Fusion Power By 2020? Researchers Say Yes and Turn To Crowdfunding.

FIRST! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-19 21:16 · Score: 2, Informative

..also, here's a TED talk about fusion power https://www.ted.com/talks/michel_laberge_how_synchronized_hammer_strikes_could_generate_nuclear_fusion

Re:FIRST! by ceoyoyo · 2014-05-20 06:20 · Score: 1

Interesting graph he shows comparing fusion reactors with Moore's law.

A matter of priorities by lennier1 · 2014-05-19 21:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

14 billion? That's less than it costs to supply that little adventure in the Iraqi desert with toilet paper!!!

Re:A matter of priorities by AGMW · 2014-05-19 21:31 · Score: 1

Indeed ... in the UK the great unwashed spend more on DMR ('distant male regent') ring tones than we spend on fusion research!

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Re: A matter of priorities by benjfowler · 2014-05-19 22:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

Quote from Professor Brian Cox: Britain spends more on ringtones than fusion research.
Goes to show you where our priorities lie as a nation; and how our worthless so-called leaders are asleep at the switch, as usual.
Re:A matter of priorities by Pino+Grigio · 2014-05-19 23:34 · Score: 1

Yawn.

Quite a lot of tech and research in plasma physics and fusion paid for from the defence budget. You know, like most of it.
Re:A matter of priorities by careysub · 2014-05-20 01:20 · Score: 2

Your post is inaccurate. The Naval Research Laboratory Plasma Physics Division is investigating magnetic confinement focus fusion, the very version referenced in TFA.
The Navy's cumulative funding over the last several years is about 50 times larger than this Kickstarter campaign target.

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Re:A matter of priorities by microbox · 2014-05-20 03:31 · Score: 1

Yeah, and think of all the high technology jobs the UK would have created. Granted the military industry has big hooks into the government... and all that money talks...

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Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Re:A matter of priorities by Ralph+Wiggam · 2014-05-20 03:49 · Score: 2

But for that $14B we actually got toilet paper. We've spent tens of billions of dollars on fusion research over the past 30 years- and all we have to show for it is the promise that if we spend tens of billions more that we might be able make a major breakthrough sometime in the next 10 years.
Re:A matter of priorities by riverat1 · 2014-05-20 06:09 · Score: 1

Wait! Nike has a laser? When are they going to incorporate them in the shoes?
Re:A matter of priorities by riverat1 · 2014-05-20 06:13 · Score: 1

I think you got it wrong. The standard fusion promise period is 20 years. ;)
Re:A matter of priorities by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-05-20 06:16 · Score: 1

> spend tens of billions more that we might be able make a major breakthrough
No, no, no. If we spend tens of billions more we get some incremental improvements. That is literally anyone is suggesting.
The press releases won't say that, of course, they'll talk about "breakthrough" and "unlimited energy". But when you go from 0.6 to 0.8 to 1.0 over two decades, I refuse to use the term "breakthrough".
In the meantime, if you want to see some nice exponential curves in action:
http://votesolar.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Lazard-June-11-Levelized-Cost-of-Energy-and-proj-to-2020-copy.pdf
Note the second chart. Lazard, those crazy long-hair greenies, are stating that commercial scale PV is 9 to 10 cents/kWh and wind is between 4 and 9 cents. Let me just put this out there: there is absolutely no way that any of the fusion devices being mention here will *ever* hit those price points.
Re: A matter of priorities by westlake · 2014-05-20 06:37 · Score: 1

Goes to show you where our priorities lie as a nation; and how our worthless so-called leaders are asleep at the switch, as usual.
OK, smart guy, show me realistic goals and the spending required for the next five to ten years of research on fusion power. Tell me where the money is to come from and the political trade-offs needed to make this happen.
Re:A matter of priorities by Ottawakismet · 2014-05-20 06:51 · Score: 1

Absolutely. It is not realistic to expect that fusion is going to magically be a simple cheap fusion source. Its more complex to control then fission, and we could not efficiently exploit all the heat that would be released. We already waste most of the heat produced in nuclear (or fossil fuel) thermal plants, so fusion would produce a lot more wasted heat then fission. I've always been perplexed by people who have thought fusion is so fantastic - we already have a super energy dense fuel that we can safely exploit - nuclear fission. Fusion seem more dangerous, hard to control and not necessarily that much better.
Re:A matter of priorities by Ralph+Wiggam · 2014-05-20 08:47 · Score: 1

10 years for the breakthrough, another 10 years for commercial production.
Re: A matter of priorities by Catch55 · 2014-05-20 23:05 · Score: 1

"Political trade offs" - that's exactly what we are talking about here - if we have to do "political trade offs" it means that we don't currently have the political will/the backing of general public. Why? Every scientist and engineer knows that we could/should be using more money on R&D - for example the realization of nuclear fusion would have almost incalculable benefits in the long run. It all comes down to this: "We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” - Carl Sagan
Re:A matter of priorities by Catch55 · 2014-05-20 23:49 · Score: 1

We already waste most of the heat produced in nuclear (or fossil fuel) thermal plants, so fusion would produce a lot more wasted heat then fission. I've always been perplexed by people who have thought fusion is so fantastic - we already have a super energy dense fuel that we can safely exploit - nuclear fission. Fusion seem more dangerous, hard to control and not necessarily that much better.
The amount of heat released in the process is dependent of the type of fuel used. That's exactly why the Aneutronic approach that these guys are proposing is different. To quote Steven Cowley: "The holy grail of holy grails is proton-boron fusion,”. This means that instead of neutrons there are positively charged helium ions produced in the reaction which can be converted into electricity by electromagnetic means. Efficiency is very high and they circumvent the problem of extensive heating due to runaway neutrons (aneutronic=no neutrons). I think that this is truly innovative approach and orders of magnitude safer and cleaner if compared to mainstream approaches that are using Deuterium-Tritium fuel.
Re:A matter of priorities by the_other_chewey · 2014-05-21 00:52 · Score: 1

The problem is that funding one scientist for twenty years will not yield the same results
as funding twenty scientists for one year. In other words: Progress (in any kind of research) does
not depend linearly on the accumulated amounts spent. If you spend little enough, there won't be any
progress at all, because the One Scientist will be busy documenting the status quo before he retires,
so the next One Scientist can learn the status quo before he retires, ...

There's a nice graph about that. Note the "actual funding" line.
Re:A matter of priorities by werepants · 2014-05-21 07:04 · Score: 1

Mods! This AC post is informative and interesting. A useful perspective on the trend of fusion development.
Re: A matter of priorities by bobvious · 2014-05-21 07:21 · Score: 1

I think it has more to do with their being bought and paid for by other interests. Nearly free energy (a fusion reactor in the utility room) is going to take a lot of money out of politicians' pockets.

Crowdfunding? by JaredOfEuropa · 2014-05-19 21:27 · Score: 2

So at what pledge tier do I get a Mr. Fusion?

Seriously, I'm happy to through some cash their way, but you'd think that for something this significant they'd be able to find $200k from actual investors or research funds to take the next step, especially since they are apparently already funded by JPL.

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If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...

Re:Crowdfunding? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-19 21:50 · Score: 1

Crowdfunding together with something tangible can raise surprising amounts of money. People are a lot more willing to "donate" money if they get something symbolic in return. If they put together a small booklet/calendar with concept sketches and ideas for interesting fusion reactors and sell they can get plenty of funding while spreading knowledge.
Valve made a similar thing for their Dota-tournament, a small compendium where the revenue is put into the prize-pool. They have raised over $3 million and aren't done yet.
Assuming that people are more interested in fusion reactors than they are in watching other people playing computer games you can easily fund the first step and get a good start on the next goal.
Re:Crowdfunding? by JaredOfEuropa · 2014-05-20 00:33 · Score: 1

We already have a universal and totally unreasonable energy surcharge. The 3 year revenues from this tax alone (from the population of our small country) could bankroll another ITER. Only problem is: we're spending it on other stuff, not on energy research or even renewables.

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If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Re:Crowdfunding? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-20 00:35 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't understand why I should spend my hard earned money to pay for something that will benefit everyone whilst my neighbors spend theirs on all kinds of nice stuff
This statement alone adequately explains why most of the problems in the world can't be solved.
Re:Crowdfunding? by Cederic · 2014-05-20 01:46 · Score: 1

Since you're getting slated for making that point, I'd like to point out that if this business is successful its owners will become instant billionaires. The people funding them on Indiegogo will not.
This is hardly equitable.
If you want me to invest in fusion power, give me a share of the benefits.
Re: Crowdfunding? by Richy_T · 2014-05-20 02:06 · Score: 1

Anti tax but supports funding by taxes and doesn't see why he should support something if his neighbors don't.
Look, I understand why someone would think this was a waste of money/bad deal/scam, whatever but jeez, if you support something, just go ahead and support it. Don't sit around whining and sucking your thumb cause it's "not fair" or some similar bullshit. Take control of your life.
Re:Crowdfunding? by njnnja · 2014-05-20 03:19 · Score: 1

This is why I do not like kickstarter-like equity investments. Kickstarter and Indiegogo should give away free shirts that say "I was an initial investor in a billion dollar company and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." If somebody puts their hard earned money at risk, they should reap the equity-like rewards. Then they can use the proceeds to buy whatever thing the entrepreneurs are selling.
Re:Crowdfunding? by Immerman · 2014-05-20 03:30 · Score: 1

>If you want me to invest in fusion power, give me a share of the benefits.
You mean like an environmentally responsible and hopefully cheap energy source that would help us al avoid the immense expenses of catastrophic climate change?
Besides which this campaign will be bupkus in the grand scheme of things - it's just to be able to afford the beryllium electrodes necessary to (they hope) achieve the 10,000x increase in plasma density necessary to achieve fusion. Something that lots of different techniques have already accomplished. Then they expect to need another $1M to reach the point of achieving net energy gain, which has been the real stumbling block for every other attempt. Then another $50M to build the first (small) commercial reactor.
They'll hardly be instant billionaires, but if 1% of the US population sent them $1 each they'd easily eclipse their funding projections for net energy gain, at which point they'd start attracting attention from real investors interested in helping with the heavy lifting of financing and business development to start building and selling actual power reactors.
Some people like to donate to feed the homeless campaigns, others would rather contribute to something that may help get humanity out of the grim future we're busily building for ourselves. Just because you'd rather spend your money on toys doesn'yt give you the right to disparage those with a greater vision.

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Re:Crowdfunding? by Immerman · 2014-05-20 03:46 · Score: 1

> but you'd think that for something this significant they'd be able to find $200k from actual investors or research funds to take the next step
Why? They've got an idea that looks good on paper - but they haven't even achieved fusion yet, whereas lots of the other equally promising techniques on the field have accomplished that years or decades ago, and then been stymied by their inability to achieve a net energy gain. Maybe these guys have really found a "holy grail" and will have smooth sailing between "fusion achieved" and "net energy gain", but they would be the first. Meanwhile there's LOTS of different promising techniques on the field, and only enough funding available to support a few of them - only those with the most promise and politically-savvy leadership will be getting anything close sufficient government funding, most are fighting over big enough scraps to just keep their lab open.
I think crowdfunding could actually be an excellent option here - there's lots of politics working against fusion, especially the smaller-scale non-tokamak approaches. But if everyone in the US contributed an average of even $1 we'd be talking ~$400M, enough to fund many of the more promising research paths. If we could manage that once per year we could fund a veritable firestorm of fusion research.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Re:Crowdfunding? by Immerman · 2014-05-20 03:48 · Score: 1

Yeah, and contributing to homeless shelters, food drives, etc. is downright un-American. Everybody should be totally out for themselves, and screw the rest.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Re:Crowdfunding? by dentin · 2014-05-20 04:10 · Score: 1

I want to know how exactly changing out the electrode material type is supposed to get a 10k multiplier on plasma focus density. The web site and what I could find were remarkably short on detail, and I'm inclined to believe that while the beryllium electrodes are important, there's some serious confusion about what is being funded and the problems that funding is supposed to solve.
Either way, I'd much rather the money be donated to the SENS project instead. We don't currently have a power crisis, so to speak - however, we do have a hundred thousand people dying per day of age related diseases, and that seems a smidgen more important to me than dropping the cost of electricity.

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Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Re:Crowdfunding? by quickOnTheUptake · 2014-05-20 04:56 · Score: 1

I think the point was that this is a for-profit enterprise asking for donation. If they were organized as a non-profit seeking to provide the world with clean cheap energy, and planning to sell the final product at-cost, or even release the full schematics to the public domain, then it would be a lot easier to make a donation. (BTW, this doesn't mean people couldn't make good money in the process; employees at a non-profit can still draw substantial salaries.)
But presumably (I could be wrong), if this works and they produce a shippable product, it will be sold at the highest price the market will bear and the people asking for donations will become fabulously rich in the process.
It might be short-sighted, but there is still a real dissonance in giving money to a for-profit, even when that for-profit is doing something you consider worthwhile. Imagine a for-profit in any other line (education, medical treatment, medical R&D, feeding the poor etc.), would you be willing to donate to them? Do you donate to the University of Phoenix? Do you donate to Pfizer?

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Re:Crowdfunding? by Immerman · 2014-05-20 05:40 · Score: 1

The urgency isn't about dropping the dollar cost of electricity today, it's about dropping the dollar cost of dealing with the enormous ecological damage being done by our current energy sources. Or are you one of those ho believes global warming is a conspiracy of tens of thousands of scientists against the poor beleaguered fossil fuel barons?
As for SENS, I agree it's an interesting project that will make old age far more comfortable, but I fail to understand how exactly that's a good thing for the species. Death can't be "cured", only delayed - and at the cost of ballooning the population accordingly, with all the problems of an elderly-heavy population boom that follows.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Re:Crowdfunding? by Immerman · 2014-05-20 05:46 · Score: 1

What does the University of Phoenix of Pfizer do for me? Pfizer, maybe, when they're not busy making yet another "cure" for things that matter to people with lots of money, but they already have a massive income stream and huge profit margins, such that I am making a substantial donation every time I buy their product instead of a generic knock-off, And nothing they do substantially benefits the species itself, in fact one of the side effects of improved medicine is that the sickly can survive substantially longer and thus further infect the population with their genes.
Meanwhile achieving fusion power offers a solution to the largest environmental crisis to hit our species since the last major ice age eliminated all but a few thousand of us.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Re:Crowdfunding? by dentin · 2014-05-20 07:35 · Score: 1

I am extremely certain that 1) global warming exists, and 2) global warming is mostly caused by mankind over the last few hundred years. As far as I'm concerned, the evidence there is more than sufficient, and deniers are nutjobs.
However, I don't really see much ecological damage that I care about at the moment, and that includes 'global warming' ecological damage. It's not that I don't see ecological change, it's simply that I don't care about most of it. It's also slow enough that mankind will be able to easily adapt going forward - easily compared to the other stuff we do day to day over the course of a century.
As for SENS, I'm not saying 'cure death'. I'm saying 'delay indefinitely death due to old age'. Why would you think we can't do that? It's a hard problem, but it's not unsolvable. At its core, life is just chemistry.
As for a ballooning population, current population estimates put a peak at under ten billion around the year 2050. There's every reason to believe that the population can be held finite.

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Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Re:Crowdfunding? by Immerman · 2014-05-20 11:27 · Score: 1

The problem is, by the time you start seeing serious climate problems it will be far too late to prevent things getting much worse. Historically global climate is (crudely) a bistable system, with all of human existence falling in the current "cold" state, and if we go on as we are then at some point soon we'll reach the point where natural positive feedback effects will commit us to transitioning to the "warm" state regardless of anything we do - and that means 100+ foot sea level rise, and all the other "alarmist" fallout, which would be *far* more expensive to adapt to than weaning ourselves from fossil fuels today would be.
Now it's possible that we've already crossed that threshold, in which case I'd say by all means let's focus on more pressing concerns, but I'm not ready to throw up our hands and give up until we're sure about that - the costs of adaptation make the costs of abandoning fossil fuels seem miniscule in comparison. And what would the next most important concern be? Maybe the horrible pollution and environmental destruction being wreaked by our quest for more fossil fuels - fracking, strip-mining of pristine wilderness for tar sands, etc? Or maybe reducing the threat of global violence inherent in having our economies dependent on relatively rare fuel deposits while our need for energy to adapt to a changing world steadily increases? This century is going to see a *lot* of geopolitical stresses as agriculture becomes far less reliable due to the already inevitable climate destabilization.
And perhaps most importantly - even if we had fusion mastered today, it would still likely take several decades to migrate the infrastructure. And we probably need a decade or two of hands-on experience to get from "first power-generating fusion reactor" to anything approaching mastery. Investing in fusion technology today gives us options for the end of the century that we don't currently have, and will desperately need.
As for a stable population - yes, I've heard the stats, 9-11 billion projected plateau, assuming we can get global zero population growth within the next decade or so (population will continue increasing beyond that point because many of the same factors that voluntarily reduce birth rates also extend lifespans, so there's considerable lag) . But that assumes people keep dying at the usual pace. If we extend lifespans indefinitely then we need to simultaneously eliminate new births completely unless someone dies to make room - and I just don't see any way we could do that without horribly draconian and invasive regulation. Of course that's not an issue if only the rich can afford to become "immortal", but I don't see anything good coming of that either. As far as I can tell immortality is the fool's quest of people irrationally terrified of death. Hopefully one day that will change, but today? I just don't think we're ready for it. Not by a long shot. Let me put it another way - assuming that neither you nor anyone you know would get the chance of being immortal, what arguments would you offer in it's favor? What rational reason do we have to extend the length of our lives?

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Re:Crowdfunding? by dentin · 2014-05-20 11:57 · Score: 1

> The problem is, by the time you start seeing serious climate problems it will be far too late to prevent things getting much worse.
I have a really, really hard time thinking that climate engineering won't be possible in a hundred years, and climate change doesn't happen fast enough to wipe out humanity in that time frame. IMHO we'll be able to put the climate wherever we want it.
> And what would the next most important concern be? Maybe the horrible pollution and environmental destruction being wreaked by our quest for more fossil fuels - fracking, strip-mining of pristine wilderness for tar sands, etc?
Nope. These are extremely low priority to me.
> Or maybe reducing the threat of global violence inherent in having our economies dependent on relatively rare fuel deposits while our need for energy to adapt to a changing world steadily increases?
This is also extremely low priority for me, as it's already happening anyway, and while some part of global violence is related to oil money, there's plenty of other reasons for people to blow each other up. Subsaharan africa and north korea are cases in point.
> This century is going to see a *lot* of geopolitical stresses as agriculture becomes far less reliable due to the already inevitable climate destabilization.
Agriculture has always been extremely unreliable, and yearly swings in weather dominate it, not climate change. Climate change is far more gradual than the time needed for agriculture to change.
> And perhaps most importantly - even if we had fusion mastered today, it would still likely take several decades to migrate the infrastructure.
Why is this any different from getting any other alternative energy source going? If anything, I'd expect continuous fusion plants to integrate just fine as they're similar to fission nukes, and ICF fusion plants to integrate just fine, as they're similar to gas turbine generators. Compared to what's needed for wind and solar, it's nothing.
Regarding population growth, most of the growth is in poor countries, where life extension will be less available, and where other dangers still cause a lot of death. While life extension does raise the projected plateau, how far it's raised depends on how fast it hits, how cheap it is, and how stable we're able to make the rest of the world. I'd bet 50/50 odds that the population in 2050 doesn't exceeed ten billion.
> assuming that neither you nor anyone you know would get the chance of being immortal, what arguments would you offer in it's favor? What rational reason do we have to extend the length of our lives?
Let me pose the same question to you, with a couple modifications:
- Assume that neither you nor any you know is dying of cancer. What arguments would you offer in favor of researching a cure? What arguments would you offer against such research?
- Assume that neither you nor anyone you know has alzheimers disease. What arguments would you offer in favor of researching a cure? What arguments would you offer against such research?
- Assume that neither you nor anyone you know lives in poor africa, where the average lifespan is barely above 40 years old. What arguments would you offer in favor of trying to help the people in this region? What arguments would you offer against it?
Aging is a horrible thing, something which frankly should not be tolerated in polite society, any more than cancer, alzheimers, and ebola. To simple take it 'off the table' as though it were uncurable and shouldn't be cured is reprehensible.

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Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Re:Crowdfunding? by Skal+Tura · 2014-05-21 09:56 · Score: 1

Global warming is mostly sensationalist journalism.
Climate change on the other hand is real, and somewhat tangible. The source of which is probably nothing man made.
Nature of this little blue ball is much much more resilient than people think.
More we burn fossil fuels:
* The more vegetation will grow due to increased CO2
* Plants will clean the air, while taking in sunshine, increase the net energy content of this little blue planet, by storing it into biomass. (increase in total net energy content is a plus, we can use that biomass to make biofuels)
* More of the heat generated by using any form of energy source which has been stored (ie. fossil fuels, burning wood etc.) is radiated out of this planet
* Less heat is extracted out of the core, because the heat difference is closing
* Ice caps work as short term buffers, while they melt they release chemicals, some of which can contribute into cooling the planet.
* If temps are higher, it means more water evaporates == more of the heat is utilized on evaporation process causing cooler temperatures
* More cloudy it is, the sunshine doesn't get to surface, and is reflected backwards (clouds are rather white after all... hence reflects IR radiation) out of the planet
If any effect what-so-ever, climate change is affected much much more by eating meat than anything else.
Don't eat meat, and you could have 2x Hummer H2s humming 24/7/365, and tons of other wastefull stuff and you still contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions than average joe. Seriously, it's that much!
Much more alarming is the amount of forests being cut down, and sweet water usage levels etc. than anything relating to greenhouse gasses, global warming, climate change or whatever you want to name it.
In my opinion, the whole climate change/global warming is a huge elaborate conspiracy scam to make people pay more for their used energy, in whatever form, created by the huge hidden powers behind the mega corporations of the world, things like OPEC which is a legalized cartel working 24/7 on ways to increase fuel prices.
Oh btw, we have no such thing as shortage on fossil fuels, that's another load of crap. Today we have the means and technology to do full compatible biofuels at likely cheaper rates than barrel of oil is going for.... Tho, mysteriously those companies tend to disappear shortly after coming public with their advancements.
Current ethanol trend is just another scam to put more money on the pockets of farmers as well, very very inefficient. much more efficient methods exist than farming sugar corn etc. for making ethanol. Any biomass can be turned into ethanol rather cheaply in mass production, provided you have the right scientists working for you, thanks to bacteria and genetic engineering. Same method can be used to make any hydrocarbons on the cheap as well...
Why do these exist in? Because people in power benefit from these "problems", they work as a wonderful revenue source AND very nice distraction from actually important stuff... you know, like advancing human race as a whole and therefore endangering the position of the powers that be.

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Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Re:Crowdfunding? by Skal+Tura · 2014-05-21 10:01 · Score: 1

Yet, by research we started taking measurements at the coldest point in recent history of recent few hundred thousand years.
Hence, the CLIMATE CHANGE, is most likely just natural change.
This research was done by drilling into ice taking a core sample. Ice has "memory" in regards of temperatures from history, of course those are just annual average readings, but that's what GLOBAL WARMING is supposed to be as well.
If you want to see ecological damage, take a look at ground water pumping and other sweet water sources, cutting down forests. Now those are scary things!

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Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Re:Crowdfunding? by dentin · 2014-05-21 10:14 · Score: 1

Don't be a troll. As I said, the evidence for global warming is unambiguous.

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Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com

Bad move by Katatsumuri · 2014-05-19 21:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

They didn't have much credibility to start with, and turning to crowdfunding only makes it worse.

It is not a mass market product with quick deliverables, it is an industrial solution. So the natural financing source would be venture capital, rather than crowdfunding. If they have to turn to indiegogo, it can only mean they failed to convince anyone relevant and are desperately trying to ride the "fusion is cool" fans, and disappoint them in the process.

As much as I would love to see fusion plants soon, it looks like this is not the company that will deliver them.

Re:Bad move by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-19 22:00 · Score: 4, Informative

But for 300 bucks you can get a copy of his 1991 book refuting the Big Bang.

I'll let the rest of you fund this maverick grad-skool dropout and his wacky ideas about standard fysix. I'd love for him finally to prove the world wrong in their assessment.
Re:Bad move by thegarbz · 2014-05-19 22:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

This. They are asking for $200k. If that's all that is needed to make a difference they could easily get that funding if their ideas were even remotely sound. It's quite telling that people will find the ITER to the tune of $13bn but won't give these guys the left over pennies from the bottom of the jar.
Re:Bad move by msobkow · 2014-05-19 23:01 · Score: 1

I had the same thought right off. A paltry $200K for something that is supposed to serve the trillion dollar energy markets of the world? If this thing had any chance of working, there would be energy market investors lining up with the chump change they're asking for.

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I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Re:Bad move by Rei · 2014-05-19 23:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

I expected to see Slashdot drooling and rushing to catch a ride on the latest "ITER = Bad; everyone without much funding = good but repressed" bandwagon. Good to see the discourse is higher than that.
That doesn't mean that ITER (or NIF, or any of the other major names) is going to be the best solution. Honestly, while there's little doubt in even most critics mind that ITER *could* lead to (via DEMO) a viable way to produce power, I seriously doubt it'll lead to an *economical* way to produce power. But the concept that none of the world's energy companies had an interest in a $200k power source that will change the world... sorry, but no. They looked at it, checked the science, and all decided it was a big "pass".
Personally, I have the most hope for HiPER leading to an economical fusion source. It's like NIF (ICF fusion), but uses far weaker (and thus dramatically cheaper) compression pulse, and makes up for the difference with a heating pulse. Basically, the capital costs are far lower and it gives more than an order of magnitude better gain than standard ICF. It piggybacks on the data from existing ICF fusion research, adding only a few new requirements of its own (such as research on how the heating pulse will interact with the high-energy state resulting from the compression pulse). And there's the standard challenges of any such pulsed fusion system, mainly about achieving a sufficient repeat rate. But it looks doable.

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Re:Bad move by felrom · 2014-05-19 23:27 · Score: 2

I didn't see the funding option for, "Donate $500 and we'll pay your electric bill for a decade." If they think they're so close to such a breakthrough they should be offering more than t-shirts and posters.
Re:Bad move by bloodhawk · 2014-05-19 23:45 · Score: 1

shush this looks wonderful. I have not heard of such an excellent scheme to divorce fools of their money for weeks now. seriously the only think that shocks me more is that they are still finding fools to con into this thing. They have been flogging this crap for 5 or 6 years and they still expect people to believe they have found the magic bullet that they refuse to show anyone proof of because someone will steal it and they simply can't find anyone in the world willing to make billions and billions by investing in them so they must resort to crowdfunding. But I guess people still fall for the Nigerian scammers and mysterious lotto winnings when you didn't even enter a lotto, sometimes the stupidity of some parts of humanity scare me almost as much as pricks like these that like taking them for a ride.
Re:Bad move by newcastlejon · 2014-05-19 23:50 · Score: 2

I wouldn't say ITER = bad, so much as ITER = big. For the amount of money that's been spent on that project, where's the harm in spreading a few million around the smaller projects too? You never know if any of them will bear fruit, and it'd be nice to be able to build a fusion reactor without needing superconducting magnets the size of a house.

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If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Re:Bad move by MickLinux · 2014-05-19 23:51 · Score: 1

I'm all for exploring ideas that are energy-economically feasible, as well as potentially resource-econemically feasible.
However, I really think that the cold-fusion idea was killed by stupidity prematurely, and --no offense -- I think that for those who want to work on a cheap fusion alternative, they should look at protein-folding to see if there is a way to get nuclei momentarily within a reasonable tunnelling cross section.
Point being, they could work on their protein folding designs on a computer to their heart's content. Then, if they do find something interesting, they can publish that as a theoretical protein model for cold-fusion purposes. Get THAT accepted, and one can then work on DNA recombination to develop the thing.

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Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Re:Bad move by AikonMGB · 2014-05-20 00:11 · Score: 1

Unfortunately, since fusion would be an incredibly revolutionary technology, there is a tremendous amount of money to be gained by being "first to the post". Any investor with money already in one technology will push hard for only that technology to be funded, at the expense of all other lines of research. Fusion research is sadly driven by economic politics.
Re:Bad move by thsths · 2014-05-20 00:15 · Score: 1

ITER's funding is a massively political issue. I would argue that it is funded exactly because it is expensive. My scientists involved in fusion research work in, on or with ITER - do you really think they would give good marks to a simple fusion technology in a peer review?
I am not saying that what they propose is sound - not even the proposal does that. But I would say that the fact that they cannot get traditional funding does not go against them.
Remember cold fusion? It certainly works, but it does not scale. We could have tried to make it scale, but nobody was really interested. ITER on the other hand has a clear route to market, but it will cost somewhere in the region of 100 billion to do so.
Re:Bad move by taiwanjohn · 2014-05-20 00:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Part of the problem is that Mr. Lerner also favors a steady-state model over the Big Bang theory, so he is not taken seriously by the mainstream scientific community. OTOH, he does appear to know a lot about plasma behavior, and has gotten some interesting results with the small-scale "garage" experiments he's done thus far. If $200k is enough to get his work to the next level where he can show some more compelling evidence, maybe that will be enough to get some VC guy like Khosla to give him a few million more.
In any case, he seems harmless enough. And he doesn't appear to be blatantly trying to rip people off, like so many of these "free energy" gurus... I say let him proceed, and see what he can come up with.
If you're curious about the approach, watch his Google Tech-Talk for the details. It's one of the more novel methods I've seen.

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Re:Bad move by Sockatume · 2014-05-20 00:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

If there's a low entry cost, multiple risky options, and a potentially enormous payoff to whoever gets there first, you want to fund as many options as possible. That's why funding agencies and private investors alike take a pretty scatter-shot approach to lab-scale, sub-million-dollar energy research.
Of course, if you have a high cost to entry, and a few high-viability options, as with tokamaks, then you have to be choosy.

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No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Re:Bad move by Sockatume · 2014-05-20 00:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

Given that the physics that this device is based on go back to the '50s and are well-accepted, yes, they do give these ideas good marks in peer review.
Cold fusion most certainly does not "certainly work"! The reason it doesn't scale is that the effects disappear as your data gets better.

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No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Re:Bad move by Sockatume · 2014-05-20 00:34 · Score: 1

No. Proteins simply can't withstand the conformational energy involved in forcing two nuclei together past the coulomb barrier, and even if they could, they'd be promptly atomised by the energy liberated in the reaction.

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No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Re:Bad move by jythie · 2014-05-20 00:44 · Score: 1

Having worked in physics research, yes, a simple fusion technology would probably get very good marks and a lot of enthusiasm.

It should also be noted that 'cold fusion' did not work. It was not an issue of scaling, it was an issue of not actually creating a fusion reaction. There are still quite a few die hards around and there was some interesting offshoot work for creating neutron sources for medical work, but as a power source it was abandoned because it never existed in the first place.
Re:Bad move by Zobeid · 2014-05-20 00:46 · Score: 1

> "natural financing source would be venture capital" . . . "they failed to convince anyone relevant"
I suspect most of those "relevant" people remember the whole Cold Fusion flap and have had it drilled into their heads that Fusion Is Bogus. Also, every time I even raise the subject of fusion in conversation, somebody retorts with the well-traveled saying that, "Fusion power is forty years away -- and always will be!", as if that was the definitive, final word on the subject.
For venture capital, the decision not to invest in fusion research -- any fusion research, by anyone -- is easy to make.
Re:Bad move by CastrTroy · 2014-05-20 00:52 · Score: 1

Yeah. At less than the annual cost to hire 2 (or possibly even 1) person qualified to work in this field. Also, when you see numbers like "50 million to produce the working 5 MW prototype", I seriously doubt that these people have any idea what it costs to build things. My city spent $5 million just to build a pedestrian bridge. Building a fusion rector would probably cost at least 100 times more.

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Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Re:Bad move by Charliemopps · 2014-05-20 00:52 · Score: 1

They didn't have much credibility to start with, and turning to crowdfunding only makes it worse.
It is not a mass market product with quick deliverables, it is an industrial solution. So the natural financing source would be venture capital, rather than crowdfunding. If they have to turn to indiegogo, it can only mean they failed to convince anyone relevant and are desperately trying to ride the "fusion is cool" fans, and disappoint them in the process.
As much as I would love to see fusion plants soon, it looks like this is not the company that will deliver them.
They only need $200k for a proof concept to get investors excited. NASA is already one of their sponsors, so it's not like this is pie in the sky. You likely haven't been paying attention but Fusion research has really taken off recently. There are several Fusion reactors around the world that now produce more energy than they consume. It's a very exciting time. I suspect we'll have real commercial fusion reactors very soon. They're safe enough they could even be used by the public... so yes, I foresee having a fusion reactor in my house within my lifetime. Sadly, I think the main change to my life will be my idiotic neighbors putting up even MORE Christmas lights and leaving them up until July.
Re:Bad move by Charliemopps · 2014-05-20 00:53 · Score: 1

This. They are asking for $200k. If that's all that is needed to make a difference they could easily get that funding if their ideas were even remotely sound. It's quite telling that people will find the ITER to the tune of $13bn but won't give these guys the left over pennies from the bottom of the jar.
They're funded by NASA.
I suspect this is more for the publicity than the money.
Re:Bad move by Katatsumuri · 2014-05-20 00:54 · Score: 1

Not if they really had made their case.
Are you going to invoke the oil industry conspiracy, too?
Re:Bad move by Katatsumuri · 2014-05-20 01:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

I did pay attention. It is one thing to get net positive energy in an experiment, and another thing to capture that energy and to sustain the reaction in a feasible way.
I would argue in favor of this experiment for the possible interesting scientific results, but by trying to market it as a viable power plant before 2020 they are turning it into a scam.
Re:Bad move by afxgrin · 2014-05-20 01:27 · Score: 3, Informative

Some criticism of Mr. Lerner's DPF fusion approach by a person who seems to know what they're talking about. http://mikebhopkins.wordpress....
It really does look like he's just rebuilt a standard pinch device.
Re:Bad move by bloodhawk · 2014-05-20 01:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

you have fallen for there bullshit marketing blurb hook line and sinker. That is NOT how venture capitalists invest at all, in fact it is exactly the opposite of the way they work, They never put all there eggs in one basket and they weigh up the potential returns verses the risk and investment costs, any successful one also knows when to cut losses and switch horses at a moments notice (don't throw good money after bad if a new horse has arrived on the scene). Given the absolutely massive returns here and very low entry bar the only logical conclusion is they are a complete scam that doesn't hold up to even the most basic of scrutiny that is required by most investors or they would be having investors fighting over each other to get in on the deal. the whole thing seems to be targeted at suckering the uneducated out of there money.
Re:Bad move by careysub · 2014-05-20 02:13 · Score: 1

... There are several Fusion reactors around the world that now produce more energy than they consume....
No there aren't. Not one.
The only one hoping to reach Q=1 (scientific breakeven) is the small Tokamak in the UK called JET which may reach this point this year (or next). But this is simply validating the ITER approach which as you know is a decade or more off, and won't produce any electricity. For a viable power plant we must have Q > 20, ITER will only achieve Q=5 is everything goes right.

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Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Re:Bad move by taiwanjohn · 2014-05-20 02:22 · Score: 1

That is interesting. Thanks for the link. I wish I had the expertise to follow the argument in detail, but I'll just have to take "their" word for it (on both sides) and wait and see how it all turns out.
That said, I confess that I hope Lerner can make his method work. From an engineering POV, it's an elegant solution to the problem of plasma instability... don't fight it, use it to your advantage. The history of science may be littered with "elegant" ideas that didn't pan out, but there are also quite a few examples of ideas that were initially scoffed at by the mainstream, and nowadays are mainstream.

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Re:Bad move by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-20 02:28 · Score: 1

Fwiw, Lerner just got a paper accepted for Modern Physics D with some new evidence for his cosmology ideas. He's definitely in the minority but he's doing science good enough for decent publication.
Re:Bad move by Eunuchswear · 2014-05-20 02:33 · Score: 1

There are several Fusion reactors around the world that now produce more energy than they consume.
Yeah, like?

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Watch this Heartland Institute video
Re:Bad move by microbox · 2014-05-20 03:33 · Score: 1

Right, that would fit into an NSF grant. Also, their promo video says that they were the most read paper (in some time frame), but really, it would be more interesting to know how many times they are cited.

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Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Re:Bad move by afxgrin · 2014-05-20 03:56 · Score: 3, Informative

Well this Mike Hopkins guy is mostly comparing neutron yields from the D-T reaction LPP were testing with. Lerner inevitably wants to use the p-B reaction which produces no neutrons (aside from residual gas sources), however to test his pinch device using D-T is much easier as the fusion temperature is lower. It also makes for a good comparison to other pinch devices. Since the p-B reaction yields mostly photons they seek to make a fusion device from the charged particles (a stream of electrons and ions) and the photon energy collected via photoelectric current. Some of those gammas are uncapturable but the energy still captured is supposedly a net gain once they can get a high enough plasma temperature.
Engineering the Photon Capture Sphere Thing (PCST) to capture photons and electrons while not activating all the material with a 100-year half-life used in its construction, nor having it rip itself apart from dissimilar metals and thermal gradients, not having an unacceptably high rate of particles sputter the crap out of inside, is all non-trivial and would require significant trial-and-error builds. This is of course assuming they manage to make a working p-B reaction with their pinch. Best of luck to Lerner, but I'm not counting on seeing any significant results unless some billionaire type takes a risk on him.
Re:Bad move by Rei · 2014-05-20 04:34 · Score: 1

I found Todd Rider's work interesting, as it touches on what a lot of these smaller scale fusion approaches try to do - to in some way or another create areas full of just high energy ions, rather than having their bulk plasma be at a Maxwellian distribution wherein only the rare "peaks" will fuse. The problem is that any such plasma will automatically rapidly trend toward a Maxwellian distribution, and any bulk approach toward accelerating ions is not going to overcome that without taking in more energy than the system yield. Rider shows out that if you want to fuse in a non-Maxwellian environment in a manner that will give a net energy yield, you need to have an acceleration mechanism that is highly selective as to what ions it accelerates. You've got to leave that bulk mass of low energy ions alone and focus only on the energetic stuff. The only other option** is to accept that your plasma is going to be maxwellian, which means either go really big (ITER and variants thereof) or really fast (NIF and variants thereof).
** - Okay, there's some more exotic possibilities like muon-catalyzed fusion and the like, but let's leave that out for now ;)

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For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
Re:Bad move by taiwanjohn · 2014-05-20 05:26 · Score: 1

Thanks again for "translating" the argument into language I can make sense of. IIRC, Lerner does acknowledge the engineering challenges in the "PCST" (nice acronym, btw). But if he can demonstrate the p-B reaction with his method (especially if he can do so for $200k), that could open a floodgate of interest and investment.
Doing that reliably on an over-unity energy budget would be a "BFD" (in the words of VP Biden), and it could dramatically alter the course of R&D. I'm just "spit-balling" here as a non-expert, but the PCST sounds a lot less challenging than the Tokamak.

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Re:Bad move by newcastlejon · 2014-05-20 09:15 · Score: 1

Since the p-B reaction yields mostly photons...
Doesn't it yield alpha particles and not much else?

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If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Re:Bad move by afxgrin · 2014-05-20 09:41 · Score: 1

The reaction itself does, my bad. Compared to a D-T reaction however it yields many photons. This isn't really my field of physics however, so it's whatever i picked up off wikipedia.
Re:Bad move by afxgrin · 2014-05-20 09:52 · Score: 1

Read up on the D-T reaction a bit more. Yeah I don't know what I'm talking about.
Re:Bad move by radtea · 2014-05-20 09:58 · Score: 1

Well this Mike Hopkins guy is mostly comparing neutron yields from the D-T reaction LPP were testing with.
Which matters a great deal, because Hopkins shows the device Lerner et al have built behaves well within the limits on such devices. That makes claims of a near-breakthrough much less plausible.
Attempts to generate net power from plasma instabilities have a long and storied history, going back (at least) to the Farnsworth fusor. We know how to get neutrons from such devices, but the goal of net power has remained elusive for decades.
The claim in TFA that "As they leave, the electrons in the beam interact with the electrons in the plasmoid and heat up the area to over 1.8 billion degrees Celsius, which is enough to get fusion reactions" has multiple issues, although some of them may be due to the nature of technology "journalism".
Ignoring that fact that electron-electron interactions are not what you need for plasma heating (electrons, being very light, have trouble transferring much energy to ions) the claim is that they are generating a thermal plasma with a temperature of 1.8E9 C, whereas the conventional explanation would be that the neutrons they are seeing are from beam/plasma interactions. The important fact is that beam/plasma interactions do not scale in a way that would allow them to produce net power, ever.
So it appears they are a) seeing neutrons and claiming b) the neutrons are due to a thermal plasma which given the other parameters they infer must be c) at 1.8E9 C.
Hopkins is pointing out that claim b is unlikely, and that conventional beam/plasma theory can account for their neutrons just fine.

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Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Re:Bad move by johnsie · 2014-05-20 10:15 · Score: 1

Muphry's law strikes again! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
Re:Bad move by Catch55 · 2014-05-21 00:57 · Score: 1

You've got the same first impression I had, the promises seem too good to be true and the lack of investors is worrying. But after doing a careful background check and reading their history through I'm actually quite optimistic of their approach. There are valid reasons why investors are a bit shy of this approach. First of all Lerner is well known for going against the mainstream in astrophysics. I have to give him credit for this because at least to me it seems really worrying that according to prevalent theory 95% of our universe is made out of Dark Energy and Dark Matter - simply put stuff that we don't actually know anything about yet. As a plasma physicist he has been able to take a different perspective to astrophysics and this has lead for him to formulate his own quantitative theory based on observational evidence (this was done already in the 80's). His theory has been the only one able to successfully predict how plasma behaves in DPF devices and this is why he received initial funding by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab. Second thing that will definitely put VC's off is his refusal of selling controlling shares of the company. This is in fear of aggressive VC taking over later when the Phase I has been completed and scientific feasibility has been reached. Third thing that matters is their lack of marketing and PR skills (which you can see from miles off - just take a look at their website and presentations) and the miniature size of the experiment when compared to other approaches. There's an interesting discussion going on at tesla motors forums and it can shine some light on the investment side of things: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com...
Re:Bad move by Skal+Tura · 2014-05-21 10:24 · Score: 1

As with all scientific theories - they are made to be rebutted, more accepted, the better!
From his point of view it's probably very logical to take steady-state model over Big Bang Theory - so maybe he just has a deeper understanding of the subject and he's a genius .... or more likely HIS view is just that way biased, he sees Big Bang as impossible
He might be the next Einstein.... or not
IMO, our view of the universe is way too small to say either as definite, right now it looks like big bang is more plausible. Then again the energy levels involved in big bang are so insanely out there it's impossible to imagine... Infact the energy levels required are infinite to the infity, if universe is defined as infinite. Universe needs to have absolute limits in size for big bang not to return value NaN.
Until we can expand our view of the universe by .... let's say going out there at least few thousand light years away from earth, to at least 3 different directions, it's pretty much complete guesswork...

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Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Re:Bad move by MickLinux · 2014-05-21 12:41 · Score: 1

If you can get fusion, you don't need to worry about losing the protein. Suppose you have a protein shaped like your chest, with your two arms tied behind your back with a highly unstable bond in the tie. In each hand is a hydrogen atom ball. You enzymatically manufacture the proteins cold, you raise the temperature until the bonds start bursting and driving the nuclei together, and in one out of ten thousand of them you get tunneling fusion... it's good enough.

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Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Re:Bad move by bloodhawk · 2014-05-21 17:00 · Score: 1

I might have a little more faith in your comments if it wasn't from a brand new user account created just to defend their position in this article, combine that with lots of comments parroting much of what they say on their website makes me even more convinced they are a scam. I really hope I am wrong as the world really does need cheap clean power, but your comments are only reinforcing my view of it, especially when you parrot many of the incorrect claims on how investment funding works.

There have been too many scams... by Karmashock · 2014-05-19 21:37 · Score: 1

For me to be anything but skeptical of this claim.

I want to believe... but seriously how many of us here are proficient enough in the physics and engineering to really have a clue.

All we can do is believe... and as much as I want to believe... i also don't want to be taken for a fool. I hope its real... but suspect its bullshit.

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I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.

Re:There have been too many scams... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-05-19 21:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

I want to believe... but seriously how many of us here are proficient enough in the physics and engineering to really have a clue.
That's why you have Wikipedia...which will tell you that aneutronic fusion needs much higher temperatures, in addition, at least fifty times the density-time of D-T fusion, and generates three orders of magnitude lower power density. Which is the reason why everyone goes for D-T. Yeah, I want to believe, too, but it's like wanting to believe that the brick wall you're heading into at 60 mph in your car isn't there, you can't wish it away.

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Ezekiel 23:20
Re:There have been too many scams... by Cley+Faye · 2014-05-19 22:12 · Score: 1

It's just that you're used to this:
"We have X that is a complete solution for your problem! You just have to fork $200k to this bank account and we'll send it to you for FREE"
Re:There have been too many scams... by BarryHaworth · 2014-05-20 00:21 · Score: 1

That's why you have Wikipedia...which will tell you that aneutronic fusion needs much higher temperatures, in addition, at least fifty times the density-time of D-T fusion, and generates three orders of magnitude lower power density.
In their paper in Physics of Plasmas they report having achieved the density and temparature necessary for aneutronic (hydrogen-boron) fusion. The new electrode will enable them to demonstrate a reaction which creates more energy than is required to trigger it - not a finished device, but one which will demonstrate its practicality and attach the funding necessary to commercialise it.
For more detail, an interview with the project founder can be found on the Future and You podcast here.

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I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
Re:There have been too many scams... by jythie · 2014-05-20 00:48 · Score: 3, Interesting

Kickstarter and Indigogo are new venues for this kind of scam, I see 'alternative tech' projects pop up (and get wiped) from kickstarer every couple weeks. Most people do not have the first hand domain knowledge to evaluate physics heavy projects, so the posters depend on pulling people's mythology and trying to tie their project to some kind of anti-status-quo narrative.
Re:There have been too many scams... by Eunuchswear · 2014-05-20 02:40 · Score: 1

In their paper in Physics of Plasmas [aip.org] they report having achieved the density and temparature necessary for aneutronic (hydrogen-boron) fusion.
Fusion woo.
even with isotopically pure fuel there are several nasty side reactions, including these:
11B + alpha 14N + n
11B + p 11C + n
11B + p 12C + gamma
The first two produce neutrons (albeit low-energy), and the third produces hard gamma rays.

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Watch this Heartland Institute video
Re:There have been too many scams... by Immerman · 2014-05-20 04:00 · Score: 1

Actually, this technique is one of the more promising fusion approaches being researched, and someone else suggested that these folks personally are actually receiving JPL funding, so they probably have their ducks in a row. The problem is that federal funding for fusion research is virtually non-existent, and what there is is almost completely earmarked for tokamak-based research, which leaves all the promising alternatives fighting for scraps just to keep their labs open.
You've no doubt heard the joke "Fusion is always 20 years away"? The punchline is that progress-per-dollar has pretty much been continuing in line with that initial 20-year estimate, but the dollars-per-year have been falling steadily ever since. The "forever 20 years away" is not due to any unexpected technological difficulties, it's purely the fault of the cheap bastards controlling the purse strings who would rather fund a few more bridge-to-nowhere projects to bring home the pork.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Re:There have been too many scams... by ceoyoyo · 2014-05-20 06:39 · Score: 1

I was under the impression they reported the necessary temperature but NOT the necessary density. Big difference.

I'd not trust the authors too much. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-19 21:47 · Score: 5, Interesting

The article states that operations are to begin at ITER in 2027. This is actually the date where ITER will be operated using a Tritium and Deuterium plasma, as opposed to a Deuterium only plasma. Nearly all tokamak experiments currently undertaken are using Deuterium-only plasmas to investigate how the devices operate. Adding Tritium to the mix means that a Tokamak can reach fusion temperatures, but it requires extremely delicate handling. A Tritium plasma is safe, but it's important to keep track of all of it (and that includes losses to the vacuum vessel of the tokamak, we really don't want any going missing!).

Plasma experiments are set to begin in ITER much earlier, with a `first plasma' date in November of 2020 using a Deuterium plasma. It should not be understated what we can gain from experiments using a Deuterium-only (which means no fusion) plasma. ITER will be used in this manner for several years, while we gain better understanding of plasma physics on these scales. When we have a good feel for the machine, then we will start to produce fusion with a `DT' (Deuterium-Tritium) plasma.

I'm very busy right now and have only had a cursory glance at the article, but I'm reading things such as `Moreover, because the end product of the reaction is moving charged particles, those can be converted into electricity directly', and thinking that at least the writers do not have a detailed knowledge of plasma physics. Tokamak power plants would use the energy of the 14MeV neutron produced by the DT fusion reaction to heat water to steam and generate it directly. `Moving charged particles' is just a plasma, just like in a flurorescent light bulb. You can make a current out of it, but not electricity.

Re:I'd not trust the authors too much. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-05-19 21:54 · Score: 1

`Moving charged particles' is just a plasma, just like in a flurorescent light bulb. You can make a current out of it, but not electricity.
I thought that's what MHD generators were for? Given that the output would be in form of plasma, it just seems a natural solution to the problem, even if you recover the remaining energy using a steam cycle. (Of course, in tokamaks, that particular design might be difficult or infeasible. Of that, I haven't really thought yet.)

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Ezekiel 23:20
Re:I'd not trust the authors too much. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-05-19 23:00 · Score: 2

You could take the plasma out the tokamak and run it through one of these, but what would be the point of generating a hot plasma just to run it through a machine which returns some of the energy you put in?
Well, you'd do that in pulsed power generators, or with waste plasma, which, as I said, may not be applicable to tokamaks - but if I understand it correctly, it would be applicable to this device, if it were actually capable of net power output, which I doubt. I'm surprised you haven't heard about MHD generators. I thought they were quite commonplace in certain applications. The Soviets were using them for geophysical research in distant areas, when they needed high currents and MW levels of power output for short periods. Between being compact enough to fit onto a truck, having something like ~1kWe/kg, and having the ability to start and stop within hundreds of milliseconds, the devices were apparently more suitable for that application than anything else I'm aware of.

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Ezekiel 23:20
Re:I'd not trust the authors too much. by multi+io · 2014-05-19 23:25 · Score: 1

Tokamak power plants would use the energy of the 14MeV neutron produced by the DT fusion reaction to heat water to steam and generate it directly. `Moving charged particles' is just a plasma
Uh, a plasma contains charged particles, but is neutral overall (normally). And the particle motion is undirected. What they claim to get out it is a pulsed, directed beam of multi-MeV 4He ions (and only those -- the electrons fly away in the opposite direction), which could be converted into electricity directly (via induction).
Re:I'd not trust the authors too much. by Gibgezr · 2014-05-20 00:05 · Score: 1

"A Tritium plasma is safe, but it's important to keep track of all of it (and that includes losses to the vacuum vessel of the tokamak, we really don't want any going missing!)."
My Google-fu was weak on this one: could you perhaps elucidate why exactly we really don't want any going missing? Is it rare and valuable? I am trying to figure out just what Tritium plasma is...my physics background ended at first year uni, so it all sounds like "dilithium crystals" to me, and means about as much.
Re:I'd not trust the authors too much. by careysub · 2014-05-20 01:55 · Score: 1

...Fusion reactors are expected to breed their own tritium in the long run, but in the short run research reactors won't and managing the world's supply of tritium will be a bit tricky. Even when they do breed it, they need to not be wasteful to get a net gain.
The tritium breeding problem is much worse than this - it is the true Achilles heel of fusion energy research. We don't have good reason to think that the required fusion tritium breeding cycle is even feasible, and even if it is the cost in a Tokamak type system at least makes fusion permanently cost prohibitive even if all that high tech fusion equipment is free! See "Fusion Power: Will It Ever Come?" by William E. Parkins in Science 10 March 2006 (it is a paid site, so no link).
The fundamental feasibility problem is that the tritium fusion process produces no excess neutrons. Of course there will be tritium losses in separation and refining, and parasitic neutron capture in the fusion reactor structure, so it is not clear how enough net tritium production can be achieved to keep the reactor running, much less produce an excess for more reactors. How about a neutron multiplier to compensate for losses, and create an excess? Multipliers do exist, although the best one happens to be, ummm, fission - but no one has ever demonstrated that a design is possible that can achieve "breeding break-even". This is an engineering challenge on the same scale as the ITER reactor itself.
Quoting the analysis by Parkins:

If we assume an average heat transfer rate of 0.3 MW/m2, the vessel wall and blanket-shield each must have an area of 2000 m2. To absorb the 14 MeV neutrons and to shield against the radiation produced requires a blanket-shield thickness of 1.7 m of expensive materials. This is a volume of 3400 m3, which, at an average density of about 3 g/cm3, would weigh 10, 000 metric tons. A conservative cost would be $180/kg, for a total blanket-shield cost of $1.8 billion. This amounts to $1800/kWe of rated capacity—more than nuclear fission reactor plants cost today.
.
Further:

Scaling of the construction costs from the Bechtel estimates suggests a total plant cost on the order of $15 billion, or $15, 000/kWe of plant rating. At a plant factor of 0.8 and total annual charges of 17% against the capital investment, these capital charges alone would contribute 36 cents to the cost of generating each kilowatt hour. This is far outside the competitive price range.

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Re:I'd not trust the authors too much. by Richy_T · 2014-05-20 04:15 · Score: 1

Plasmas were sometimes referred to as the fourth phase of matter when I was studying physics. Then, of course, there are gels and such also.
Re:I'd not trust the authors too much. by crunchygranola · 2014-05-20 07:14 · Score: 1

The article you cite seems rather crude and out of date, considering there are now various in depth design studies of reactors (and not just tokamaks) that carefully account for the amount of lithium needed and the rate of tritium production. That is now a large part of what such design studies work towards understanding and improving (it is obviously not a trivial problem).
True - but it showcases the underlying problem rather well. Do you have links to any of those studies of actual blanket costs and performance?

And the process does involve excess neutrons. If the blanket is made of litium-7, the reaction that produces a tritium releases another neutron. This can be helped by D-D reactions too, which while not useful by themselves for producing a net gain in power compared to the easy of the D-T reaction, you still get neutrons out of various deuterium only machines today. This allows designs that have projected 5-20% excess production of tritium.
No, the tritium fusion process does not produce excess neutrons exactly as I said, and yes, as I said, there are reactions that cause neutron multiplication (I did not treat this at length though, I just mentioned the best multiplier known). The multiplication in lithium is not large, and it is not clear that it can cover all the losses and end up with breeding break-even. I note that recent EFDA's (the European fusion consortium) recent press releases on the subject merely claim that they believe the problem to be "soluble". This PPPL study from 2010 estimates a net breeding ratio of exactly 1.0, which means fusion plants will require fission plants to breed their start-up tritium inventory.

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Re:I'd not trust the authors too much. by crunchygranola · 2014-05-20 07:17 · Score: 1

I did not notice that my brother had logged in and switched identities since earlier. I am actually "careysub"

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Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age

Re:Cheap energy - just what we need... by allcoolnameswheretak · 2014-05-19 22:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

Sometimes I wonder - I, or perhaps humanity as a whole, we have so much anxiety about the destruction and depletion of our natural resources, the extinction of species, the CO2 in the atmosphere, the conservation of our environment. Some of us try so hard to be environmentally conscious by recycling waste, reusing appliances, conserving water and energy.
Then maybe 100 years from now the killer asteroid will struck Earth and obliterate everything, or the supervolcano under Yosemite will blow up. And the universe will point the finger at us and say "ha ha!"

That would be a real bummer.

But I suppose this is like saying, why take care of myself? Why take a shower in the morning, have a balanced died, quit smoking, if maybe tomorrow I'll be dead?
As long as we have a chance at survival, we have to protect our heritage, which means the natural environment that spawned and hosts us.
Who knows, maybe in 100 years, instead of being obliterated, we will take this heritage with us to the stars.

EROEI? by Noryungi · 2014-05-19 22:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

I am sorry, that sounds like a suspiciously "pie in the sky" project to me.

First of all, nuclear fusion is insanely difficult. OK, maybe not *that* difficult, more like: "Easiest way to get fusion is to get 1.99x10^30 Kg of hydrogen in one place" difficult.

Now, coming out of nowhere, we have people saying: "Give us US$ 1,000,000 and we will give you portable, safe fusion within 6 years!". Sure, people, what makes you think you can do better than, say ITER? New approach, yadda yadda yadda, sure, I have heard that one before. Whatever the "new approach" was, it did not work the first time, it probably won't work now. Insanely difficult problem, overconfidence of the new kid on the block, and all that

Second, the old "Fusion power is clean!" saw. No, it is not. Fusion generates insane temperature and neutron radiation. What makes you think you can put everything in a small container? What happens to all that energy dissipation? To the container and its surroundings? If you RTFA, these people are saying thay can generate up to 5MW in a containment chamber "small enough to fit in a garage"! Excuse me? No dangerous radiation, perfect containment in a completely secure, small package? Hmmm... The Engineering does not seem strong in this one.

Third argument against: EROEI. Sure, you can get fusion going in a very small spot. We know this, it has been done before, using several different technologies (See Z-Machine at Sandia National Lab, for instance). BUT... (a) how much power do you have to pump into these capacitors to even *create* fusion in the first place? (b) creating fusion can be done... but what about *sustaining* a fusion reaction? In other words, if it takes you 20MW of power to sustain 5MW of power generation, where is your EROEI? Oooops... There is none.

Final nail in the coffin: "We were financed by NASA-JPL". So what? NASA funds thousands of projects per year. JPL, probably hundreds. And don't get me started on the NSF or DARPA, (or whatever local equigvalent exist in your country), OK?They certainly fund some pretty weird things, just on the off-chance that XYZ wild theory could prove interesting. Or, even better, that XYZ wild theory will be conclusively disproved. That, in itself, does not mean anything. It certainly does not mean your project is headed by cool-headed, super-smart, seasoned engineers and scientists: just that your weird project received a bit of money from whatever popular government entity you could contact.

As a matter of fact, if your project was so smart and so innovative, *and* headed by cool-headed, super-smart, seasoned engineers and scientists, you probably would not have to ask for money on IndieGogo or other: smart money would flow, by the millions, into your coffers, again just on the off-chance that super-duper weird idea could prove to be the real, "fusion in a box" thing that could change the world. Seriously. And don't give me that conspiracy crap that big oil does not want you to be independent yadda yadda yadda: there is so much money floating around right now, looking for ROI, and so many (rich) people ready to tweak the nose of Govt (See: The Intercept) that a serious project like this would get funded 10 times over. WhatsApp sold for *billions* of dollars for Pete sake! What makes you think portable fusion reactors could not get funded? Get Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg on the phone!

All in all, this does not sound very serious. More like the romantic fantasy of the genius guy in a garage changing the world one micro-fusion reactor at a time. Sorry.

Fund this? Sure, why not. But I'll pass this one, thank you very much.

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The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)

Re:EROEI? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-19 23:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

They are claiming aneutronic fusion that converts plasma to energy directly, so shielding-wise it could well fit in a container. And the argument "if that would be possible, someone would have done it already" undermines the whole concept of scientific research.
The problem I have with this project is that they are making extraordinarily bold claims (they even have a power rating for the product) which should require extraordinary proof, and need to be vetted by very serious scientists to be believable. Should that happen those scientists would have no problem getting the funds from governments or private investors, banking on their reputation alone. The fact that they have convinced no reputable scientist and have no peer-review scientific output, but have already embarked on a commercial venture should be a huge red sign, this is not some smart gadget you can patent and make a fortune on, it's hard science where theoretical results are typically decades ahead practical applications.
Re:EROEI? by PeteFox · 2014-05-19 23:07 · Score: 1

I suggest you actually go and read some of their web site. Lawrenceville Plasma Physics have been conducting their science very much in the open, they have presented to Google, along with other alternative fusion approaches and have the most read article in 2012 in the Journal of Plasma Physics. They have also historically had grants from NASA to investigate plasma. While certainly not very conventional, that's almost certainly the point.
Re:EROEI? by Noryungi · 2014-05-20 00:32 · Score: 1

tl;dr Science may be easy, but engineering is expensive and we all know how hard it is to get funding from governments if you don't know the special handshake.
Except, of course, they already got funding from NASA-JPL in the past - so you could argue they do know the "secret handshake" or whatnot.
I believe (after a bit more research) that they did not get Government or other fundings because their main scientist is really controversial. He may be a plasma specialist, but his cosmological ideas also run counter to traditional views & theories.
Make of that what you will - he may be right (on Fusion power, at least), but he should have taken a more back-seat role for the (non-crowdsourced) funding effort.

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The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Re:EROEI? by Noryungi · 2014-05-20 00:47 · Score: 1

Yes, and they also have been taken down by a plasma physicist for complete nonsense: read this if you dare.
The title of this article says it all: "Why Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Results are Not Even Wrong; a Detailed Analysis." Ouch.

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The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Re:EROEI? by Eunuchswear · 2014-05-20 04:27 · Score: 1

Scientists may ostensibly only in it for the science, but ultimately they're still just people with jobs and reputations to protect.
Oh fuck off you troll.

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Watch this Heartland Institute video
Re:EROEI? by Immerman · 2014-05-20 05:08 · Score: 1

You are aware of how little fusion research funding is available, right? Especially outside of tokamak-based approaches. And most of the scientists competent to speak on the viability of the their approach also have their own, even more viable (in their mind) projects. And none of it is likely to give anyone a return on investment sooner than a decade or two - so investors are unlikely to get involved even if the science and engineering were completely clear cut.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Re:EROEI? by ceoyoyo · 2014-05-20 06:50 · Score: 1

So their rebuttal to the charge that they haven't demonstrated fusion is we didn't demonstrate fusion?
You can get high temperatures in lots of different ways. Fusion requires more than that. That response is more damning than anything else.
Re:EROEI? by icomment · 2014-05-20 14:59 · Score: 1

"... The fact that they have convinced no reputable scientist and have no peer-review scientific output, but have already embarked on a commercial venture should be a huge red sign, this is not some smart gadget you can patent and make a fortune on, it's hard science where theoretical results are typically decades ahead practical applications." ?!?! I don't know where are you getting your facts but the review committee comprised of top recognized fusion scientists (see below) had concluded that: "While a number of near-term physics issues remain to be resolved, it is likely that with adequate financial support these matters could be addressed in a relatively short period of time, e.g. a few years.Ã If these issues are addressed, Ãoethe committee does not see any fundamental roadblock to power system viability.Ã In other words, a functioning, economical and clean new source of energy may soon become reality. Committee: Dr. Robert Hirsch, a former director of fusion research for the US Atomic Energy Commission and the Energy Research and Development Agency; Dr. Stephen O. Dean, President of Fusion Power Associates and former director of fusion Magnetic Confinement Systems for the Department of Energy; Professor Gerald L. Kulcinski, Associate Dean for Research, College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Professor Dennis Papadopoulos, Professor of Physics, University of Maryland. (see here http://lawrencevilleplasmaphys...) Also, the chief fusion researcher has a peer reviewed article just published recently: http://www.worldscientific.com... Last but not least lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com holds a number of patents regarding its Focus Fusion over several continents... This project continues to get both private investments and crowdfunding donations as it should based on cutting edge science, experiments and results observed so far.

Re:Wikipedia by Karmashock · 2014-05-19 22:32 · Score: 1

precisely...

its an utter crapshoot from my perspective... if it has a chance of working I'd like to see it funded. If these guys are just scammers then I'd be happy to see them come to bad end... ideally a fatal end. The same idealism that makes me value the attempt fills me with utter hatred at anyone or anything that would stand in its way.

Fusion power could be one of the biggest things to ever happen to not only our species but life on earth in general.

We are after all the great hope of our world. The other life on planet earth is utterly incapable of higher reasoning. If any life on planet earth is to survive it must leave the planet. And only we or something like us has a chance of doing that. Fusion power would extremely useful in this regard.

Anything that causes it to be developed must be encouraged. Anything that causes it to hindered should be flayed alive.

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Re:Wikipedia by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-05-19 22:35 · Score: 1

I've been seeing the same argument about the Lawson criterion in nuclear physics textbooks since the 1980s, and so far, it hasn't failed me (or anyone else, for that matter). If masses of people are writing there that the hurdles for aneutronic fusion are higher than for D-T fusion, the most plausible explanation is that they really have a good reason to write that.

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Ezekiel 23:20

dubious by ssam · 2014-05-19 22:43 · Score: 1

There are some pretty dubious energy projects on indiegogo.
https://www.indiegogo.com/expl...

Also:
"The Department of Energy decided forty years ago to put all its fusion money on one device, the tokamak, and is not funding anything else"
What about NIF? or is that DoD?

Re:dubious by mbkennel · 2014-05-19 23:15 · Score: 1

The NIF is a nuclear weapons project, not an energy project. It is financed by DOE NNSA, National Nuclear Security Agency.

The primary goal is to generate calibration data for nuclear weapons simulations. There some minor lip service to energy research, but the engineering approach is 70 years behind where the tokamak is for energy production.
Re:dubious by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-05-20 05:56 · Score: 1

> What about NIF? or is that DoD?
Nope, DoE all the way.
The reason the DoE stopped funding most fusion wasn't some sort of tokamak conspiracy, but the simple fact that it appeared highly likely *none* of them would work, so you might as well stick with the one that's most likely among the unlikely.
And so many years later (I had all my hair) it looks like that was a very wise decision. Not one of the alternative approaches being studied at that point panned out; all of them hit brick walls in their price/performance ratios at levels well below the tokamak.
Since then I've seen, literally, dozens of "great new ideas" come and go. Only a few years ago I was talking to people about "fast ignition" which was definitely totally for sure going to save ICF. It didn't.

Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by benjfowler · 2014-05-19 22:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

I'll take this seriously when somebody demonstrates feasibility of running aluminium smelters and other extremely high-energy processes off wind turbines and solar panels...

This is about as dumb as an old acquaintance who wanted to convert his car to run on electricity, run by solar panels on the roof (yes, there are really people that stupid out there).

Crank alternative science by benjfowler · 2014-05-19 22:58 · Score: 1

If you believe that the smartest people on Earth are working on a 17 billion euro machine like ITER, when they could be building cheap focus fusion machines for 1000x cheaper, then I have some shares in the Tower Bridge to sell you...

I'm in, except... by Overzeetop · 2014-05-19 23:11 · Score: 1

I want an n/200,000 share of all patents, publications, and corporate assets produced in the next 10 years in return for my n contribution. And you can keep the ferro-fluid and the shout-out.

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Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?

its a pretty sad state. by nimbius · 2014-05-19 23:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

When we need crowdfunding, kickstarting, and bake sales to advance meaningful discoveries in theoretical scientific research, but shit like the F35 fighter plane can quietly blow through 5 billion dollars without producing a single useable aircraft outside of testing. Even sadder is knowing its projected cost is over one trillion dollars along 50 total years of development, and the only comment was in 2011 from the senate armed services committee which basically amounted to a high five.

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Good people go to bed earlier.

Re:its a pretty sad state. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-20 00:26 · Score: 1

Except that the point of reality is that while energy research is underfunded by governments (if not by major energy firms - note that there are very few "oil firms" left in this world; they're all "energy firms", and they're all putting money into new sources of energy, although of course we don't know how much and nor do we really know what they're researching so it could be pastry recipes), it is not underfunded to the level that a potentially world-changing project, requiring a few hundred thousand dollars, has to go for crowdfunding. That's farcical. What this is, my friend, is a scam, and the sad thing is that so many people, undereducated in this particular field, are so unthinkingly cynical about governments that they'll believe any baloney like "Forty years ago the DoE decided to support just one approach, the tokamak".
Re:its a pretty sad state. by Jiro · 2014-05-20 03:41 · Score: 1

We don't need crowdfunding to advance meaningful discoveries in theoretical research. This project only went to crowdfunding because it doesn't have enough merit that it can get funding through the normal channels. You think any big company wouldn't be all over this if it actually had a chance of success?
Re:its a pretty sad state. by Catch55 · 2014-05-20 10:50 · Score: 1

They were originally funded by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab. Funding dried out in the Bush era when Nasa was taken off of the fusion business. So I think they do have merit but unfortunately government funds go to bigger projects like ITER and NIF. What comes to private investors, you have to take into consideration that Lerner has refused to sell controlling shares of the company - which always puts off investors. And as I've understood they are only crowdsourcing money for the new electrodes - they still have all the usual expenses to take care of due to keeping the lab operational and running and these come through "normal channels".

Re:Oh, sure by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-05-19 23:14 · Score: 1, Funny

I'm feeling very noir about that.

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Ezekiel 23:20

Hydrogen Boron Reaction? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-19 23:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

This article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion describes the pros and cons of using different fuels for radiation free fusion. By using Hydrogen-Boron you can avoid the neutron radiation problem. But in exchange you have to have a temperature 10 times what we've failed to produce for a long enough time to get energy back from the more common fuels. The article also mentions that a lot of the energy released would be photons, which are harder to convert into electricity.

Hydrogen-Boron and radiation free would be nice and so raises the profile of this work and perhaps makes it more crowd funding friendly. But without more explanation makes me even more suspicious that they are saying all the too good to be true parts and skipped mentioning all the reasons it's not likely to work. On the other hand it would be nice if boards of competent scientists could invest some real money in slightly crazy ideas that were allowed to fail without politicians going nutso that when you tried 10 things with a chance of success of 10% only one worked.

Re:Hydrogen Boron Reaction? by Eunuchswear · 2014-05-20 04:31 · Score: 1

The article also mentions that a lot of the energy released would be photons, which are harder to convert into electricity.
Ah, photons, sounds nice and fuzzy. Gets more amusing when you realise those photons are hard gamma radiation.

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Watch this Heartland Institute video

Okay, Fusion is cool but... by Chas · 2014-05-19 23:28 · Score: 1

Honestly, it's tech we probably aren't going to see, even by 2027.

I'd rather we funneled energy research money into something we could implement wide-scale by then. Like LFTR.

Once we've got plentiful energy, THEN we can go chasing after fusion.

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Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:Okay, Fusion is cool but... by otis+wildflower · 2014-05-20 04:31 · Score: 1

Indeed, between PRISM to burn existing nuclear waste, and LFTR, the world can have centuries if not millennia of linear energy growth, and by which time fusion may even be practical.

This was tried 35 years ago by InterGuru · 2014-05-19 23:29 · Score: 5, Informative

This was tried as the Trisops Project 35 years ago but lost funding because all of the fusion energy project's focus was on the Tokamak.

Trisops was an experimental machine for the study of magnetic confinement of plasmas with the ultimate goal of producing fusion power. The configuration was a variation of a compact toroid, a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) structure of plasma and magnetic fields with no coils penetrating the center. It lost funding in its original form in 1978.
The configuration was produced by combining two individual toroids produced by two conical pinch guns, located at either end of a length of Pyrex pipe with a constant magnetic guide field. The toroidal currents in the toroids were in opposite directions, so that they repelled each other. After coming to an equilibrium, they were adiabatically compressed by increasing the external field.

Disclosure: I was an author on the paper and of the referenced Wikipedia article;

Re:This was tried 35 years ago by leomekenkamp · 2014-05-20 00:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

Do I understand correctly that you have worked on that project? If so, could you comment on what the people on LPP Fusion are doing? Is is feasible / safe / sustainable?

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Re:This was tried 35 years ago by avandesande · 2014-05-20 04:15 · Score: 1

I saw a plasma focus machine at Stevens Institute of Technology in the 80s...

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love is just extroverted narcissism
Re:This was tried 35 years ago by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-05-20 05:49 · Score: 4, Informative

I'm passingly familiar with the compact toroid concept, having written *that* article on the Wiki.
Generally speaking it appears the approach is unworkable. In spite of great interest in self-stable configurations, confinement time remained on the order of nano-to-micro seconds, and energy losses were higher than expected. It was not clear whether these could be solved, but it was clear that finding out would cost a lot more money. The apparent low-cost path to fusion did not appear to be so low-cost, and that seems to be the reason the funding was cut.
In the case of DPS it's not clear to me that anything new has been demonstrated. A quick look over the cites on various wiki pages show a very low level of development and nothing that could be considered any sort of non-linear progress. In the case of LPP, their announcement of a 1.8 billion degree plasma after 30 years is hardly encouraging, given how quickly progress had been prior to then.
More controversially, many of the claimed benefits of the design are supposed to come out of a never-before-seen interaction which remains undemonstrated. I remain skeptical that such a thing even exists, and certainly don't take Mr. Lerner's computer models as a reasonable argument - consider LASNEX.
It is worth mentioning that CT's form the basis of at least some MTF systems, and these *are* seeing a significant amount of development today. Whether this is the path to the moon or simply another finite tree remains to be seen. Some consider spherical tokamaks to be CT's (I am *not* one of those) so they add MAST and similar to the list, but these projects have also apparently hit their brick walls.
Re:This was tried 35 years ago by Catch55 · 2014-05-20 10:04 · Score: 1

I would have to give some merit to Lerner for his consistent effort with this device from the early 90's to the present day. The "never-before-seen" interaction is called "The quantum magnetic field effect" which seems to be the key point of Lerner's own quantitative theory and one of the main reasons why he had funding from the Nasa in the first place. Although there are some pretty considerable challenges (check out the onion shaped photovoltaic collector) further ahead in the engineering phase, I think that this project and Lerner's original theory is interesting enough to deserve the funding and therefore also completion of the scientific phase of their experiment.
Re:This was tried 35 years ago by InterGuru · 2014-05-20 14:42 · Score: 1

Do I understand correctly that you have worked on that project? If so, could you comment on what the people on LPP Fusion are doing? Is is feasible / safe / sustainable?
Is it safe? I see no safety problems beyond those normally found in laboratories or industrial projects that use high energy densities.
Is it feasible? Who knows? That what science experiments are designed to find out.
Is it sustainable? I assume you are asking is it affordable. I suspect that it could be supported for less cost than the toilet paper used at ITER.

Hydrogen-Boron reaction by MarkWegman · 2014-05-19 23:35 · Score: 1

This article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... covers the pros and cons of Hydrogen-Boron reaction. You do avoid the nasty neutron radiation issues but at a cost of needing 10 times the kind of temperature we have spent decades trying to achieve. While the posting says much of the energy is easy to convert to electricity a lot of it escapes as photons. The fact that the article in the posting doesn't cite the issues suggests that it's not a balanced article and is the kind you'd expect for fundraising from naive people (aka us). I do agree with some of the comments above that it's a shame that boards of scientists who know the issues don't have funds to distribute to crazy ideas like this with potential huge payoffs, without politicians complaining that when scientists take a risk they mostly fail.

At this rate by ThatsNotPudding · 2014-05-19 23:42 · Score: 1

I expect to see them on Shark Tank.

I also love that they changed the name from the British Dragon's Den to Shark Tank, because - what - too satanic sounding for middle America?

Re:At this rate by JaredOfEuropa · 2014-05-20 00:43 · Score: 1

I also love that they changed the name from the British Dragon's Den to Shark Tank, because - what - too satanic sounding for middle America?
Maybe it's because of that lady with the car rental business (and famous for what has to be the worst business website); she came for capital to expand her successful business, which the "dragons" were willing to provide with much reservation. After hearing their offer she replied that for giving up 40% of her company to them she'd be better off just going to a bank, and to the surprised reactions to her turning down the offer on the table, she scoffed: "I'm Chinese. We eat dragons for breakfast".

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If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...

Presentation by multi+io · 2014-05-19 23:58 · Score: 1

Just for reference, this appears to be a Google TechTalk presentation by their chief scientist about the subject. It's 7 years old no less.

Focus Fusion: The Fastest Route to Cheap, Clean Energy

Eric Lerner? by Sockatume · 2014-05-20 00:05 · Score: 1

The company's Chief Scientist is listed as Eric Lerner, a name I thought I recognised. Turns out he's a noted plasma cosmology crank.

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No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?

Re:Eric Lerner? by Sockatume · 2014-05-20 00:11 · Score: 1

This isn't to say that the guy's not credible - if he knows anything, it's plasmas - but it's odd to see his name come up in this context.

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No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Re:Eric Lerner? by OneAhead · 2014-05-21 03:44 · Score: 2

Yeah, and Linus Pauling, one of the most influential chemists in history, was a noted megavitamin crank. Not that I'm trying to elevate Lerner to that level, just saying that being a crank in one field doesn't necessarily preclude doing good science in another. I know plenty of good scientists that have the weirdest ideas about some things that are not their core specialty. It seems to be a pattern.
The idea of DPF is fundamentally sound, and Lerner's company LPP has a few papers in serious peer-reviewed journals in relevant fields, so I'd tend to give them the benefit of doubt. How much benefit is a different question, though.

Science, not fortune telling. by asylumx · 2014-05-20 00:11 · Score: 2

I just don't see how making promises like this is good for anyone. Clearly they are just looking for funding; no scientist or researcher in their right mind would promise something they can't already do by a specific date unless they were lying (or guessing, call it what you want) in order to get funding. This is the kind of crap that makes simpler people no longer "believe in science."

Re:Science, not fortune telling. by asylumx · 2014-05-20 00:42 · Score: 2

Just wanted to add: If there is research that needs to be done that is not, by itself, profitable, then I believe we should consider funding it without forcing the researchers to make PR statements like these because who knows what ideas or conclusions that research might actually lead to -- It's really too bad that we are so focused on all research building profits for someone. We, as a society, suck at thinking about anything long-term.

Crowdsourcing... well if we have a government of the people then isn't everything they do technically crowdsourced already?

Indiegogo for buying beer or a new car by GauteL · 2014-05-20 00:13 · Score: 1

After reading this story and this older story (which has 5 backers and a nice 390 Euro beer kitty) I can't help thinking I want in on this action.

Do I need to invent a ridiculous company idea or is it enough to just ask for donations for my holiday fund?

Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by GameboyRMH · 2014-05-20 00:40 · Score: 3, Funny

This is about as dumb as an old acquaintance who wanted to convert his car to run on electricity, run by solar panels on the roof (yes, there are really people that stupid out there).

His idea was completely possible, for certain values of "car":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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Re:Wikipedia by Blaskowicz · 2014-05-20 00:46 · Score: 1

We don't need to leave the planet at all, chances of a global catastrophe caused by something other than us is very minimal. When we'll be able to, we'll be long dead anyway (you and I personally, not the species)
An exception would be a large coronal mass ejection, which will fry all our satellites and computers except for some stuff in underground bunkers or buried.

Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by Cederic · 2014-05-20 01:39 · Score: 1

Given that wind and solar power can contribute 5-10% of the power needs of an entire country, I think it's reasonable to assume they can power smelters.

Whether they can do that and power the rest of the country is a very different question.

Similarly, powering a car using solar power is trivial. It may just take a few days between journeys to charge the battery.

Re:Cheap energy - just what we need... by hypergreatthing · 2014-05-20 01:40 · Score: 1

Cheap and Clean energy will save nature.
You can make the price of oil as high as you want, there will still be people using it and polluting.

Sounds like... by SmileyByte · 2014-05-20 01:40 · Score: 1

...vaporware.

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Re:Wikipedia by meta-monkey · 2014-05-20 01:41 · Score: 1

I really get tired of the whole "we've got to leave this rock!" trope. There's nowhere to go that would be more survivable than anything that can happen to earth. Look at the most hostile environments on earth. Antarctica. The Gobi desert. Now imagine those places irradiated by nuclear fallout. That would still make for an easier place to live than anywhere else in the solar system. At least there's air pressure. Some hope of extracting oxygen and water from the environment. Something. Next, just for fun, imagine the power requirements to move any significant portion of the earth's inhabitants off planet. Fusion wouldn't even make a dent when we're birthing 200,000 a day.

There is no place else to go. That is why the call should never be "we must get off this rock," and instead should be "we must care for and protect this rock."

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ooh I want one! by slashmydots · 2014-05-20 01:42 · Score: 1

Everyone who supports it gets a free Mr Fusion when it's done! Just kidding, but that would be cool though. You know, I have a feeling that those ITER morons are just a bulky, overly expensive disaster run by an idiot and it's a gigantic money pit. They're like Solyndra. It should work in theory but it's too expensive and run by morons. I also don't believe LPP Fusion though. It sounds like they have an idea that MIGHT work and they're phrasing it like it's a done deal and they just need the cash to build it.

ITER Joke by EmperorOfCanada · 2014-05-20 02:02 · Score: 1

This would be a wonderful joke to play on ITER. All those bureaucrats would be so ticked to have to actually go back to science. What I love about FirstFusion is that not only does promise to be a small reactor, but that in all likelihood when it starts to work properly that people will figure out all kinds of improvements to make it smaller and more efficient.

People think about how this will change the world; but I suspect that it would result in all kinds of interesting and new things well beyond the usual More Energy, Cheap Energy effects. One would be the reminder that technology can change our lives. That being a scientist is cool, and funding science is smart.

Re:ITER Joke by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-05-20 05:24 · Score: 1

> FirstFusion is that not only does promise to be a small reactor
Yes... promises. Like "I won't raise your taxes" and "'till death do we part".
> People think about how this will change the world
Which presumes it works. It almost certainly won't. Wishes are not the same as generators, and if they were, I'd be wishing for a pink unicorn instead.
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/why-fusion-will-never-happen/
Re:ITER Joke by EmperorOfCanada · 2014-05-20 06:11 · Score: 1

I suspect that if you showed if you made a bet with the guys creating univac that an entire computer as powerful their monster could be put onto a tiny chip that they would have told you to go back to your science fiction comics. I suspect that if you then spent the next two weeks(with them at gunpoint) explaining the basic quantum nature of semi-conductors and how they could be lithographed on to extremely pure and then doped crystals of silicon and the way that transistors could be used to build interesting logic circuits, etc etc that they still wouldn't believe you. And I am talking about putting a univac on a chip, not something like a modern CPU.

If you tried telling them about a modern CPU you would have to tell them that it would contain more pathways than all the city streets in the world combined and that laying this all out was routine.

So when someone pronounces that something can't be done that other rational people are trying to do; then I think good luck to the rational people; but if those who say something can't be done actually start to whine about it; then I think wow the rational people must be close.

Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by aNonnyMouseCowered · 2014-05-20 02:17 · Score: 1

If by "feasible" you mean doable, then all you need is enough real estate. I can even think of a Rube Goldberg power generation scheme that uses wind/solar energy to slowly fill up a dam that can be used forhydroelectric power.

Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2014-05-20 02:43 · Score: 2

The correct designation is 4.5*10^9 BCE (Before Common Era). The BC (Before Christ) designation throws an integer overflow exception above the value 6000 and returns NaN.

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Re:Cheap energy - just what we need... by Richy_T · 2014-05-20 02:44 · Score: 1

We won't get to the stars if the watermelons have their way. We'll all be living in mud huts in squalor until the extinction event happens. Whatever species achieves sentience next should have plenty to work with though.

Re:Oh, sure by Immerman · 2014-05-20 03:05 · Score: 4, Informative

Not until they had an imminent commercial product they wouldn't. VC's tend to want you to have proven technology, scalable production options, and a solid business plan. Meanwhile it sounds like these folks are at the point of being ready to build the proof of concept prototype to show that they can actually accomplish the 10,000x increase in plasma density necessary to achieve fusion. If they can do so *then * the VCs may start jumping out of the woodwork. Maybe. If they also have the production options and business plan worked out.

From the article: "Lerner says his team can obtain a crucial electrode for $200,000, demonstrate net power gain with $1 million, and solve the final engineering problems, leading to a functioning fusion reactor with just $50 million in funding."

Considering that there are several different approaches that have already achieved fusion (heck, anyone can build a Farnsworth Fusor for $500 - they make an excellent neutron source if you need such a thing), I suspect that actually demonstrating net power gain will be the keystone that gets investors seriously interested, so I'd say these folks need to manage $1.2M in crowd-funding before anyone even looks at them seriously. Then it will come down to the viability of their business plan as to whether they can attract VCs for the first $50M reactor. But frankly $1.2M seems to be eminently doable for a good crowdfunding campaign, so the question is if enough people think this is cool enough to throw some money their way to find out if they've actually got the problem licked, without expectation of any kind of direct return on investment.

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Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by ImprovOmega · 2014-05-20 03:13 · Score: 1

You joke, but there do exist Pumped-storage hydroelectric facilities. It's been suggested that these could be used in combination with solar generating plants to provide electricity around the clock.

Re:Oh, sure by microbox · 2014-05-20 03:27 · Score: 2

The financial industry is sitting on trillions of investment dollars that are looking for a home. Wonder who buys all that sovereign debt? That's because there's nothing better out there for all that money. Or at least, that's the financial industries story. We're really looking at the failure of financial institutions to manage investment dollars. They will only lift their game insofar as things like kickstarter forces them to.

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Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by microbox · 2014-05-20 03:29 · Score: 1

Gee how to do you know that that cannot be done. You see, maybe the technology isn't around now, or maybe it is, and the electricity infrastructure needs to be updated. But it is not entirely stupid.

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Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right

Re:Oh, sure by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-20 03:32 · Score: 1

General Fusion and Tri-Alpha have demonstrated that you can get investment from typical business sources even without a final confirmed project. While they do have some money from the founders and government funds, they also were able to get millions in investments, far more than what is being asked for here which has gotten them some pretty respectable teams of researchers and sets of diagnostics to do research with.

Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by tp1024 · 2014-05-20 03:46 · Score: 1

... in countries that are excessively dry and not to far from the the equator.

Mr Fusion by neonv · 2014-05-20 03:47 · Score: 1

In a few years, they will rename the device to "Mr. Fusion".

Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-20 03:48 · Score: 1

They run smelters from hydro and geothermal in Iceland, AFAIK.

In theory energy intensive processes (although ones that can start up and end with little run up) are a good way of storing excess energy from solar and wind when production is higher than demand but finding things that match this profile is tricky.

It tends to really go the other way - shedding demand when usage is high compared to production. So a firm may get a financial incentive for turning its air con off for an hour during a period of high demand. Since the air is relatively cool and if the building is well insulated then an hour of non operation of the air con should hopefully lead to negligible increase in temperature. The hope would then be that these savings could be rolled into improving insulation of the building such that it could then tolerate 2 hours of air con downtime, and so on.

My name in history? What a ripoff! by BoFo · 2014-05-20 04:02 · Score: 1

If one of the perks of funding is not, at the very least, a 5MW container-sized fusion reactor to stick in my backyard, where's the incentive?

Seesh!

Re:My name in history? What a ripoff! by Catch55 · 2014-05-20 07:37 · Score: 1

If one of the perks of funding is not, at the very least, a 5MW container-sized fusion reactor to stick in my backyard, where's the incentive? Seesh!
Think about the legal consequences if the concept comes out as unworkable. Also offering something like that would imply scam more than anything.
Re:My name in history? What a ripoff! by OneAhead · 2014-05-21 03:29 · Score: 1

Bravo! You might just as well be saying that you'd be willing to give your money to a scammer like Andrea Rossi, but not to serious real-life scientific research. If everything were to think like that, there would be no public funding for fundamental research, and no progress (because applied research alone won't get you very far in the grand scheme of things).
Re:My name in history? What a ripoff! by OneAhead · 2014-05-21 03:36 · Score: 1

s/everything/everyone/
Oh yeah, and I'm not implying TFA is necessarily serious research (though it does seem legit at first glance). I'm just attacking your criterion for judging a project worthy of funding.

p-B fusion features by Immerman · 2014-05-20 04:19 · Score: 1

The charged particles thing is one of the great benefits of p-B fusion, in addition to the lack of neutron or gamma radiation along the primary reaction path . You fuse a common hydrogen-1 nucleus (aka a proton) with a common Boron-11 nucleus to get a Carbon-12 nucleus that's unstable due to too much excess impact energy. The C-12 then immediately fissions into three helium-4 nuclei with the nuclear energy converted to the kinetic energy of their (fairly consistent) speeds.

You then have charged particles moving at extremely high speed and there's a number of ways those can be converted to electricity directly - most of which, in essence, boil down to firing them backwards into a small particle accelerator, which will generate as much energy slowing them down as it would have taken to get them up to speed. Minus efficiency losses of course, but those are potentially far less than even the best-case theoretical heat engine.

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D-T is strictly proof of concept at this point by Immerman · 2014-05-20 04:32 · Score: 1

D-T fusion is among the easiest reactions to create, so that tends to be what the initial "proof of concept" aim is for, but realistically in the long term we need to either design reactors that breed their own Tritium, possibly by including Lithium in the plasma or shielding, or rely completely on more common materials

That's one of the reasons p-B fusion is often considered the holy grail - it's got something like a 100x smaller reaction cross section, so is typically a much more difficult reaction to generate, but it uses the most common isotopes of hydrogen and boron and produces virtually no neutron or gamma radiation along the primary reaction path. Plus as an added bonus without neutron or gamma radiation all the nuclear energy gets converted to the kinetic energy of the three helium nuclei that the unstable (because of excess reaction energy) carbon-12 nucleus immediately fissions into. And energy can be recovered from fast-moving charged particles far more simply and efficiently than via a heat engine driven by gamma-heated reactor coolant.

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Re:It's pocket change, so they're probably greedy. by Immerman · 2014-05-20 04:42 · Score: 1

What sane investor would put money into fusion research that hasn't even accomplished fusion yet, much less achieved the net energy gain that's proven to be the stumbling block of all other publicly visible research? Meanwhile if 0.4% of the US population sends them just $1 they'll have the $1.2M in funding they believe they'll need to first buy these beryllium electrodes (the current $200K) and then work out the engineering challenges to achieve net energy gain, which they presumably think will be relatively easy with their approach. At that point, assuming it works, they'll have something to make them stand out from the crowd and perhaps attract investors to build their first $50M commercial prototype.

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Fusion isn't hard by Immerman · 2014-05-20 05:01 · Score: 1

You do know achieving fusion is actually really easy, right? Any science student can build a Farnsworth Fusor for Whatever the "new approach" was, it did not work the first time, it probably won't work now
What part of "new approach" don't you understand? There was no first time. At best there were preliminary experiments showing promising results - these folks for example need some expensive beryllium electrodes so that they can increase the plasma density enough to trigger fusion, for the first time with this approach.

As for radiation: you clearly have no idea what you're talking about - there's many different aneutronic fusion reactions that don't emit neutron radiation along the primary reaction path. p-B fusion has the added benefit of also emitting negligible gamma radiation, with virtually all energy being released as kinetic energy of the three helium-4 nuclei produced, which are also potentially extremely easy to convert into electricity without involving any inefficient heat engines. The existence of side reactions means it won't be *completely* neutron free, but you don't need much shielding if only 0.3% of your energy is being released as fast neutrons.

As for the money - there's LOTS of promising small-scale fusion research, but very, very little government funding, virtually all of which goes to ITER, and investors aren't going to put money into something with no expected payout for decades. (and realistically that's what we're probably looking at here - even if they get energy-positive by 2020 they still need to build a business around the technology)

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Indiegogo Flexible Funding? by AC-x · 2014-05-20 05:06 · Score: 1

Flexible Funding makes it very suspicious as they can just pocket all the money people donate even if they don't reach their funding goal. This is probably a scam and will never go anywhere.

Re:Indiegogo Flexible Funding? by Catch55 · 2014-05-20 10:33 · Score: 1

I just listened to a recent podcast where Lerner was interviewed (http://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/) and it seems that they are only trying to crowdsource enough money for the new beryllium electrodes. To me the flexible campaign doesn't render the effort any more suspicious than it would be with a fixed goal. In fact just the opposite - it shows that whatever the result of the crowdfunding campaign - they are probably going to carry on anyway and buy the new electrodes. In ant case most of their funding is coming through investors and that's how they pay for the normal operating expenses.

People, do the math! by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-05-20 05:21 · Score: 1

"US$50 million to produce the working 5 MW prototype"

$50,000,000 / 5,000,000 W = $10/W.

Anything over about $5 will not get built. Period. Consider Levy County and Darlington B. And unlike this system, they actually worked.

Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by AvitarX · 2014-05-20 06:22 · Score: 1

Setting the birth of Christ (arguably a historical event) as the delineation has always bothered me less than referring to the birth of Christ as kicking off the common era.

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Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by ceoyoyo · 2014-05-20 06:25 · Score: 1

You could certainly run a regular aluminum smelter using solar panels or a wind farm. It's just electricity.

There are better options for smelting with solar power though:

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2012...

So. by azav · 2014-05-20 07:04 · Score: 1

There are some groups who already have working cold fusion that works in the lab and is repeatable. The trick now is to turn the devices into commercial devices (at a profit) and not get smashed out of business by the current entrenched market forces in the energy industry.

I've seen videos of the devices actually working.

Yes, I could be wrong, or have been mislead, but that's the info I've been fortunate enough to be exposed to.

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Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2014-05-20 07:30 · Score: 1

The objection was not to using the birth of Jesus of Nazareth as a starting point. The objection was to the designation Anno Domini, (The Year of Our Lord). And it is called common era because it does not really start with the birth of Jesus. King Herod was dead by 4 BCE or 6 BCE depending on which eclipse you pick. So the census ordered by him must have been earlier. So Jesus was really born 5 BCE or 7 BCE. So the Common Era is exactly that, some arbitrary starting point. Mistakenly believed to be the year of the birth of Jesus by Christians. Because so many dynasties and Kings and commercial documents were dated based on that year count, it is quite appropriate to call it the Common Era. Christians are free to add 5 or 7 to the CE year and call it their AD. XXXX CE = (XXXX + 5 ) AD for Christians. Or 7 if they prefer the earlier eclipse dating for King Herod's death.

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ITER Failure by DMJC · 2014-05-20 09:06 · Score: 1

When are people going to wake up to the fact that the ITER is only funded because the idiots spent billions on it, and have no choice now but to make it actually work. The russians started experimenting with Tokomaks in the 1970s and the US having to stick it to the commies rushed in with money to compete. 40 years later with no end in sight, we're still here trying to make a broken idea work. ITER is one of the actual cases of the government spending stupid amounts of money on a project with no proven success. The same amount of funding spread across the other fusion projects would quite likely have resulted in a usable reactor by now. Hell the Polywell guys reckoned 100 million would have built a power plant using their reactor design. A smaller figure would prove net power according to Robert Bussard.

Re:ITER Failure by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-20 09:57 · Score: 1

ITER is one of the actual cases of the government spending stupid amounts of money on a project with no proven success.

No proven proven success.... like TFTR and JET being able to produce over 10 MW of fusion power, and the increasing values of plasma duration, Q and triple product that has been on a steady climb matching predictions for the last couple generations of machines and upgrades.

Re:Wikipedia by Karmashock · 2014-05-20 11:32 · Score: 1

If you like... but am I wrong?

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Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by Areyoukiddingme · 2014-05-20 11:35 · Score: 1

... in countries that are excessively dry and not to far from the the equator.

You do realize northern Australia is 1379.21 KM from the equator, right? And the the entirety of the Sun Race course is farther than that? Nor does the desert have anything to do with insolation. It gets as much sun as it gets. Nobody drives race cars in the rain, solar or not. A certain amount of drama was added to both of the last two races because it was so cloudy.

Anyway, they changed the rules in 2005, because the speed limit had become a problem. Basically anybody could build a "car" that would make the trip, at the speed limit. Since then, they've gotten away from the original vehicles that were more bicycle than car.

Re:Wikipedia by Karmashock · 2014-05-20 11:39 · Score: 1

This ignores the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs or the the fact that our sun will run out of hydrogen.

And even if we ignore natural methods of everyone killing themselves on earth, nukes, genetically engineered germ plagues, etc are just as deadly. We owe it to life on earth to survive. And that means getting off this planet.

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Re:Wikipedia by Karmashock · 2014-05-20 11:46 · Score: 1

All you're saying is that living in space is hard and we're not very good at it.

I agree. It doesn't change the fact that we must leave or we're dead.

You want to stay here? I give you the whole world. Every inch of it. Do as you will with it.

But let me leave first. And once I leave... when your ilk finally wise up and decide to leave... you'll find everything else is ours.

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Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by Catch55 · 2014-05-20 23:31 · Score: 2

Pumped hydro is already used at least here in Scandinavian countries to storage the surplus energy produced by nuclear during night time. But there are also propositions of hydro-facilities that could be drilled into the ground and provide storage in smaller scales, for neighborhoods or small cities. Interesting talk about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Fusion power since 4.5*10^9 BC in space! by AvitarX · 2014-05-21 05:39 · Score: 1

I guess that makes sense, common era, as in common usage of years.

I still personally feel (and know I am in the minority) that changing the year of the lord to common era is more offensive than letting the old term stand as a ceremonial deism.

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Re:Oh, sure by stoatwblr · 2014-05-22 08:20 · Score: 2

"Because they cost a fortune and coal is a hell of a lot more profitable. "

Only until you're forced to pay the cleanup costs.

The biggest US-environmental disaster of the last decade wasn't Deepwater Horizon. It was a pond of coal ash slurry breaking loose - and it was a small one in comparison to some of the (increasingly unstable) ones dotted across the USA.

Slashdot Mirror

Fusion Power By 2020? Researchers Say Yes and Turn To Crowdfunding.

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