Reply To: Toshiba's "Micro Nuclear Reactor" – it's not fusion, but it's here now

[Ivy Matt]

Well, I hope that won’t be necessary—at least the secretive part. General Fusion is actually not all that secretive—certainly not compared to Tri Alpha, or even to EMC2 these days. In fact, the thing I’ve noticed about them is that, for whatever reason, they seem to get their share of publicity. See here for a recent example. I have, however, noticed that even the more in-depth articles don’t seem to delve into what exactly they’re working on at the moment. Whether that’s a conscious policy by General Fusion or simply the reluctance of reporters to delve too deeply into trivia, I would be interested to know.

By the way, regarding General Fusion’s funding, apparently they need $50 million to demonstrate net gain. Of that $13.9 million (Canadian) is publicly funded through Sustainable Development Technology Canada. According to Next Big Future, they will need a further $300-$500 million to go into commercial production. The same Next Big Future article also has a comparison of funding raised for Tri Alpha, EMC2, and LPP.

I would like to amend my statement in my previous post to: “the approaches that seem to me most likely to bear fruit soonest with the least amount of money are receiving the least amount of funding—but less than they need”.