ICC recap and Bill Gates TED talk review

On February 16-19, PPPL hosted the ICC Workshop (Innovative Confinement Concepts).  This coincided with Bill Gates’ TED talk, in which he proposed nuclear fission innovations as a solution to the world energy+CO2 crisis.  These two events can be juxtaposed with interesting implications for Fusion research strategy.

Laberge’s General Fusion

MTF-Magnetized target fusion. 

Give his team six to 10 years and a few hundred million dollars, he says, and his company, General Fusion, will give you a nuclear-fusion power plant.

Brzosko Reports Repeatable Functioning of DPF

Dr. Jan Brzosko reports that the DPF can function in a highly repeatable manner. 

Dr. Robert Bussard, 1928-2007

The Focus Fusion Society regrets the October 6th passing of pioneer fusion researcher Dr. Robert Bussard.

Should Google Go Nuclear

Check out the Google video lecture by Robert Bussard on Nov. 9, 2006 explaining alternative approaches to Fusion.  It’s 1 hour 33 minutes and explains the superiority of Boron Hydrogen fusion. 

ITER Pitch - and recruiting Australians

Thanks to member AndyL for drawing our attention to a lecture given by Dr. Barry Green at the Australian National University.  It’s a detailed description of the ITER approach to fusion.  The “ITER Pitch” so to speak.  Here’s the actual mp3.

The lecture explains the current state of ITER’s research, and the heroic scientific and political efforts required to make it happen.  The lecture includes a pitch to students to think about a LONG career with ITER should Australia decide to be involved with the project.

The interesting bit for us is the question time at the end.  Listen for an anonymous person making a comparison with focus fusion!  [For the Focus Fusion take on ITER and the Tokamak, here is a comparison of Conventional vs. Focus Fusion, and a look at barriers to the development of fusion. ] 

Fusion Alternatives

We here at the Focus Fusion Society think our approach is the best for realizing the promise of fusion.  However, we also think that all promising alternative routes to fusion should be adequately funded, that the fusion field as a whole needs more money.  What are the other approaches?

Conventional Fusion vs. Focus Fusion

Energy production has three main elements:  fuel, reactor and generator (why these three?).  Conventional fusion and focus fusion differ significantly in their approach to these three elements:

• Fuel:  Focus Fusion uses a different fuel, hydrogen and boron, rather than the conventional Deuterium and Tritium. 
• Reactor:  It uses a much smaller, inexpensive, more elegant reactor, the Dense Plasma Focus.  In contrast, conventional approaches to fusion revolve around the tokamak, a large, unwieldy and very expensive device that has consumed billions of dollars in research money and is still very far from achieving net energy. 
• Generator:The Focus Fusion approach seeks to generate electricity directly. The tokamak is designed to generate heat which then has to be converted to electricity using expensive turbines and generators.

Fusion is not Fission

Fission and Fusion are both Nuclear Energy.  When people discuss nuclear power, they are usually referring to nuclear fission. This is because we have many nuclear power plants that use fission, but no one has been able to build a working fusion plant yet.  The biggest practical difference between the two is that fusion reactions don’t have the problem of “chain reactions” and “melt-downs”. 

Z-Pinch

Sandia Reports Achieving 2 billion-degree ion temperatures in Z-Pinch, the only thing is, they’re not sure how they did it.  Here’s a focus fusion perspective.