Reply To: Military Effects

[Lerner]

I submitted this as a comment on the blog:

Bob Hirsch is to be congratulated on making the, for him, painful assessment that the tokamak, deuterium-tritium approach to fusion cannot produce the safe, clean, cheap energy that the world needs. He is also right that aneutronic fuels, especially proton-boron, are essential to fusion success. But in focusing on one device, the IEC, he is repeating the basic mistake he and other policy makers made 40 years ago by putting all their eggs in one basket and betting on only one device. It was premature then, as events proved, and it is still premature. Right now there are in addition to IEC at least three other devices that have a chance of producing net energy with proton-born fuel: the dense plasma focus, femtosecond lasers and the field reversed configuration. The first two, with extremely dense plasmas, can use the quantum magnetic field effect to reduce electron temperatures relative to ion temperatures and thus reduce the x-ray cooling of the plasma. In our own work at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. we have achieved in experiments the ion energy and confinement time, although not yet the density, needed for net energy production. The best and lowest risk path to fusion is therefore an International Aneutronic Fusion Program that adequately funds ALL possible approaches to aneutronic fusion, rather than determining in advance the one most likely to succeed.