Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. Far and away the largest fusion project on earth is the ITER reactor under construction in France. An international slate of countries support this research effort with billions of euros. The timeline for development and testing of this facility stretches into the 2050s. As the king of fusion projects ITER draws widespread press coverage. But bigger isn’t always better. In an article published in February of 2018, fusion research physicist physicist Daniel Jassby lays out some drawbacks of the ITER project. Dr. Jassby outline four critiques of ITER: electricity consumption, tritium fuel losses, neutron activation, and cooling water demand. When operational ITER will consume as much electricity as a medium sized city. […]
Read MoreWritten by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. The School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP) at American University in Cairo (AUC) recently published an energy piece in their quarterly Cairo Review of Global Affairs. The article about renewable power sources was written by Jeffrey Ball, scholar in residence at Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance and a lecturer at Stanford Law School. The article posted last week here at focusfusion.org covered renewable energy trends in western Europe. Mr. Ball’s article extends that story to the Middle East and Northeast Africa (MENA). Here too, renewable energy is beginning to make a significant contribution to the regional energy demand. The article lays out the global trends for […]
Read MoreWritten by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. The About page of FocusFusion.org describes our group as “a grassroots campaign and educational organization, fighting to bring cheap green energy to all.” Of course the ultimate green energy would be aneutronic fusion like that being pursued by LPPFusion and other groups. However, while that pursuit is underway, there has been progress in the move away from traditional fossil fuel energy production. On April 30, 2017, Germany set a record by generating 85% of its electricity from renewable resources. This day was particularly windy and sunny. The power generated from solar and wind farms added to that from biomass and hydro plants summed up to 85% of the country’s demand. The remaining […]
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