[tcg]

It may be beneficial to make it more generally known that fusion has ALREADY been achieved with the DPF. The real questions remaining are whether the machine which accomplished this can be made reliable enough, whether pB11 fusion can be sustained, and whether a net gain of electricity can be obtained. The Tokomak “fusion in 50 years” crowd dominates the airwaves, and most of the public knows nothing else but this obstructionist propaganda.

It seems to me that there have been enough hot neutrons flying out of plasma focus devices, first in 2001 and more recently, that the time may have come to announce at least a partial success. I can think of a couple of projects well funded by the Government which could be made to look rather wasteful of time and money by comparison.

Of course, the ultimate goal is aneutronic fusion, but that is still a way off, and the longer we wait to expand the public consciousness, the harder it will be.

Americans love a winner, and to gain more general support we could stand to look like winners, even if only in part.

[tcg]

As a California resident, I have watched the barrage of ads for prop. 16 with keen interest. Clearly it is intended to preserve the grip of private companies on power generation by hiding behind a tax-and-spend smokescreen. The tipoff is that it is aimed solely at a municipality’s ability to assume debt for a specific purpose, power generation, and not against general indebtedness. So far I have seen no ads against the proposition.

In my perspective, this is a struggle to preserve power generation as a prerogative of privately owned, for-profit companies and keep it out of the hands of public entities. If FF is a success, prop. 16 will certainly make it more difficult for cities and counties to make use of the technology, but I believe this difficulty would vary from community to community. Could the City Council in my town convince 2/3 of the voters that with perhaps half a million of borrowed money, we could cheaply generate all our own electricity and for a similar sum we could purify sea water for all our water needs? Personally I think this would be an easy sell. A more conservative town may not vote the same way, but it would be their loss, and they would continue to pay high prices, suffer water rationing and brownouts.

Even if the proposition passes, it would only take a few communities climbing the 2/3 voter wall and benefiting to bring everybody else on line, so to speak.

[tcg]

“Programs expand to fill the available memory.”

The figures which Breakable gave may be long, but in time I think he would be vindicated. Just in Southern California alone, desalinating seawater by reverse osmosis, too expensive at current electrical prices, could use thousands of megawatts. Also in this region more and more homes are installing air conditioning, which at least doubles the electrical bill. How many uses and enterprises are out there unvisualized, waiting to be plugged in.

[tcg]

A fabulous article, one bound to raise a lot of discussion. It works around two observations which have been bothering me greatly.

First, Science has been too much contaminated by Religious methodology. Much of particle physics (String Theory) and cosmology (The Big Bang, Dark Matter), to name just two areas, are sustained by faith rather than observation and experiment. The true believers run the show in both areas and are seem to spend most of their time ignoring or destroying opposition. Try to publish a paper which contradicts the “received wisdom” in these fields and see what happens.

Second, Religion has tried to gain validity by absorbing the trappings of Science — Creationism comes to mind. They seek to prove that their faith is correct with scientific rigor, when actually it is beyond the need for such proof.

Science and Religion are like oil and water. They don’t mix; they should not mix. Each has its own validity and domain and they should be kept apart.

The article suggests that the betterment of this situation must start in the schools, but I disagree. The problem is at the top, among the ultimate practitioners, the leaders. They are the ones who need to get their head straight.

[tcg]

A few years ago I was able to chat with a professional astronomer who worked at Palomar, and I asked her why astrophysicists seemed to prefer to use the gravitational force to explain everything, neglecting electromagnetism. She acknowledged that the latter was 10 to the 43 times larger than the former and that 95% of the universe was in the form of plasma, and then she shrugged. “Gravity only has one aspect and works only in one direction. Electromagnetism has two aspects which interact with each other, and both can be positive or negative. It is just very difficult to model.” She then mentioned something about Occam’s razor, and we started talking about something else. It was clear that astronomers in general study very little Plasma Physics and try to take the easy way out in their theorizing.

[tcg]

Count me in. I have am a fair hand with a computer and I am also an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer.

[tcg]

A lengthy article, but worth reading. The story here is of increasing pressure on those whose search for the truth may have worrisome implications for vested interests. The threat must seem very real. Originally, I thought the severity and persistence of the response excessive until I realized that perhaps trillions of dollars are at stake over the long run.

The big fusion projects, as well as Bill Gates newly trumpeted plan to advance nuclear fission, all have timelines so long that ample time has been set aside for gleaning the last dollar from existing energy resources. The powers-that-be seem placated by this. However, any novel advancement which would rush that timetable significantly might not be entertained happily by these folks. This could affect, say, small innovative fusion projects.

It might pay to exercise caution and emphasize the extended and bumpy path to success. Whenever a wolf comes hunting, it pays to look like a poor mouthful.

[tcg]

I do have one small problem with the phrase “harnessing ( or leveraging ) plasma instabilities”. To my mind “instability” connotes a random, uncontrollable process, and focus fusion is hardly that. Instability is what is plaguing the ITER project.

The plasma focus works as it does because it exploits the inherent properties of the electromagnetic force to control the plasma. It expresses the jujitsu of physics, whereas the tokomak represents the brute force approach.

Perhaps this is a small point, but the impression I get of “working with instabilities” is nowhere near as positive as “harnessing the electromagnetic force”. Compare the image of trying to maintain order at a day care center with that of controlling a lightning strike.

TCG

[tcg]

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about NIF and ITER is that they are primarily for research. The cheap generation of electricity is a peripheral objective, or smokescreen, if you prefer. These projects are designed to sop up as much government research money for as long as possible. In my line of work this is known as “milking the cow”.

Few people have noticed that DPF devices have already achieved nuclear fusion, in one case nine years ago. The primary goal of the Lawrenceville project is the construction of a machine which will generate abundant cheap electricity, and although many obstacles remain to be overcome, progress has been steady.

ITER and NIF will generate a lot of static, but whoever shows up first with results will get the prize.

[tcg]

Yikes!

I hope Amcnea is kidding. There could be nothing worse than to encourage the Pentagon to wrap plasma fusion in a security blanket because they would smother it. They would overrun the project like a mob of plague infested fleas, and soon you would need a security clearance to sneeze hard. There are other, less self-destructive ways to finance a project like this.

[tcg]

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

[tcg]

The animation is great. It could use some refinement and polishing, of course, but it clearly shows how focus fusion works. However, it left me hungering for the logical continuation, the generation of electricity. Nobody would operate a plasma focus just to get a suntan — we are looking for megawatts here. Part of the brilliant originality of the work at LPP is the method of direct production of electricity from the output of a DPF without having to boil water to run a generator. A short continuation of the animation would make this novel approach clear.

[Author]

Posts