Author Archive

ITER Assembly

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. At times FocusFusion.org levels a critical eye toward ITER. The massive international fusion project has an out-sized impact on fusion research funding while pursuing well traveled ground. We advocate for aneutronic approaches like those of LPPFusion and others. However, a pair of videos highlights the awesome scale of ITER. The videos amply show ITER to be unarguably an impressive engineering and management project. While the videos are a few years old, they nonetheless remain pertinent. ITER construction currently approaches the timeline covered in the first video. The video, mostly well done animation, shows the assembly of the major reaction chamber components in the tokamak building. In actuality, the tokamak building construction should […]

New X-ray Diagnostics for WEST Fusion Device

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor A team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) won a DOE Office of Science award to develop new X-ray diagnostics for WEST, the Tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak, in France. The three-year, $1-million award will support the construction of two new devices at PPPL. This includes collaboration with French scientists and deployment of a post-doctoral researcher to test the installed devices. First of all, WEST is the upgrade to the Tora Supra, a French Tokamak situated at the nuclear research center of Cadarache, Bouches-du-Rhône in Provence. The WEST facility uses plasma-facing carbon components. Likewise, the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U) at PPPL uses […]

Modeling ITER Performance

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor New research results support the predicted performance of ITER. Good news for those diligently constructing the massive reactor in southern France. In plasma, electrons separate from their nucleus leaving behind ions. To continue heating plasma to fusion temperatures requires injecting more energy via radio frequency (RF) waves. Free electrons and ions respond to these waves differently leading to different temperatures for both plasma constituents. Scientists needed to better understand how these differences influence overall plasma temperature and density. The combination of temperatures within the plasma produce “multi-scale” turbulence. Turbulence can reduce fusion reaction rates. The scientists used a “reduced physics” computer model called TGLF. This model simplifies the massively parallel and costly […]

Fossil Fuels Still Dominate

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. Mainstream media loves to feature stories of the newest green energy initiative. Rightly so as humanity tries to cope with climate change. Each new initiative and milestone creates additional hope for the future. However, more balanced reporting may indicate we need even more progress. A National Observer article by Barry Saxifrage gives a more sober perspective. His article published last summer indicates fossil fuels still dominate globally. Mr. Saxifrage started with the well regarded “BP Statistical Review of World Energy.” Despite copious amounts of data contained in the report, it didn’t answer one simple question: how much fossil fuel is the world burning each year? So Mr. Saxifrage downloaded all the data […]

LPPFusion Funding Campaign News

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. LPPFusion has been running an equity funding campaign via the WeFunder website. The successful campaign has met the minimum funding goals, but the team hopes to meet their stretch goal in the last few weeks of the program. WeFunder website has been able to attract a new class of investor thanks to recent changes in U.S. securities law. As explained in a previous FocusFusion post, in 2012 President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act). Title III of this legislation went into effect on May 16th 2016. It allows for more liberal investment opportunities in private companies. LPPFusion is using these new rules to place an investment offering on […]

ITER News

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. Last week we covered fusion funding increases under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) basic research wing, the Office of Science. However, additional fusion funding increases took place in other parts of the U.S. budget. The massive ITER project also received more funds than expected. The ITER international fusion research initiative has seen the U.S. balk at its funding commitments. The 2017 budget only provided $50 million of the scheduled $107 million dollars. President Trump had threatened to likewise curtail U.S financial commitment in 2018. This would have meant a $63 million dollar U.S. contribution in 2018 instead of the scheduled $122 million. However, in the Omnibus Appropriations bill, Congress agreed to […]

U.S. Ups Funding For Fusion

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. Late last week the final 2018 budget was passed by the United States Congress. While delayed six months, this budget contains significant increases for programs backed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). DOE’s basic research wing, the Office of Science, gets a 16% boost, to $6.26 billion, in a 2018 omnibus spending bill passed by Congress last week. In contrast, last May President Donald Trump’s administration had proposed a 17% cut. The Office of Science oversees six programs, and fusion energy sciences saw one of the largest increases. Fusion research funding will increase 24% to $410 million. This compares to $331 million distributed to fusion programs under the 2017 budget. It’s […]

Benefits of Aneutronic Fusion

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. Aneutronic fusion describes any fusion reaction whose products don’t include free neutrons, or one where neutrons carry away less than 1% of the energy released from fusion. This type of fusion reaction has benefits over the more commonly studied fusion reactions. Free neutrons from fusion cause residual radioactivity and structural damage. Yet, aneutronic fusion avoids these detriments and carries another benefit when power generation is the goal of fusion. Most fusion research focuses on fusion between deuterium and tritium (D-T). Both are isotopes of hydrogen. Normally, a hydrogen nucleus consists of a lone proton. Deuterium pairs this single proton with a neutron. Tritium adds yet another neutron to give this flavor of […]

The Real MIT Fusion Announcement

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. This past week many mainstream media outlets devoted coverage to an announcement of a fusion research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The MIT announcement highlighted an effort to develop a compact tokamak fusion reactor. The headline grabbing news was the prediction that this would yield electricity to the grid in 15 years. Much of this coverage positioned the announcement as possible due to some new novel scientific break-though. Let’s take a closer look. The tokamak device proposed by MIT is essentially the same design proposed by Russian scientists nearly 70 years ago. Tokamaks, invented in the 1950s by Soviet physicists Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov, grew from an original […]

Fusion Funding Cuts

Written by Tim Lash, Focus Fusion Society Contributor. A few weeks ago President Trump released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2019. This proposal carries cuts to many scientific programs. Programs under threat include several fusion research efforts. Cuts might delay ITER construction funding. Yet, smaller programs could feel the impact most. The University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), which houses one of the most powerful lasers in the US, has slammed what it calls “potentially devastating” budget cuts threatened by the Trump administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2019. University interim president designate Richard Feldman defending LLE released the following statement: The University was disappointed to learn that the Administration’s fiscal year 2019 budget proposes a significant […]