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
I agree with the concept of keeping one’s light hidden “under a bushel” and NOT ACCEPTING government funding at any level, ever. Once government gets in on the act, and they will, there is more than merely the nose under the tent. They will tax and regulate this to death, under the guise of “the American people need this windfall money to go to pay off our national debt which we have permitted to grow beyond our control”, and are under the influence of those very business monopolists who have more to lose and have very influential lobbyists and PACs at the ears of our so-called “representatives” in Congress. The idea of going directly to users or manufacturers who require power is a good one. Possibilities: automotive/ship propulsion/transmission business, home generators, aircraft engine manufacturers eventually if FF can fit weight and safety requirements, and much more. Ask questions like, “how far down and up in scale can a useful FF device be manufactured and fueled? nano-equipment, computers, phones come to mind where relatively tine, portable power may be addressed, and large satellites, national power generation, and planetary exploration power supplies can be considered. Just do not allow the government to control this technology. They have not shown themselves to possess sufficient common sense, restraint or selfless nation interest to date, so how could we trust them to become involved in this? Especially since their agencies and their funded institutions have to date dismissed and marginalized every sensible advance in plasma physics to feather their own nests and prop up only their own ideas, bad and good, of how things work in physics. They simply have not earned a place at the fusion table as they have done nothing to enhance this line of thought and application.
TCG;
Spot-on commentary and observations. Until FF is proven and being licensed far and wide, I personally would much prefer that Lerner retain absolute control over its development and disposition. Bureaucracies, whether DoE or other, are inherently in business to perpetuate the problem to which they are the “solution”. If FF succeeds, the DoE will be as useless as udders on a bull.
benf;
the environmental scare tactics are unnecessary, and will be moot anyway. BTW, please watch your language. pH change from 8.3 to 8.2 is not “acidification”; it’s slight de-alkalization, nowhere near what may/must have been the case in the deep past when CO2 levels were 10X higher and corals etc. were evolving.
Brian you’re right about current pH levels but “ocean acidification” is the term used by oceanographers, and many of them are very concerned about it.
I agree that government funding is unlikely to be beneficial at this point. Lerner seems to have what he needs.
Oceanographers are all over the map on the subject. Note that virtually every extant shellfish and coral and mollusk species originally evolved in environments with CO2 at multiples of current levels. In fact, its current low fraction in the atmosphere is substantially a result of those species “fixing” the CO2 with Ca in limestones etc. worldwide.
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