Energy Secretary Steve Chu and Focus Fusion
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Discuss In ForumsEnergy Secretary Steven Chu gave a talk at Google, Oct. 26, 2009. During the question and answer period, someone asks him about Focus Fusion.
Here’s the video of Steven Chu at Google.
The Focus Fusion question occurs at 27:31 minutes. Pardon the transcription below - I couldn’t type that fast. You will note some gaps.
Questioner: So the previous gentleman already asked my question about thorium, but we’ve seen a number of exciting talks recently on various energy sources and one was on focus fusion and I was wondering if there’s any money was going into that.
Chu: Onto what type of fusion?
Q: Focus fusion.
Chu: Oh this is where the ions have been focused and channeled and it… to get fusion, is that what we’re talking about?
Q: I believe so. It’s using the instabilities of the plasma against itself, essentially.
Chu: We are looking at fusion. Certainly DOE is investing in ITER. but going beyond ITER we’re looking at fusion and fission hybrids… [he describes fusion fission hybrids ]...So all these ideas are in play. New technologies, so called “wave reactors” technology, you start with a plug of 15-20% ...neutrons turn u238 into ...plutonium which then is burned down and after you’re done with this, you scrape up the…so there are a number of technologies we’re trying to figure out how to do.
[At this point, Chu seems to recall Focus Fusion.]
The Fusion - it’s tough. Pure fusion is still very very tough. and so…it looked a little bit…I know that Google was interested in doing one of those things. I looked a little bit at it, got some of the experts at Lawrence labs to look at it but…we’ll see.
From this, it looks like Focus fusion is vaguely familiar to Chu, mostly because Google looked at it. Here Chu suggests that he had someone at Lawrence Livermore look over the concept. In my memory, Google had someone at Princeton (PPPL) look at it. He may actually be recalling Focus Fusion here, or he may be thinking of something else. This needs some follow-through.
DPF Animation
Fusion as a “Quest”
Comments
This article raises an issue which I would like to see discussed further.
How much attention should be drawn to the work at Lawrenceville at this time? There exist powerful interests out there who would not be happy to see a safe and inexpensive means to generate electricity be developed. I refer to the resource monopolists who control oil, coal and uranium. They are looking forward to the time when they will be able to extract ever increasing amounts of money from us for ever scarcer resources which we cannot live without.
The government is not necessarily our friend. There is no way we could raise the financial muscle to outbid the resource hounds who already have so much influence in Washington. It is only a question of time before these vampires seek to flex their muscles and make a potential competitor vanish. Do we really want the Department of Energy looking over our shoulder? The usual sequence of events in the past has been: support, control, obliteration.
So far Focus Fusion has struggled forward successfully on private support, support with no strings attached. Shouldn’t this effort continue in the same way?
I suggest that Focus Fusion supporters should avoid direct confrontation or even too much publicity and remain as a guerilla army, ready to spring up fully formed and unstoppable when the time is right.
TCG
This is actually typical: specialists in a field are often ignorant of alternate work. For example, I heard an astronaut talk the other day and he kept referring to Virgin Galactic’s upcoming vehicle as “space ship one”.. even after a few people corrected him he kept it up, and he made it clear he didn’t know the name of the air launch vehicle (White Knight 2). Similarly he failed to recall the name of the SpaceX capsule (Dragon) or the other participating member of COTS (Orbital Sciences).
Given the magnitude of the crisis we’re potentially facing with GW and dependency on fossil fuels, I think Focus Fusion should be going all out to be noticed and funded. The fact that the secretary has some idea of what it’s about means the foot’s in the door. Think of all the competing interests trying to get in his radar! Now is probably a golden opportunity to apply for government support, whether financial, to spread the word, or find more sponsors for the work. This administration is clearly more interested in promoting scientific exploration than the last. Don’t take it for granted.
However, Secretary Chu seems more interested in exploring fission power and CO2 capture, but it’s such a no brainer that if fusion power can be aneutronic, it should be developed ASAP! He says it’s tough, but fission reactions were tough in the beginning, weren’t they? The Manhattan project was a monumental exercise, unfortunately for war. You need to think in marketing terms, given the competition from the nuclear, coal and oil lobbies that are working overtime in Washington to maintain or expand their markets. They are hoping for billions in government investment to burn cleaner. The powerful interests will always be out there trying to undermine emerging technologies, but they haven’t stopped the PV industry or the Wind Power industry from expanding. The power of the people and the vote for green technologies has been a stronger current.
I would hope there is some kind of promotional follow up with the Secretary to apprise him of where Focus Fusion research is heading. It needs to be sold as a viable green technology, as Eric Lerner eloquently presented to Google.
The previous comment spoke to Focus Fusion being “noticed and funded”, but I would suggest that both of these should be undertaken very carefully.
As one example, there are large, powerful companies which control vast coal reserves in this country. Their product is already producing a significant percentage of our electricity. Would these interests be pleased to learn that just over the horizon may be an alternative means of generation which could make their holdings near worthless? If they realize what threatens them, is there anything they would not do to prevent it?
Surely, these are forces which we would not want to notice the progress of Focus Fusion until it is too late for them to interfere. The list of similar businesses and interests with the same potential losses to face would be very long. This evaluation may seem overly cynical, but in fact it is ordinary business philosophy—normally called “maintaining the profit margin”.
As to government support, I have to urge the same caution. Government rarely supports anything without wanting to exercise control. Since those big heads in Washington obviously know little about Focus Fusion, the quality of their oversight would likely be heavy-handed and faulty. Do we need this type of well documented meddling?
If the Focus Fusion effort is short of cash, there are less compromising and dangerous places to get it. Up to now Eric Lerner and his crew have shown brilliant Physics, but barriers exist in the areas of politics and economics which will need to be overcome or bypassed. This is a giant, multi-dimensional chess game, and the moves must be made carefully.
If they were smart, these companies would be working on the engineering problems of focus fusion the very instant the science bit turns out successful.
Then they’ll license the patent and start selling electricity instead of selling coal. Coal is dead and they should be looking to write-off the previous incorrect valuations of their coal stocks and move forward profitably.
Of Course! Maihem’s comment is exactly to the point. He outlined one way these resource interests can adapt successfully to a big change in the game and still make money, which is all they want. It is a forward looking perspective, but unfortunately these companies are known for stubbornly looking in the opposite direction.
It seems that part of this great transformation that we all hope for will be the science, but another part will be developing new business models to placate the vested interests. With their backward looking perspective, we cannot rely on them to be so clever on their own.
For example, when Saudi Arabia realizes that the same machine which will make their oil unneeded will allow cheap desalination of seawater for agriculture, wouldn’t they be satisfied to make their country bloom and produce enough food for millions of people? Selling food is at least as good a business as selling oil.
The point here is that there will be important work for more than physicists in all of this. People with the right touch in the political arena and others with a head for business will be needed too.
Sure, a coal company could invest in focus fusion. But anybody could invest $300K and buy a focus fusion plant. Many middle-class individuals could do it. A coal company already owns lots of coal; the playing field is decidedly not level, and they like it that way.
The Middle East might be better off with fusion and plenty of desalinated water, but they wouldn’t have the world by the short hairs anymore. They’d just be a few more countries capable of growing crops.
By and large, it’s not about wealth, it’s about power. Keep that in mind and the decisions of the powerful will make a lot more sense.
Followup: this implies that the right people to approach are people with money, who either lack power, or who have a power base which would not be threatened by focus fusion. Google was a great example. Go after the heavy *users* of electricity, rather than the heavy providers of it. An alternate approach would be small companies in the power business, hoping to overturn the existing order.
The U.S. government has deep ties to the fossil fuel industries, so I’m not optimistic about their involvement. The one exception is the Navy, a heavy user of fossil fuels, which is funding Bussard fusion to get free of that yoke. But if we’re on track to have definitive results by 2011, it’s probably a waste of time to pursue that route. Prove the science and private investment can take it the rest of the way.
The oceans are acidifying, losing the ability to absorb CO2, vast areas don’t support life. Frozen methane is thawing and it may be approaching it’s catastrophic tipping point. Forests are dying. Species are disappearing at a rate that resembles the global extinctions of the past. The fossil fuel industry is the biggest culprit and I believe the largest industrial entity we have on the planet. We don’t have fifty years to transition away from it as our primary energy source. Maybe we don’t even have twenty five years…
It is staggering to think of what it will take to change the paradigm of energy usage. Yet we see the shift starting to happen, albeit at too slow a rate. I value the points that have been raised about the concerns of government and corporate intrusion and surely would not want to see Focus Fusion technology becoming an imperial tool. The concepts of local community base, small scale and broad universal dispersal make a lot of practical sense, cutting down on transmission losses and bureaucratic impediment. However, there’s still the overwhelming problem of time and the lack of it. The fact is the government can get behind technologies and fast track them. The space program is an example. It’s not automatic that if government is involved there will be failure. Without oversight there can be failure. This can happen in any case.
A unified groundswell of support and organization that we see happening all around us is what it will take to keep things moving along. This current administration may not be perfect but they have genuinely tapped into the sentiment of peoples yearning to seriously come together to solve problems like global warming. There is a momentum to listen and respond to calls for progress. The government can interfere, but it can also be a catalyst in the right circumstances.
The rate of change has been slow because greener alternatives have been more expensive. If focus fusion really does deliver on being 50x cheaper than coal, with only a $300K investment, we’ll see a staggeringly fast transition. Anyone who doesn’t transition will quickly go out of business.
This is pretty much the only thing giving me hope that we can escape the mess we’re in…that focus fusion, or another breakthrough technology, will make it economically unfeasible to avoid going green.
So I share your concerns, I’m just very skeptical that it’s possible to convince the U.S. government to help in a serious way. Somehow the lobbyists always seem to step in and twist things to their advantage, undermining the whole point. For example, the right way to do carbon trading is to sell them strictly at auction; in Europe the big emitters got grandfathered in, to such an extent that some of them made a profit on the deal.
Prove me wrong and I will be very pleasantly surprised.
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