Slashdot Mirror
Dr. Bussard Passes Away, Polywell Fusion Continues
Vinz writes "Dr Bussard, the man behind the Bussard Collector and inventor of the Polywell fusion device, passed away last Sunday in the morning. He leaves behind him a legacy of EM fusion devices, and a team determined to continue his efforts. The news of funding extension for the construction of his WB-7 fusion devices made it to slashdot months ago (as well as his talk at google). They may be a serious candidate in the run to bring commercial fusion, and may work at lower scales than other projects. Let's hope the project continues in good shape despite his departure."
The catch to these devises appears to be that if you have a strong enough electrostatic field to contain the ions then you will also lose A LOT of high energy electrons (Rider 1995)
And Bussard insisted that Rider's math model was flat out wrong. Recent experiments by Yoshikawa and MIT have both demonstrated that Rider's model is, in fact, wrong.
The Polywell design has tremendous merit to it and the experiments that Bussard managed at the end of his life were successful in measuring fusion scaling factors and electron loss factors. From those experimental results Bussard's team rushed together what was expected to be their last device in WB-6. On analyzing the data it generated, it achieved record breaking fusion rates. Now that the navy has re-funded his team to finish WB-7, expect to see some big announcements in a year or so.
For more on Polywell theory and background go here.