Energy Secretary Steve Chu and Focus Fusion
Energy 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.