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.

Is Focus Fusion the same as Cold Fusion?

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.

Could Sonofusion be coupled with this process?

GE Chimes In

A post on the Post Carbon Institute blog referring to a presentation given at the 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research. 

Russian Group Achieves pB11 Fusion With Very Small Yield

A Russian team of researchers reported observing pB11 fusion using a laser.  The yield was only about 1,000 reactions, about 7 billion-fold short of breakeven, but the experiment did show that pb11 fuel will burn more or less as expected.