Focus Fusion Credibility

Posted by Admin on Aug 05, 2006 at 07:31 PM
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• Our government thought enough of this research to put funding into it.
• Focus Fusion is based on well-confirmed scientific theories.
• Eric Lerner is an internationally known astrophysicist and author.
• Focus Fusion is not the product of one researcher.

Our government thought enough of this research to put funding into it.

From 1994-2001 Lawrenceville Plasma Physics was funded $300,000 by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to carry out research aimed at developing focus fusion for space propulsion. This research was carried out in collaboration with teams of scientists at University of Illinois and Texas A&M University. The funding terminated in 2001 not because JPL was dissatisfied with the results, but because the program that was funding this and other research, Advanced Propulsion Technology, was itself de-funded.

A technical review of a focus fusion development proposal by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”), (U.S. Dept. of Commerce) concluded:

Technically the plan is very strong. The objective is truly revolutionary, yet the plan to achieve it is feasible. The steps to the objective are clearly defined. The plan is based on new, highly original theory and analysis. There is a good coordination of simulation and experimentation. The optimization plan, while ambitious, is feasible.

While the proposal that LPP made to NIST is for an x-ray source, not a fusion reactor, ALL of the scientific assumptions, theories and techniques that lead us to calculate that we can achieve net energy production with the focus fusion were included in this proposal to justify the achievement of the x-ray goals. The physical conditions that were promised in order to produce the x-rays will also allow the production of net fusion energy.

Focus Fusion is based on well-confirmed scientific theories.

Unlike zero-point energy and cold fusion, which are based on new physical theories, or at least new interpretations of existing theories, Focus Fusion is based on an original application of very-well-confirmed scientific theories such as electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. No “new physical theories” are invoked.

The work of LPP president Eric Lerner in this field is taken seriously by his peers. He has presented the science behind our approach at several scientific conferences just in the past 5 years, including:

• the IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science, 2002.
• the American Physical Society, 2003 and
• the XI Latin American Workshop on Plasma Physics, 2005.

Lerner was an invited speaker at both the Fifth (2003) and Sixth (2005) Symposia on Current Trends in International Fusion Research, which is sponsored by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  In the Sixth Symposium the paper was presented with Robert E. Terry, Naval Research Laboratory)
(The paper presented is available as a pdf file:Advances Towards pB11 Fusion with the Dense Plasma Focus )

No criticisms of the underlying science of focus fusion have been raised at any of these conferences. On the contrary, physicists in the field praise Lerner’s approach. 

Julio Herrera, physicist and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a leading international expert on the plasma focus, says:

The experimental program that LPP plans to carry out has great potential to show how the plasma focus can be used to generate fusion energy and to demonstrate the feasibility of hydrogen-boron fusion,

Bruno Coppi, Professor of Physics and Senior Fusion Researcher at MIT says:

I think that the “focus fusion” approach of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. should be funded as the science behind it is very interesting.  Even if this approach does not succeed in producing fusion energy, the research will produce valuable technology in the near term.

Eric Lerner is an internationally known astrophysicist and author.

Eric Lerner, in addition to his work in controlled fusion, is an internationally known astrophysicist, whose original theories of quasars, large-scale structure and the cosmic background radiation have been published in leading astronomy and plasma physics journals, including The Astrophysics Journal, Astrophysics and Space Science, IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, and Lasers and Particle Beams. His work challenging the Big Bang theory has been reported in popular science magazines, including a cover article of New Scientist (July 2, 2005) and in television and film documentaries. His views on cosmology have been published in periodicals ranging from Sky and Telescope to The New York Times.

He is the author of the cosmology popularization, The Big Bang Never Happened, (Vintage) and co-editor of the Proceedings of the First Crisis in Cosmology Conference (American Institute of Physics Proceeding Series). James Van Allen, the discover of the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth, wrote of The Big Bang Never Happened:

Eric J. Lerner gives both a provocative critique of the Big Bang and a stimulating account of the insightful and creative, although controversial, cosmology of Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfven.

In 2006, he was a Visiting Astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Santiago, Chile, one of the foremost observatories in the world. He has been invited to present his theories at many leading institutions, including ESO, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Princeton University, the University of Pavia (Italy), The University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

Focus fusion is not the product of one researcher.

Focus Fusion is the fruit of a research program involving dozens of experimental groups over 40 years. The plasma focus device, while it has suffered over the years from a great lack of funding, and faced challenges to theoretical understanding, has now become one of the most promising alternatives to the costly tokamak approach to fusion. In Latin America, for example, plasma focus devices are the only alternative device that is now being actively researched. The contribution to the plasma focus research of LPP and the Focus Fusion Society has been, first, to develop in the 1980’s a quantitative theory of the plasma focus that indicated that it was capable of burning hydrogen-boron fuel; second, to demonstrate that the magnetic field effect would greatly reduce the cooling of the plasma by x-rays, and third, to introduce the idea of improving the efficiency of the device by injecting angular momentum into it.  These innovations together are what are expected to overcome the remaining technical barriers to hydrogen-boron fusion.

In this work, FFS Executive Director Lerner has built on the work of the late plasma focus pioneers Winston Bostick and Victorio Nardi of Steven Institute of Technology and of the founder of modern plasma physics, Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfven. Today, other researchers such as George Miley of the University of Illinois and Franklin Mead of the Air Force Research Laboratory are also investigating the possibility of focus fusion and the use of hydrogen-boron fuel with the plasma focus.