New Magnetic Effect Discussed at Conferences

Posted by Admin on May 04, 2003 at 04:46 PM
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The Symposium brings together the leading researchers in the fusion field and is sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Global Foundation, Inc. The new results, which were received with great interest by the Symposium participants, will be published in the Proceedings of the Symposium. At the APS meeting, one of the participants pointed out that other plasma experiments had also achieved giga-gauss magnetic fields, making it more plausible that the plasma focus could achieve fields in the range of 20 giga-gauss, as Lerner’s theory predicts.

In addition, Lerner presented the Texas A&M experimental results showing that the focus could achieve billion-degree temperatures. These results will also be published in the Proceedings, a significant breakthrough, since several journals had declined to publish the results as too controversial.

The Symposium also marked a shift in views by some of the most senior researchers in the fusion field. While many of these scientists had spent most of their careers developing the tokamak, in presentation after presentation, they now condemned the US Department of Energy for concentrating exclusively on the tokamak, which in the words of one researcher, had “lost us decades” in the pursuit of fusion power. “Does anyone here think that we would not already have fusion power today if the program had been run correctly?” asked David Montgomery. Few in the room disagreed. The International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER), a multi-billion-dollar experiment now in the planning stages, came under particular criticism as a device that could not possibly fulfill its goals of producing net energy. A final report, which will be published as part of the Proceedings urged greatly expanded funding for alternative fusion devices.