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The two main categories typically thought of as one day leading to Controlled Fusion are: Inertial Confinement using Lasers or Ion Beams to heat a small pellet of deuterium-tritium to such high temperatures and pressure that the atoms fuse.

Then, the second choice for Fusion is Magnetic Confinement, this is the method used by the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princeton. The principle is to use Magnetic fields to hold plasma containing deterium-tritum together long enough for fusion to be initiated.

Now, both these approaches have been stumbling around for many decades consuming billions of dollars while scientists proclaim that the breakeven point is "just around the corner." Well enough is enough, it is time for something fundamentally different.

The new method uses a "Plasma Focus" which is a device which works with plasma rather than against it with expensive and inefficient brute force methods. Quoting from: Focus Fusion In contrast, the plasma focus device functions by using instabilities that nature provides. It is natural instabilities that cause the plasma filaments to form and later to compress themselves into an ultra dense plasmoid to generate fusion temperatures. Such instabilities are common in nature and, as Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine has emphasized, are the way that nature evolves and creates new structures and new types of order.

Focus Fusion is thus a new type of Fusion that uses Hydrogen-Boron as a fuel that will produce electricity directly (the helium nuclei) verses the water, steam, and turbines necessary to produce energy with the Tokamak and other potential methods of Fusion. Because of these advantages this Fusion device could be extremely small and inexpensive. All that remains is for the right person or persons to realize this and capitalize on this wonderful opportunity to bring cheap clean power to humanity.

Hey! You just dipped your supercomputer into my fusion reactor!

Check out the Focus Fusion Society for a promising solution to the world's energy woes.

They are developing a hot fusion device, called a plasma focus, which is small, inexpensive, simple (relatively), energetic, produces no long-term radioactive waste, and effectively converts fusion energy straight to electricity. A working prototype has already demonstrated sustained fusion. As a side-note, the plasma focus looks to be conveniently ideal for fusion space propulsion, producing much higher specific impulse than chemical rockets.

The development of usable fusion power, long prophesied by science fiction, will be a watershed event for human civilization.

Please visit the above link and look it over. I'm a member of the society. Join us and help change the world.

--Porkrind

One interesting development is the achievement of fusion temperatures with the comparatively simple dense plasma focus device. Check it out at the Focus Fusion Society. To me this looks simple and promising.

As an aside, the guy running this, Eric Lerner, is a prominent plasma fusion researcher who has written a very fascinating book on plasma cosmology, a competing theory to the Big Bang Theory. I had no idea, but it seems there are a lot of scientists that don't buy Big Bang Theory.

--porkrind (too lazy to log in)

They already have a working prototype!

If you want more information about the research sql*kitten mentions, check out the Focus Fusion Society. Their goal is raise funding for additional R&D in this subject, but they also have a good description of how focus fusion is achieved.