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Power Science

Bussard Gets Navy Funding For Fusion Research 146

Posted by kdawson from the only-2-mil-but-hey dept.
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.)
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Bussard Gets Navy Funding For Fusion Research More

Bussard Gets Navy Funding For Fusion Research

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  • I only know about Dr. Bussard by the many times I have read and re-read Niven's Known Space series. If he's the true source of the "Bussard Ramjet" then whether or not it's a workable concept, I laud the man for thinking further out of the box than anyone since R.B.Fuller.

    We need minds like that, I'm glad to see he's being fed.

    • Re:Dr. Robert Bussard (Score:4, Informative)

      by Nefarious Wheel ( 628136 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @03:56AM (#18838153) Journal
      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: (Score:3, Informative)

        by 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: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )
        Now that's impressive. If it works, Bussard will be a household name.

        He'll be known as Mr. Fusion.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by radtea ( 464814 )
        Ok, I R'd TFM. Now I'm even more impressed -- nuclear power without stray neutrons. Ubergreen.

        p + 11B -> alpha + alpha + alpha has been known for a long time, and has some serious problems. Google "migma" to get some of the background.

        The basic issue is that the Coulomb barrier is large and the radiative losses in the plasma will always be larger than the generated power for reasonable configurations. This is not to say that it is impossible, just very, very hard, and some of the most promising approa

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Rei ( 128717 )
          The basic issue is that the Coulomb barrier is large and the radiative losses in the plasma will always be larger than the generated power for reasonable configurations. This is not to say that it is impossible, just very, very hard, and some of the most promising approaches involving disequilibrium plasmas have been proven on very general theoretical grounds to be unworkable.

          Ah, you refer to Todd Rider. Interesting papers, to say the least, but they don't state what it is often reported that they state: t
      • Ok, shouldn't your signature be

        'Someone says "Haiku" / ten blocks away, and I go / all drifting snowflakes'?

        If the pattern is 5/7/5, "Somebody" bumps you right out. Slice out that extra syllable. Besides, 'Someone' just sounds more poetic than somebody, at least at the beginning of a line. It's an English Iam/stress/foot thing I suspect. At the end, it has a better match to the lay of the stress: "We hit somebody / with our brand new Subaru / swerve, squish those turtles" -- but then, that last line nee
        • Ok, shouldn't your signature be 'Someone says "Haiku" / ten blocks away, and I go / all drifting snowflakes'?

          Yes, it should. Funnily enough, I'd only meant that as prose. I will trim that little root, thank you.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )
          It's funny how Americans focus on the 5/7/5. While that's the most common stanza for Haiku, it's not the only one. The keys to Haiku are extreme brevity and a focus on nature symbolism. It's poetry condensed to an extreme degree. 5/7/5 in English doesn't even stay true to the original poetry because Japanese syllables are shorter.

          My favorite English haiku is by Nicholas Virgilio, about his brother who died during the Vietnam War:

          Lily
          Out of the water
          Out of itself

          Of course, even this is considered by some

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )
      True story. I worked as an electromechanical tech on a fusion experiment for about a year. I was one of the first employees, so I wasn't there when things got interesting; mostly my job was checking out equipment scrounged from other closed down experiments, cannibalizing some things for parts, assembling and preparing various stainless widgets to go into hard vacuum.

      I don't remember the name of the PI, but it was Dick Hardacre or something like that. He was one of these guys who was promoted to his lev

  • How about (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 )
    linking to the Speculations [speculations.com] blog anyways. I mean it's not like it isn't the very top story on there or anything . . .
    • It might be the top post today, but what about tomorrow or next month?
      This is described in the blurb:

      (The link is to another blog that reproduces Brewster's post, because Speculations has no permalink.)
    • Thanks, but it's not that big of a deal. Speculations is a magazine for writers, and could do without being Slashdotted again. :)
  • His future on the ringworld is safe!

    Bussard ramjets are vital to stability.

  • Tom Ligon (ex-colleague from Bussard) disagrees (Score:5, Informative)

    by OeLeWaPpErKe ( 412765 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @03:55AM (#18838149) Homepage
    "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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 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.

  • The report was incorrect (Score:5, Informative)

    by InDi0 ( 691823 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @03:57AM (#18838157)
    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... (Score:4, Funny)

    by tttonyyy ( 726776 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @04:25AM (#18838251) Homepage Journal
    ...about the reactor having an "I feel lucky" button, but with a "Do you feel lucky, punk?" Navy twist to them.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by 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: (Score:3, Funny)

          by 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"...)

      • I knew a kid who quacked. He was also really good at arithmetic, so that might explain it.

  • Starcraft quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xel'Naga ( 673728 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @04:29AM (#18838261)
    "Thank God for cold fusion"
    -Terran marine, getting a can of beer from a nuclear device
    • Reading through your post history, you've made a half-dozen Starcraft references just on the first page. Geez.

      If your name wasn't Xel'Naga, I might be tempted to accuse you of fanboyism ;)

  • More info (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Johnno74 ( 252399 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @04:54AM (#18838343)
    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 (Score:4, Informative)

      by kestasjk ( 933987 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @05:24AM (#18838445) Homepage

      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: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I'm not making this up, he literally threatened the audience with giving the tech to China for free

        Why is that a "threat"?

        • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          because his statement was in the form of a threat: "if you don't X, then i will Y".

          given politically correct logic, the above statement is a threat when Y is not 'give technology to china'.

      • Re:More info (Score:4, Informative)

        by Strange Ranger ( 454494 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @07:46AM (#18839019)
        # 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]
      • Honestly, I could write a post in a similar tone from a 1943 POV on how Los Alamos will never produce anything useful.

        That said, he really should have toned his money request down. =) But he does have a new way of solving some of the problems of existing Farnsworth-Hirsch fusors and we probably could determine whether he is on to something really useful or just delusional for less than $10e6. Compared to the costs for ITER that's low enough that we should at least try to recreate his last experiments.

        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.

        The

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )
          Well, his solution solves the grid issue, but at the cost of introducing relevant Bremsstrahlung losses into the system.

          I'm not going to weigh in yet as to whether his system will work or not. It bothers me how many people simply listened to his talk and are now convinced that it's the solution to all of our problems. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to get a good grip on the concept of Debye screening and to what degree it applies to IEC fusors ;) I don't think it's right to insist on people that they fund s

          • Well, his solution solves the grid issue, but at the cost of introducing relevant Bremsstrahlung losses into the system.

            That's why I'm not really sold on his reactor either. Not the Bremsstrahlung per se but the fact that his design will stand or fall with the actual losses and efficiencies. What we're doing here is qualitative reasoning but we'd need quantitative answers =)

            Nevertheless I think I'd be worth the 10 million to find out whether his design scales as well as he assumes.

            1) You need high voltages both for coronal discharge ionization and for accelerating the ions toward the core.

            Yes, but those voltages should be orders of magnitude lower than the kinetic energy of the resulting particles.

    • From your linky [science.edu]:

      This is the only nuclear-energy releasing process in the whole world that releases fusion energy and three helium atoms -- and no neutrons.
      Too bad it doesn't work off-world.

      Science reporting like this from the "The International Academy of Science"???

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Clean, cheap power... what the nuclear age has so long promised but failed to deliver.
      Oink oink, flap flap.

    • A big if... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Flying pig ( 925874 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @06:24AM (#18838675)
      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: (Score:2)

        by Ihlosi ( 895663 )
        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 governments were throwing wads of cash at the brightest minds of that time, maybe ?

        • WWII plus Cold War = rapid technolgy...

          This is so true. We had a totally different mindset towards rolling out new technology back then. It was a nation security crisis if the Russians had mastered something that we didn't. Because of that urgency, we didn't mess around.

          Now it feels like many new technologies are "optional", would be great, etc... Where's the crack team from skunkworks to figure out if this fusion tech has legs?

          From websites alone Blacklight Power LOOKS much further along. Of course I

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ihlosi ( 895663 )
            That's why you don't just "throw $200 million" at these projects.

            Yeah. I think "back then" politicians were much better at picking the right people to throw money at. Today, it's just "my corporate buddies".

      • For tabletop stuff, getting to market may not be all that difficult. But it sounds as though he has to scale up to get energy positive. In that case you have to weigh the cost of abandoning the current technology against adopting the new technology since it will occur in the same sector. Investors don't like to see their cash cows shut down without seeing a very positive alternative so adoption will be pretty conservative if they can act as gate keepers and want to protect the return on investment in sunk

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by LarsBB ( 516200 )
        "I suspect the world was seduced by the fact that conventional nuclear energy did get up and running fairly quickly..."

        Nuclear fission up quickly? This is not true! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project [wikipedia.org]. Nuclear fission power was a huge undertaking, "...the Manhattan Project would eventually employ more than 130,000 people and cost a total of nearly $2 billion USD".

        Just because it has not worked yet, or is not easy, is not the same thing as it is not a good idea or possible.

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

      That's wonderful - can we see the prototype please? There isn't one? Let's leave the marketing hype timescales to the drug addled Eloi in public relations.

      That said, a nuclear power device that is more than an expensive way to boil water really deserves decent funding to possibly get somewhere useful in a decade or two - or teach us something else that is useful even if it doesn't work.

    • nuclear is clean and cheap, if people let it be. too bad the media do a great job of whipping up bullshit the moment anyone says radiation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
      Clean cheap power

      choose 2

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 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: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Bamfarooni ( 147312 )
        Uh, I was at the famous speech at Google and you don't know what you're talking about. The room was completely packed even though he went 30 minutes over.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )
        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?

        Bussard talked about it. However, it's not exactly a true statement; google magnetohydrodynamic power. Most interesting to me is the p
      • "Two-hundred-million dollars? How am I gonna get that?"

        "You could sleep with a million fat chick for $200 each."

        "Or 200 really fat chicks for $1M each."

        "What? Why are you all looking at me like that? Fat chicks need love, too.... but they gotta pay."

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 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

    • The wikipedia article you linked to only seems to mention one run achieving fusion, with 3 neutrons detected. That's with 12.5 kV running current through some rather large solenoids, which suggests quite a significant power investment. This is far, far, far below unity. In fact, I'm not sure how high of confidence 3 neutrons offers. He says it scales extremely well, but it seems to me an intermediate demonstrator is warranted before investing $200 million in a 100 MW prototype. He's trying to run before he
    • For those who want to donate to this cause, from the bottom of the www.emc2fusion.org page:

      Send Your Supporting Contributions to:

      New Mexico Community Foundation
      http://www.nmcf.org/ [nmcf.org]
      Santa Fe Office:
      343 East Alameda,
      Santa Fe, NM 87501
      505.820.6860
  • Completely offtopic, but my first thought when reading this was the phrase "Bussard Ramjet", which I've read in various sci-fi novels (most notably 'Footfall' by Niven and Pournelle) - lo and behold, it is the same Bussard [wikipedia.org]. Science is cool!
  • Damned Buzzard [mofolandia.com.br]! I hope Woodpecker alert the authorities about this well known con. How dare he!

  • See the device in action (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <info AT devinmoore DOT com> on Monday April 23, 2007 @06:35AM (#18838713) Homepage Journal
    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 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: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 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: (Score:3, Informative)

        by 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

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bearpaw ( 13080 )

          BTW it is economical right now to convert Coal into gasoline and diesel fuel. I can only think of two things stopping it. ...

          There's another thing stopping it -- or at least slowing it down a bit, I hope. The cheapest way -- in the narrow, corporatist sense of "cheapest" -- to get at coal is to basically scrape entire tops off of mountains and dump the non-coal parts into valleys.

          Meanwhile, some folks express concern that wind turbines ruin views. That's not totally unreasonable, but at least the ridg

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
            I doubt it. They are already doing that now so I don't see that as being a reason for corporations.

            I figure that the biggest reason is still that they are afraid that oil will plummet in price and make their investment worthless. Just like what happened in the 80s.

            Of course in the 70s people tried to cancel the Indy 500 because of the gas shortage... Just goes to show how stupid people can be.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by maxume ( 22995 )
        If electricity were nearly free, you would see trains electrifying all over the place. If the reactors are safe and clean, you just put one on your cargo ship. Cars and trucks and planes are certainly a different matter entirely.
        • Trains are all already electric. Their drivetrains are "diesel-electric": they have a diesel engine driving a generator, and electric motors driving the wheels.

          It'd be easy to convert them to some other electricity source; just rip out the diesel engine and replace it with the new source.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ihlosi ( 895663 )
        You'd have to go a long way to get oil down to 10 bucks a barrel.



        If the US stopped buying the stuff today, I could see that happen.



        you'd have to convince everybody to ditch their gas powered cars for electric cars.



        If you have cheap and unlimited power, you could just synthesize gasoline (as well as pretty much any other petrol product) from CO2 and water. It's perfectly doable, just completely uneconomic right now.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Enigma2175 ( 179646 )

        And diesel trucks are designed to drive for hundreds and hundreds of miles pulling huge payloads - not something that's practical with electricity yet. Trains,

        Actually, pulling a large payload is more efficient with electric motors. If you are already hauling a large load then adding some heavy batteries is not that much of an addition to your weight compared to the load.

        Almost all modern freight trains in the US are diesel-electric [wikipedia.org], which means their wheels are already driven by electric motors. It would

        • Actually, pulling a large payload is more efficient with electric motors. If you are already hauling a large load then adding some heavy batteries is not that much of an addition to your weight compared to the load.

          True enough, but I'm just wondering if it's feasible with current battery technology. If you need 800 pounds of batteries to get 400 miles of range out of a relatively light passenger car, how many pounds of batteries would you need to get the same range out of a vehicle that weighs 40 times more? Plus, cross country hauling trucks are limited by weight, so if the weight of the propulsion system goes up, you have to take weight out of the cargo which reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of that mode

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Teancum ( 67324 )
          In looking at the scales of the Bussard fusion reactor, I don't see it becoming a "Mr. Fusion" (aka Back to the Future) type device on an automobile, but I do see that it can be used in places like a Submarine, Aircraft Carrier, or perhaps in a locomotive. The age of steam-powered locomotives may yet come back in the 21st Century, but it won't look like the original "iron horse" that ran on wood cut from the hills the train ran through.

          Bussard's suggestion that it could be a viable power source for a genui
    • The good news is that we kick of dependency on petroleum, of which 2/3 of the world's proven reserves are in the Middle East, a region we have little knowledge of, dominated by people of a religion we have little understanding of.

      And the bad news is, 63% of the world's proven Boron reserves are in Turkey [wikipedia.org].

      Mind you 3% and Asian Minor are steps in the right direction.

  • Sceptical (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BlueParrot ( 965239 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @08:44AM (#18839467)
    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...
    • I think you are misapplying the triple product here. This is basically beam fusion so the temperature part is ill-defined. The low density is compensated by the long path length (multiple passes) and you want the charged plasma temperature kept low to avoid thermal charge leakage. The energetic beam will heat the plasma through Coulomb losses so this needs to be balanced against the probablity that a fusion reaction occurs before the beam particle losses too much energy to the plasma. The basic issue is

    • Fundamental misunderstandings in parent (Score:4, Informative)

      by Melee_Fracas ( 1092093 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @11:53AM (#18842043)

      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).

  • How impressed should we be about the "International academy of science" award?

  • More likely this is about the admin/congress games (Score:3, Informative)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @09:16AM (#18839819) Journal
    Back in the 80's, I was working on darpa grants. In one case, reagan and congress got into it over the budget. Just before the tussle started, we were advised that our research was good, but that our funding was frozen until the budget was approved. The military was simply making certain that they had their bases covered. It is likely that Bussard has the same deal going on. Though there is a problem with this. It is likely that he is BOTTOM of the priority since his money is now frozen. That means that if money is cut, he may be cut. It would be wise to write those letters and notify your local congressman, that they need to consider side-effects, including making certain that the contract continues. This is more important in whatever state that this is occurring in. They are VERY likely to make certain that this gets funded on the side by DOE or NASA (not likely) if needed.

  • Focus Fusion (Score:2, Informative)

    by freefrag ( 728150 )
    I wonder if there's anything to this approach to fusion [focusfusion.org].

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by neomalkin ( 1010865 )
      Sadly, no. The dense plasma focus is an excellent neutron and x-ray source, but an inadequate fusion reactor. Despite what the theorist that runs that site would have you believe, the focus does not produce a true thermonuclear plasma. It's more beam-like. There's simply no more funding to go to focus work RE: it's potential as a full scale fusion device. If we see practical fusion demonstrated in the next 15 years, it will be at one of these three places: NIF at Lawrence Livermore, the Z-Machine (soon to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )
        Well... while NIF, Z-R, and ITER seem the most likely, they're also incredibly expensive. It's all about weighing prospects of success against costs. Even Rider's papers don't rule out all small-scale devices, and that's probably some of the most pessimistic literature out there. I think each device ought to be weighed on its chance of success, but also on its cost. Not every device will make the cut, certainly, but I'm sure one could justify the economic argument for a number of them.
  • I've followed Bussard's work in this area, and we're darn lucky to have him. Working for the Navy makes me nervous, though.

    It's always been rumored that the Farnsworth fusor was buried (and it was, big time and deliberately) because it looked like it might work. While that device would probably never have become economically feasible as a power generator, there's not much likelihood the current Tokamak-based designs will either, and they're getting billions for research worldwide. One theory is that Farnswo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teancum ( 67324 )
      I wouldn't be too worried about this as there are some serious national security issues that are around with more than half of all oil used in the USA coming from abroad. In this situation the U.S. Navy is one who would want to be explicitly involved with the development of a fuel source they could use for their own ships and be able to continue to fight without having to invade an oil producing country in order to merely maintain their own ships.

      A major world conflict involving the USA (Iraq is not a majo

  • Paul Allen Knows Something More... (Score:5, Informative)

    by BoRegardless ( 721219 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @11:31AM (#18841747)
    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: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by holomorph ( 1072062 )
      Paul Allen's science advisors don't necessarily know enough about fusion to be capable of evaluating whether or not Tri-Alpha's scheme will work or not. Even the guys at Tri-Alpha know it probably won't, but it might, and the investors (including Paul Allen) are aware that it is a very high risk investment, but they have enough money that they feel it is still worthwhile. After all, if someone does come up with a workable fusion power machine those that funded it stand to make a lot of money.
  • I'm so happy about this I could burst! We are SOOOOOO close to this I can just about taste it. The world is going to be a very different place with Polywell DD Reactors. I'm trying to figure out what it means for the standard of living for the millions (Billions?) of people who currently have to spend all day searching for wood to cook their meals, and have to go to sleep when the sun goes down.

    I reckon that 30 years of investing could result in teh 3rd world draggingitself out of the dark ages. Just a sing

  • Did you know that since the government has pulled the funding, Bussard started collecting funds through New Mexico Community Foundation [nmcf.org]? There's also an online petition [petitionspot.com] to resume his funding by the government.

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