Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[Rezwan]

Tulse wrote: Why promote/describe/sell aneutronic fusion, rather than Focus Fusion (or DPF) specifically? Why confuse folks with more details, especially if those aren’t directly relevant?

Credibility, differentiation, context.

Fusion doesn’t have a good reputation to begin with. But people who think about it, assume that the government and scientists must have done their due diligence and are working on what they need to be working on. The concept of aneutronic fusion isn’t even on the radar.

To come out of the blue and talk about focus fusion and the DPF and that it’s aneutronic is bewildering and raises a ton of questions. Whoever I talk to needs a full half our of explanation, and then they ask the same questions again an hour later, and a day later. It will take a lot of repetition and clarification to get the idea across.

If the goal is to promote FF,

Is that the goal? That would make us the marketing department of LPP, and not an independent nonprofit organization with a broader pro-fusion mission. What if FF doesn’t work? Does the Focus Fusion Society close shop? This is a strategy question – I am in the process of setting up a new forum to discuss this.

FFS is a unique nonprofit organization that seeks clean, cheap energy from nuclear fusion whatever form that ultimately takes. We are currently following the LPP experiment because it’s the most elegant concept imaginable. Also, it’s our namesake, it’s how we got started. And we’re hoping this is the winner.

However, it is not a proven concept, so we need to keep that in mind, and build a broader coalition that takes a clear-eyed approach to the pursuit of fusion. In a way, we need to model appropriate fusion-questing behavior. One of the historical problems with fusion is that people have fallen into the trap of wishful thinking and it has hurt fusion overall. If we put our support of LPP in context of a broader strategy for fusion, and emphasize our rational approach to it, we increase credibility and interest.

frankly, I would avoid using “nuclear” in headings and taglines. While focus fusion is indeed technically a nuclear process, it’s not fission, which is all the public is really familiar with, and it has almost none of the properties that the general public associates with nuclear energy (nasty, long-lived radioactive waste; risk of serious accidents; risk of proliferation for atomic weapons; huge expensive powerplants, etc. etc. etc.). In this way, labelling it “nuclear” is actually far more confusing and (unintentionally) deceptive.

That’s deceptive. Also, that will come up when people try to discredit the movement, it will look like we’ve been trying to cover something up.

The points you make in the rest of the paragraph are precisely those we want to educate people about – so they get how important this is in the nuclear context. Not all fusion is the same. And fusion isn’t fission. This should be common knowledge for everyone.

Anyway, don’t underestimate the public. It’s not their flaw here, it’s our flawed ways of communicating these ideas that we need to question. (Don’t blame the listener – look at how you’re conveying your message).