Fusion Conversation Tracker

[Rezwan]

For those of you who are posting about fusion on the world wide web, we invite you to put your links to those posts here.

This might inspire other people to post – joining the thread in question, or posting in other venues.

Your links will also help us to see what the conversations are like, what people are talking about, what questions come up most often. It’s a great way to take the pulse on people’s understanding of the matter.

It will also help uncover useful ways to talk about the pursuit of aneutronic fusion and related matters. Find the shortcuts through this dense topic. (They don’t call it “Dense plasma focus” for nothing!)

Also, Eric would like to keep track of frequent posters so that he can provide a tour of the lab to the most effectively vocal people (not obnoxious 🙂 ).

There was also discussion of certificates of appreciation. Designers of said certificates welcome!

[dennisp]

I wrote about focus fusion and other alternative fusion projects here:
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/5/planId/14629

Just ctrl-F “fusion”. I can still edit this so please let me know what you think.

Some background (which hopefully won’t get this thread capped!):

MIT is running a contest to crowdsource solutions to global warming. Last year I was one of three contest winners with the “carbon rights” proposal:
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/3

As a result, I got to present my proposal to congressional staffers and to the U.N. Secretary General’s personal advisory team on climate issues. The latter was especially gratifying…after the formal presentation we sat around a conference and discussed the ideas for another twenty minutes. So, there’s a chance that if I were lucky enough to be a winner again this year, the SecGen will end up aware of FF.

Over the next few days, a team of scientists will look over the proposals and comment on them. After Sept 30, judges will select finalists, and we’ll get one last span of time to edit the proposals. Final winners will be chosen in part by judges, and in part by votes of users on the site during the first two weeks of November. Details on this year’s contest are here:
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/current-contest

[Rezwan]

dennisp wrote: I wrote about focus fusion and other alternative fusion projects here:
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/5/planId/14629

Thanks! It looks good. A lot of info there on the various flavors of fission. This is the kind of info that could go into our Energy Brackets Campaign. I must print out and peruse.

MIT is running a contest to crowdsource solutions to global warming. Last year I was one of three contest winners with the “carbon rights” proposal:
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/3

As a result, I got to present my proposal to congressional staffers and to the U.N. Secretary General’s personal advisory team on climate issues. The latter was especially gratifying…after the formal presentation we sat around a conference and discussed the ideas for another twenty minutes. So, there’s a chance that if I were lucky enough to be a winner again this year, the SecGen will end up aware of FF.

Congratulations! That’s so cool! Does the public get a vote as well?

[dennisp]

Judges pick the finalists then anyone on the site gets to vote (between Nov 1 and Nov 15), each category (national and global) gets at least one winner picked by judges and one picked by the public.

[Rezwan]

Ah! Yes, I tried to hit the vote button to no avail. But I signed up as a supporter!

[dennisp]

Cool, thanks! If I make finalist I’ll post something.

[dennisp]

Well I’ve made finalist, and along the way expanded the fusion section a little. Here’s the proposal:
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/5/planId/15204

Out of five National proposals, one will be chosen by popular vote and one by judges.

I also have one of three Global proposals. That one’s here:
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/4/planId/15203

My National proposal is the only proposal that advocates any form of nuclear power, much less fusion. There was a thorium proposal under global, but that got kicked out in the judges’ final review. My global proposal is just a combination of the winning proposals from last year.

When I won last year, our visit to the U.N. team turned into a 20-minute free-form discussion, so even if I only win on the Global proposal, I hope to have some opportunity to talk about fusion and thorium.

[benf]

That’s excellent Dennisp, really interesting approach to the carbon issue. Glad to see you’re getting the word out there, good luck!

[dennisp]

Tom Murphy, a physicist, has been posting a great blog about the potential of various energy sources. He just did one on fusion, but focused on NIF and tokamak. I posted a reply about FF and others here:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/01/nuclear-fusion/#comment-3240

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