The Focus Fusion Society Forums Focus Fusion Cafe FF gets a mention in talk to Energy Secretary Steve Chu

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  • #668
    Breakable
    Keymaster

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvUujZVYJuY
    See 27 minute, or whole of it.
    Basically what he said is that fusion-fission hybrids are more feasible than pure fusion and I tend to agree with him.
    In case FF cannot produce break-even or convert X-Rays to electricity efficiently this might be a good path for Plan C.

    #5040
    Phil’s Dad
    Participant

    Isn’t FF both fusion and fission. The key is it is aneutronic. And cheap. :cheese:

    #5042
    Tulse
    Participant

    Technically almost all fusion reactions involve fissioning of the fused nuclei, but the nuclei are very light. What are labelled “fusion-fission hybrids” instead refer to technologies where a fusion reaction is used to produce neutrons to facilitate the fissioning of heavy elements (to, for example, burn waste from fission reactors, or turn it into usable fission fuel).

    #5051
    DerekShannon
    Participant

    Wow, great catch, @Breakable! There sounds like very good reason to follow up based on Chu’s comments there:

    “The fusion is tough. Pure fusion is still very very tough. And so um I looked a little bit, I know that Google was interested in doing one of those things, I looked a little bit at it, uh, got some of the experts at Lawrence Berkeley Lab to look at it [weighing hand gesture]. It’s not–you know–but we’ll see.”

    So did a review by LBL torpedo a Google investment in alternative fusion? Did government employees evaluate an investment on Google’s behalf, at the behest of the Secretary of Energy? Regardless of whether the “look” was for Google or Chu himself, where is this review or memo on alternative fusion concepts available?

    There would seem to be grounds for an FOIA request here, don’t you think, Rezwan?

    For the record, this is the only evaluation I know of involving the DOE and focus fusion, from feedback on one of LPP’s proposals for a tunable X-ray source:

    ‘LPP’s… technical plan has been reviewed favorably by two physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and one at the Department of Energy, who concluded: “Technically the plan is very strong. The objective is truly revolutionary, yet the plan to achieve it is feasible. The steps to the objective are clearly defined. The plan is based on new, highly original theory and analysis. There is a good coordination of simulation and experimentation. The optimization plan, while ambitious, is feasible.” NIST’s Dr. Purabi Mazumdar further indicated that there were “no negative comments.’

    #5052
    AaronB
    Participant

    I think he was probably talking about the IEC/Polywell design, not ours. He didn’t seem to have any knowledge about Focus Fusion at all. Well, hopefully the idea was planted for him. I’m sure there were a couple of assistants there with him who were taking notes, so hopefully they go back and do some homework for him. We’ll see what comes of this. Hopefully something good. You never know.

    #5068
    Breakable
    Keymaster

    I dont think Polywell has “good coordination of simulation and experimentation”, as far as Google tech talks mentioned simulation was not possible.

    #5069
    Breakable
    Keymaster

    PS:Now is the time to get paranoiac – everything is going to smoothly 😉

    #5225
    tcg
    Participant

    This article raises an issue which I would like to see discussed further.

    How much attention should be drawn to the work at Lawrenceville at this time? There exist powerful interests out there who would not be happy to see a safe and inexpensive means to generate electricity be developed. I refer to the resource monopolists who control oil, coal and uranium. They are looking forward to the time when they will be able to extract ever increasing amounts of money from us for ever scarcer resources which we cannot live without.

    The government is not necessarily our friend. There is no way we could raise the financial muscle to outbid the resource hounds who already have so much influence in Washington. It is only a question of time before these vampires seek to flex their muscles and make a potential competitor vanish. Do we really want the Department of Energy looking over our shoulder? The usual sequence of events in the past has been: support, control, obliteration.

    So far Focus Fusion has struggled forward successfully on private support, support with no strings attached. Shouldn’t this effort continue in the same way?

    I suggest that Focus Fusion supporters should avoid direct confrontation or even too much publicity and remain as a guerrilla army, ready to spring up fully formed and unstoppable when the time is right.

    TCG

    #5230
    Brian H
    Participant

    tcgibian wrote: This article raises an issue which I would like to see discussed further.

    How much attention should be drawn to the work at Lawrenceville at this time? There exist powerful interests out there who would not be happy to see a safe and inexpensive means to generate electricity be developed. I refer to the resource monopolists who control oil, coal and uranium. They are looking forward to the time when they will be able to extract ever increasing amounts of money from us for ever scarcer resources which we cannot live without.

    The government is not necessarily our friend. There is no way we could raise the financial muscle to outbid the resource hounds who already have so much influence in Washington. It is only a question of time before these vampires seek to flex their muscles and make a potential competitor vanish. Do we really want the Department of Energy looking over our shoulder? The usual sequence of events in the past has been: support, control, obliteration.

    So far Focus Fusion has struggled forward successfully on private support, support with no strings attached. Shouldn’t this effort continue in the same way?

    I suggest that Focus Fusion supporters should avoid direct confrontation or even too much publicity and remain as a guerrilla army, ready to spring up fully formed and unstoppable when the time is right.

    TCG

    I’m strongly in agreement, but it’s hard to resist tooting and blowing horns in the face of so much arrant ignorance and wrong-headedness in control of things.

    And Eric is, despite his overall anxiety about being sidelined or swallowed and stifled, etc., rather trusting of the Bureaucracy and its masters and minions (not to mention somewhat deferential towards Big Science which has heretofore scorned his theories and findings.) I fear for him and FF if they get involved before viability is established with hard results.

    I have previously expressed my faith here in the consequences of an “Existence Proof” of the DPF/FF model’s workability, since scientific and engineering history teach that once people know something is possible, they have had MORE than half their work done for them, and will push through to match or exceed the original discovery in short order. So that’s the “Big Picture” protection I hope will be in place before the Medusa-like effects of government involvement take hold.

    #5236
    belbear
    Participant

    If the physics works out, the proof of concept for p-B11 fusion is there and things go bad with government or “faceless, evil megacompanies”, there is always an option for that “greatest sacrifice” an inventor can make to save the world:

    That is, to throw every bit of knowledge out in the open, free for the taking, and watch those early FF generators pop up a few years later in countries like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, India….

    It may cost the people form LPP their future as a manufacturer and their income from patents, but it will earn them a place in the history books and may even save them from those freak accidents that sometimes happen to people who know too much and refuse to cooperate…. :ahhh:

    I know, it sounds Hollywoodish but sometimes fact is stronger than fiction… (Like the fact that no moviemaker ever imagined the Soviet block could collapse so… peacefully)

    #5241
    Brian H
    Participant

    belbear wrote: If the physics works out, the proof of concept for p-B11 fusion is there and things go bad with government or “faceless, evil megacompanies”, there is always an option for that “greatest sacrifice” an inventor can make to save the world:

    That is, to throw every bit of knowledge out in the open, free for the taking, and watch those early FF generators pop up a few years later in countries like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, India….

    It may cost the people form LPP their future as a manufacturer and their income from patents, but it will earn them a place in the history books and may even save them from those freak accidents that sometimes happen to people who know too much and refuse to cooperate…. :ahhh:

    I know, it sounds Hollywoodish but sometimes fact is stronger than fiction… (Like the fact that no moviemaker ever imagined the Soviet block could collapse so… peacefully)

    DPF principles and many experimental rigs of different sorts have been explored for several decades, so there is already a strong base in that sense. Any patent’s purpose is nominally to make information available to the whole world with a lag on making use of it. But whether or not full and sufficient info is “thrown open” doesn’t matter as much as you might think; my point above was that “existence proof” (i.e., since it worked at least once, other researchers know that there’s at least one approach out of a smallish set which is not a dead end) plus the immense incentive (prestige of being first to commercializable unity, plus financial and societal benefits) would (and probably will) mean that many world-wide will duplicate (and exceed) LPP’s results in a very few years.

    #5242
    Tulse
    Participant

    Exactly, Brian — FF may not be simple to achieve at first, but LPP plans on demonstrating over unity with a program costing what amounts to pocket change for most governments (and even for many corporations), using a very straightforward device. If they can do it with this rig, it is hard to imagine that many others won’t be able to succeed as well.

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