Funding Instability

Q:Does the pursuit of "instability" create funding problems?

A:

Focus fusion represents a fundamentally different approach than the vast majority of existing technology. Since the innovation of the steam engine, most technology has aimed at controlling nature by producing conditions that are stable and homogeneous, close to equilibrium. Instabilities, rapid changes that create inhomogeneities, are avoided as they decrease predictability. The tokamak, for example, functions by attempting to produce a plasma that is stable and quiet.

In contrast, the plasma focus device functions by using instabilities that nature provides. It is natural instabilities that cause the plasma filaments to form and later to compress themselves into an ultra dense plasmoid to generate fusion temperatures. Such instabilities are common in nature and, as Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine has emphasized, are the way that nature evolves and creates new structures and new types of order.

While the stable-state homogeneous approach to controlling nature has produced great advances it is limited and at times highly destructive. For example, the tendency toward mono-cropping in agriculture creates homogeneity and destroys the fertile diversity of nature. This is widely recognized as environmentally harmful. Yet in agriculture, as in technology, the stability approach dominates. As a result, funding agencies such as the department of energy have had difficulty accepting the instability based approach of the plasma focus device. It is likely that major government funding will not become available until the feasibility of hydrogen-boron fusion has been demonstrated experimentally.