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