Unfortunately, the first people there won't be Lockheed; it will be the Chinese.
Fusion in this case refers to merging two atoms into a single, heavier atom. In bonding, excess energy from the atoms is released, and if the amount released is higher than the amount that hit the two particles to merge them, the result is fusion energy. This is what researcher Omar Hurricane and his colleagues successfully demonstrated, via laser, at the lab’s National Ignition Facility, or NIF, last August. On Wednesday, the team published their findings in the journal Nature, making it official.
First, there are actually two types of fusion: inertial and magnetic. Hurricane’s paper demonstrating fusion with lasers involves the inertial type. The other type of fusion, also called magnetic confinement fusion, uses hot gas encased in a giant ring to squish atoms together to produce energy. While the U.S. has several ongoing magnetic fusion projects, so do many other countries. And China hosts one of the most significant magnetic fusion centers in the world, the HT-7 Tokamak facility in the city if Hefei.
“They’re investing. They’ve really been very diligent in pursuing next generation energy technologies with consistent support, as opposed to what you’re seeing in the U.S., which is difficulty maintaining consistent effort moving forward because of budget variability,” said Paul Roege, program manager at Idaho National Laboratory and a retired Army colonel. China has contributed $2.1 billion to a $21 billion international project called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor and is also spending more internally.
“The Chinese are training 2,000 scientists to take advantage of the gains in international research [into fusion],” Andrew Holland of the American Security Project said. “Similar things are happening in Russia and South Korea. The U.S. is very much in danger of being left behind.”
http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2014/02/americas-fusion-race-china-heating-so-why-washington-going-cold/78848/?oref=d-channelriver
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