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Focus Fusion, once successfull, would probably be used to supplement big energy initially. But as long as its manufacture is not controlled/monopolized, you should see a shift to local and specific uses ie. buildings, towns and small plants. Now if we could just break up the banking/financial monoply we might be on our way to a better world. Also, lets hope its not to late to stabilize global warming.

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Yes Phil’s Dad when you use PB11 it is. also if you used H3. But other fuels DD (which has already been used in FO to create the first pinch- albeit minimally) and DT would definately not be aneutronic and could produce neutrons.

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Rezwan’s correct, the key is to craft the right questions. For my graduate work I constructed 5 part Likert Scales then tested attitudes. The Likert scale is a simple and valid way to test subjective attitudes. Its simple to construct with attitudes ranging from ex. Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree in a five part range. However, validity depends on an insitefull if not artfull selection of the appropriate questions.

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I’m coming late to the proliferation issue and FF but now that we move forward I think we should consider our response to this concern. When we develope a garage sized device that could be distributed world wide this will come up! Of the two reactions DD and DT that could be used to produce a stream of neutrons I wonder how energetic DD is. Already DD has been used to produce the first pinch and I haven”t heard of anyone glowing in the dark nor has the FF “FO” been declared a hazardous site. The DT reaction might be much more active but you already need nuclear technology to produce Tritium. Then again, would FO really stand up to DT neutrons or flame out. Actually I’m not terribly worried about some rogue group refining nuclear fuel and constructing a nuclear device. The principles are well understood but the engineering is a nightmare (North Korea’s attempt was a dud). The greater concern is enriching deplet U238 to a sizable percentage of U235 that could blanket a dirty bomb. Hey! no one wants to rain on this parade least of all me but again we should consider our response.

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I have been following every-ones debates about radioactive cooling. I don’t claim to be a physicist but I do have questions.
Super volcanoes have spewed forth massive amounts of deep magma in the past . Is Yellowstone National park decidedly more radioactive? If that’s to close to the surface there was a catastrophic deep magma upwelling in Siberia hundreds of millions of years ago. Is the magma material in Siberia more radioactive? I’m just asking?

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I’m not really versed in the chemistry of peroxide combustion but peroxide was tried and found wanting. Since it gives off oxygen and water it was developed as an ideal submarine fuel in WWII. The trouble was both the Germans and British had problems with on board fires. Instabilities with combustion apparantly. But why go that route when you can electrolize water to produce Hydrogen for combustion or fuel cels?

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Jamesr’s right they use the term neutron instead of proton to describe the process in the DVICE blog. Still they seem to get most of the broad brushstokes correct. More importantly its positive. Perhaps someone could respond to that issue and others (ERIC)? and we could get another blog out of them.

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I mentioned this in other forums, the Molten Salt Reactor was actually developed into a working prototype in the early seventies. Most of the major development issues were worked out (see ORNL). When they pulled the plug in the early seventies the reason given was “It wasn’t a true breeder! Then the first oil price shock came in the early seventies and still the design was not revived.

Point of information, the US has the second largest reserves of thorium in the world. So what killed it politics, lobbying, stupidity, all three! This technology might finally be revived. When I looked into who buys stock in thorium fabrication I found that wall street investers are buying hundreds of thousands of shares at a clip. The advantages of thorium MSR
low short lived radiactive wastes, the ability to burn high level waste held in storage, safety against proliferation and loss of control, have been mentioned by myself and others. I think we are going to hear more about thorium ie. FUJI MSR (if refunded) a strong program in India etc.

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There are posts from a Helion Energy with their “Fusion Engine”. Not aneutronic, deuterium/tritum, but the burn chamber is isolated and seems to produce minimal radioactive waste. It is a field reversed configuration with two plasmas accelerated together at 1 million mph in the burn chamber. They claim that scaling up would produce “break even” They have a neat illustration/cartoon but not much real data to verify their claims. Does anyone have any hard information on this group and their progress.

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