A chance to promote FF to Congress and the U.N.

[dennisp]

I need your votes. I have a chance to promote alt fusion research to people who directly advise the Secretary General.

MIT has a contest to crowdsource solutions to global warming, and winners present their ideas at Congress and the U.N. I’m a finalist with an entry that advocates alternative fusion research (among other things). Here’s the entry, just ctrl-F “fusion”.
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/5/planId/15204

Out of five competitors in this category (National), one winner will be chosen by judge and one by popular vote.

I was a winner last year. At the U.N. we met with the Secretary General’s personal advisory team on climate change, and after our presentations had a free-form discussion for twenty or thirty minutes. I’ll also get to present at Congress, but last year that was less exciting, it was just staffers and a couple lobbyists. But potentially a congressman or two could show up, and staffers can have a lot of influence anyway.

If you would like to vote, it’s just a matter of signing up with your email address, and voting on the site some time before Nov. 15. Just go to the link and hit the Vote button. I promise MIT won’t spam you, other than very occasional contest updates.

Last year, the winner of the popular vote had 174 votes. I can manage a fair amount from friends and coworkers, but unless the judges pick me I’ll need help from people like you guys to get a win.

[dennisp]

I’ve developed a pretty good lead on votes, with a lot of help from thorium supporters. Not so much that the competition couldn’t overtake me. Voting continues until Tuesday…

[benf]

Congratulations to DennisP, he’s won! Climate Co Lab announces 2011 winners

[dennisp]

Yep, sure did. I got huge support from a bunch of liquid thorium enthusiasts on reddit.

I’ll only have a few minutes to present a whole lot of stuff but I’ll get a blurb on alt fusion in there, and mention a few projects by name. I was thinking I might describe it as a hail-mary pass…you don’t know for sure it’ll work, but if it does it wins the game all by itself.

[Rezwan]

Congratulations!

More than a hail Mary pass, it’s a duty to cover the bases in fusion – to show leadership in fusion. Emphasis on leadership might have an impact on leaders.

[dennisp]

I was thinking two main points….first, that it isn’t pie-in-the-sky, serious people are investing in fusion. Second, that according to one of the main economic/climate models, an energy breakthrough like cheap fusion would keep global warming to one degree C with no other interventions.

It’s a riskier bet than, say, thorium, because we haven’t yet produced net power. But if it’ll works, the whole climate problem just sorta evaporates. So I don’t promote it as our sole strategy, but if it is doable, it’d be a crying shame to miss out on it.

A question: I’m assuming you guys do want focus fusion to be noticed by government types? If you feel like you’ve got plenty of money right now, maybe there are downsides.

[Mike Weber Goodenow]

Congratulations. What’s next on this?

[dennisp]

Presentations in January. If it’s like last year, we’ll have congressional staffers in DC, and the U.N. Secretary General’s advisory team on climate change in NYC. After that, I’ll start prepping for next year’s contest…I’m hoping to do some economic modeling and put together a plan with real quantified projections.

I’ve ended up in touch with some nuclear scientists and engineers working on thorium power, and a couple other people connected with ideas in the proposal. Not sure yet what’s going to develop from that. And I’m thinking about various ways to promote this stuff beyond the contest.

[Mike Weber Goodenow]

This is great, Dennis.

[Brian H]

dennisp wrote: Presentations in January. If it’s like last year, we’ll have congressional staffers in DC, and the U.N. Secretary General’s advisory team on climate change in NYC. After that, I’ll start prepping for next year’s contest…I’m hoping to do some economic modeling and put together a plan with real quantified projections.

I’ve ended up in touch with some nuclear scientists and engineers working on thorium power, and a couple other people connected with ideas in the proposal. Not sure yet what’s going to develop from that. And I’m thinking about various ways to promote this stuff beyond the contest.

Your prethentation will be under falthe pretentheth! Thorium ith thilly. Focus Fusion will thweep the board! :coolsmirk:

[msmith]

From SFGate article dated 1/27/2012

American Lawmakers Warned of Emerging Nuclear Power Market Risks and China’s Possible Domination

Kachan & Co. helped educate U.S. Senators and Members of Congress this week
on alternative nuclear technologies.

Lawmakers were given a letter from Dallas Kachan, Managing Partner of Kachan & Co.,
a cleantech analysis firm that has published a study on new breakthroughs in nuclear
power technology. Titled Emerging Nuclear Innovations: Picking global winners in a
race to reinvent nuclear energy, the Kachan report was the result of six months of
international research.

Link to article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/27/prweb9143858.DTL

The Kachen report is pay-walled but here is a link to a summary of the Executive Summary which lists
both Lawrenceville Plasma Physics and Focus Fusion Society in the end notes – page 7 and 8.

http://www.kachan.com/sites/default/files/Nuclear_Report_Executive_Summary.pdf

[Rezwan]

Thanks! This is great information!

It would be great if you could post this in the website and not just in the forums. Shoot me an email if you are interested and I will add you as an author and go through the process with you.

That goes for the rest of you. A lot of great info is hidden in these forums. We need folks to take that extra step to polish thoughts into articles for the web site. Contact me if you want to write. Also, editors and polishers are welcome for formatting oversight.

Thanks!

[Rezwan]

BTW Dennis, Mike, which senators and congressman are you targeting? Fusion Day is coming up and this would be a great time to contact some and try to meet with them. But we need to act soon. Just a few names.

[Zara]

So we have beaming technologies if we see spiders enter our homes correct… Thx yrs. ago….

[Author]

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