losses A LOT. If I understand it correctly he claims to have done that by separating nuclei and electrons, which quite frankly is bullshit. 1 gram of hydrogen contains [roughly] 10^23 nuclei, giving 10000 coulomb's of charge if not kept neutral by electrons. Now, for those of you who know your electrostatics, try sticking 10000 coulomb into coulomb's law of electrostatic repulsion for a device that separates the charges by a distance of 1 meter or so, and then tell me this scheme will work. There is a reason you need a strong containment field for a fusion reaction...

Fundamental misunderstandings in parent

[Melee_Fracas (1092093)]

What would be interesting would be if this device could demonstrate a high triple-product. I.e if it can achieve a high plasma density, high temperature, AND high confinement time simultaneously

High triple product is interesting and difficult to achieve for neutral plasmas because the have a Maxwellian temperature distribution. At pressures and temps we can achieve, only a small fraction of the ions in the plasma are available to fuse, because only that small fraction are in the small high-energy range where fusion occurs. The polywell design overcomes this by dropping the ions into a potential well at exactly the right energy. Everyone who gets into the party has sufficient energy to fuse. This is huge, as the the population of particles available in a neutral plasma are wayyy out on the long tail of the energy distribution curve.

n practice THAT is really difficult to do, mainly because for any feasible pressure the temperature required will be in the range of hundreds of millions of degrees,

The triple time is difficult to achieve in a toroidal field because the field is almost everywhere convex outwards. Every plasma instability there is drives the plasma away from the dense inner portion of the magnetic field to the less dense outer portion. This is why you need huge tokomaks. The Larmour radius of an ion is huge because of the mass of the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleii. For every collision that happens, whether or not it results in fusion, the colliding particles wander, on average, two Larmour radii outward. Polywell differs from this in two fundamentally important ways. First, the quasi-spherical field is convex inward everywhere except at the point cusps that serve as the injection points. This "spherical field" accomplishes this by being composed of smaller fields at it's periphery. An analogy: Imagine you're a ping-pong ball in a close packing of ping-pong balls. Everywhere you look you see your neighbors, and they are convex toward you. But the sphere that their centers lie upon is convex away from you. It's the same thing in the polywell. The plasma core is inside a sphere, but the geometry of the boundary is composed of smaller fields that are convex toward it. Second, the fields are containing electrons, not ions. The Larmor radius of electrons is much smaller than that of protons (and ions) because of their much smaller mass (on the order of 3000x smaller IIRC). Basically, this means that electrons stay confined for all practical purposes, subject to the constraint that they don't impinge on a conductor.

the sun gets away with "only" ten million centigrades because of the intense pressure in the core ).

Simply incorrect at a factual level. The corona of the sun reaches ten-million or more degrees, but the core of the sun, where fusion happens, is only ~ten-thousand. It's the extreme pressure and density of the hydrogen in the core that allows fusion at this relatively low temperature. (Imagine a place where a hot proton-electron soup had the density of seawater, if you can.)

The only way this could possibly work would be if he has actually reduced bremsstrahlung losses A LOT.

Irrelevant because of the above.

If I understand it correctly he claims to have done that by separating nuclei and electrons, which quite frankly is bullshit. 1 gram of hydrogen contains [roughly] 10^23 nuclei, giving 10000 coulomb's of charge if not kept neutral by electrons.

You do not understand correctly. The plasma at the center of this device is nearly neutral, with a charge sufficient to attract the ions at high velocity to the core. This is accomplished by recirculating the electrons in the magnetic field with the special geometry described above. Basically, the electrons stay confined in the magnetic field as they circulate toward the center, and the inverse-square function that their density follows as they approach the core creates a negative well there. Then ions are dropped into this well, almost entirely neutralizing it, and bumping into each other (with a probability that is a function of the ion density, which again follows and inverse square law).

Paul Allen Knows Something More...

[BoRegardless (721219)]

His VC arm has put money into Tri Alpha Energy near Irvine, CA which licensed technology from UCI patents for creating the proton - boron 11 fusion/fission reaction. Paul Allen would not invest without some SERIOUS high level investigation by his own independent PHDs.

FocusFusion.org notes this as do other public references available on the web.

1. The proton - boron 11 fusion/fission reaction has been well known for decades & has been picked because is is "clean" of gamma rays and neutron production, meaning the equipment doesn't become radioactive.
2. Controlling a continuous reaction process has been the stumbling block
3. Tri-Alpha Energy has obviously produced enough test data and analysis to convince serious investors to fund development of a demonstration unit.

A quick web page for noting various fusion concept/projects:

http://www.eastlundscience.com/FUSION2050.html [eastlundscience.com]

Re:Dr. Robert Bussard

[Nefarious Wheel (628136)]

Ok, I R'd TFM. Now I'm even more impressed -- nuclear power without stray neutrons. Ubergreen.

And there should be plenty of Boron about.

Re:

[khallow (566160)]

Low neutron fusion means viable fusion. Neutrons are extremely hard to stop. Hence, they easily steal energy from the fusing plasma and require great amounts of shielding in order to intercept the energy that they carry.

Re:Dr. Robert Bussard

[Nefarious Wheel (628136)]

Ok, let's cross over to a place where "other cultures" live, i.e. Welsh and Old Folks. I be nothing like the former (although I do have friends who say only Welsh can spell a sneeze phonetically) and definitely an early entrant in the latter, so let's get down to it:

Welsh "dd" is kind of a shortish "th" sound, so I "R'd" meaning "Readtha".

"F" is silent, although some folk say it stands for "Fine".

And a long time ago in the IT profession (back when it was known as "Programming") we had these innovations held together by thin strips of razor blade called "printed Manuals" with words like "PL/I" and "CORGZ" and "DBOMP" on them. ("Paper" is kind of like a blank .html file, only well, sort of entirely different. Ours had holes punched in them and the odd bloodstain). So RTFM meant, loosely, "Read The Fine Manual". I wrote that abbreviation (and why is "abbreviation" such a long word?) so many times my fingers kind of took over there for a moment. Perils of old age slipping into me dotage. Apologies to all you young nerds who couldn't make the linguistic transition there. But brush up on your "old", if you're lucky you'll need to speak that language some day.

Iffn' ye don't like that explanation, give me a few and I'll invent another one. In the mean time, "dddd" to the lot of ye.

Re:Is this the same Bussard...

[falcon5768 (629591)]

Err more like Yes and Sorta.

Yes he is the same guy, but the sorta part comes from the Ramjet concept being part of the Warp Drive nacelles in Star Trek, but not the actual power source of them but part of it.

In the Star Trek concept, the forward part of a Bussard Ramjet is used to collect interstellar hydrogen which is then used as the matter portion of the anti-matter propulsion system (ie the actual Warp Drive reactor) The thing being its concept has been changed so much from the original series to Enterprise that its hard to pin down if this really is the matter portion of the reaction, or if this is now used as part of a supplemental system and the hydrogen is stored elsewhere for use in the impulse drive or for emergency power.

The other big kicker was the fact that between production of TOS and TMP it was found that there just wasnt enough hydrogen out there to actually make such a concept able (ramjet OR bussard collector) That was part of the reason Andrew Probert started to change the forward nacelle around on the Refit Enterprise to de-accentuate the whole collector portion. The Excelsior got rid of it entirely (though odds are this was more due to the stupidity of the ILM modelmakers in concepts related to Trek, which had a lot of real life science basis thanks to Genes work with NASA scientist). Then it reappeared on the E-D (which funny enough was also designed by Probert.) and the concept was retrod back into the concept.