I AM OUTRAGED! Dr. Bussard has figured out a cheap way to do fusion! US Government killed project!!!

[originalpckelly]

Star Trek fans may be familiar with Dr. Bussard, he's the inventor of the Bussard Ramjet, or on the USS Enterprise, the "Bussard Collector"

It would basically kill off big oil, but this goddamn government killed his budget last year! Want to know why? FUCKING IRAQ WAR!!!!!!!

We have got to start some private democratic foundation to help them get money. If 2/3 of America gave one dollar, this man's program could finish!

If 20 million people gave ten bucks, this program could be funded.

If 2 million people gave 100 bucks, this program could be funded.

If 200 thousand people have a thousand dollars, this program could be funded.

If 200 people gave a million dollars this program could be funded.

Here is the whole talk this man gave at Google:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

I kind of understand this, and from what I heard he seems to have found the magic bullet to make this technology work. His magic bullet, in the un-perfected version, is 100,000 times more powerful than the original device! (Which Philo T. Farnsworth, whom invented TV as we know it, originally built. Students all across America build this kind of thing every year.)

Here is more information on IEC Fusion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_confinement

This shit is totally amazing!

We have got to do something about this, as it would totally change the world as we know it. If we don't do it here in America, some other country will beat us to the punch. (China or India, Dr. Bussard thinks.)

This is the same man. I certainly trust him. It is so profound, we cannot allow this knowledge to go silently into the night. We have to do what ever we can to make this known!

[originalpckelly]

1. Here's a Wikipedia article on him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Bussard

Here's the Bussard ramjet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

[originalpckelly]

2. This is way too important to fall away!

This is about the most amazing breakthrough in science, it comes from a credible source, and he's being fucking ignored!

I just cannot stand this goddamn nation anymore. This country could have the meaning of life and still manage to crush it!

So much fucking bureaucracy!

[Junkdrawer]

21. Thank you for posting this...you do realize that with this talk...

Research Projects are now underway in China, probably using Russian physicists...

The biggest secret is always "It can be done". That's why Russia had The Bomb 4 years after we did.

Big Oil will guarantee that the US goes the way of the dinosaur...

[AZCat]

22. Actually Russia had THE BOMB 4 yrs after us because...

they stole the design. They didn't begin to actually fund their own research until several years after we did. My copy of "Dark Sun" is out on loan to a friend so I can't check in that but IIRC the Russians just didn't have resources available for R&D until after they pushed the Germans out of Stalingrad. They caught up later on when the US put development of a fusion bomb on hold (temporarily, at least).

[Junkdrawer]

25. I agree, but it's long been a truism that Stalin wouldn't have sunk the money...

into The Bomb had we not shown him that it worked. Germany gave up their program when they couldn't be assured it could be done.

[AZCat]

28. You should read "Dark Sun" - it's well worth it.

Stalin didn't spend a lot of money prior to our successful test of "the device" but he did spend a lot of human resources on his spy network within the Manhattan Project. A lot of the information leaked was from individuals who weren't looking for financial compensation, but who had ideological concerns about the project (and our use of it).

[originalpckelly]

3. This was on Slashdot:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/11/18/0616205.shtml

:grr: It makes me so angry to hear how they (the government) fucked up something miraculous.

[originalpckelly]

4. Here is the excerpt from the article on Wikipedia:

"On March 29, 2006, Bussard claimed on the fusor.net forum that EMC2 had developed an inertial electrostatic confinement fusion process that was 100,000 times more efficient than previous designs. However, the company's funding ran out, and Bussard is looking for additional funding to develop a full-scale fusion power plant. On June 23, 2006 Bussard provided more details of the breakthrough and the circumstances of the shutdown of this work by the government."

[originalpckelly]

5. Here is the letter Dr. Bussard wrote explaining the miraculous breakthrough:

"I have read the threads on the Randi forum, and they are all intent and I am sure well-menaing. However, I have not been able to "log in" on this forum so am writing to you instead. Perhaps you can post this note as a reply and commentary to some of the issues raised by your forum correspondents.

First, what we have achieved in our rather unexpectedly good tests of last November 9 and 10th was an output of DD fusion at about 10 kV, at B fields of 1300 G, in a 30 cam dia device (WB-6) run in a pulsed mode from big capacitors, with a fusion rate of about 1E9 /sec. This works our to be about 100,000 x higher than the data of Hirsch/Farnsworth at similar well depth and drive conditions. The test duration was only about 0.4 masec, but since the electron lifetime is ca 0.1 microsec this is steady-state to the plasma particles. We had neither the money, nor the cooling, nor the power supplies, nor the controls to run this small device steady-state, which is what we need to do, and what requires us to build the full-scale device.

This was a direct result of discovering something during late Spring/ early summer tests of WB-5, which was a closed boc machine, like the early HEPS of 1989. What we discovered was - in hindsight - elementary; it was that indeed God is in the details, and the detail of particular importance is that no metal surface penetrated by B fields must occupy more than about 1E-4 to 1E-5 of the total surface available to the recirculating electrons. If this dead fraction is larger, there is NO hope of net power from any such machine. AND, it is essential that the device be recirculating, i.e. that the electrons can circulate out and back through the cusps all over the machine. Of course, this is obvious; but in 15 years no one saw it, not Hirsch, not our consultants not our opponents, not our staff, and not me.

It is consistent with the need for electrons to recirculate about 100,000 times before being lost to collisions with structure, to yield net power.

Please remember that our device has the property that the electron flow and losses are decoupled from the ion flow and fusion generation. Power balance depends on suppresssion of the electron losses, which are derived from the energetic electron injection that forms the gridless negative potential well that traps the ions.

When we figured this thing out, in summer 2005, we quickly designed and quickly built WB-6, using only conformal (with the B fields produced) coil cans, so that no B field uniquely penetrated the cans, and then placed the coils in a special array so that no corners touched (this latter is a long topic having to do with local B fields, and loss of WiffleBall trapping due to line cusp effects at the corners, etc, etc, and is the baisis of our final patents on this thing). It IS the details that make or break the device. And this particular set of details absolutely dominates the performance.

Anyway, we ran the device in October, for beta=one tests, to confirm transport scaling laws, and then in early November to test for fusion output. And, happiness, indeed, three tests on 9 November and one on 10 Novem,ber gave the results mentioned above. The next day, 11 November, we tried it again, but magnet coil motions induced by repeated testing had moved the coils enough that an insulation spot had worn away inside the cans, and the device shorted and blew up one leg, with the full cap discharge. Having no further funding, we had to start shutting doen the lab the following Monday!!! Irony?

As to our funding -- our USN contract still exists, and still has about $ 2M authorized in it. However, year-by-year funding was NOT provide for FY 2006, so that we knew we had to close down early in 2006.. What saved us was Adm Cohen (CNR) who put another 900 K into the program to try to get us down the road to where we DID go, and then we had to quit. It was not a cutoff of OUR funding, but the entire Navy Energy Program was cut to zero in FY 2006, and we were a part of this cut. The funds were clearly needed for the more important War in Iraq.

So, as we cut down, we managed to save the lab equipment, by transfer to SpaceDev, which hired our three best lab people as well, and we are still trying to get the missing $ 2M restored and put into our existing but unfunded contract. IF this happens - which is improhable, given the politics of this election year, and the non-visionary people in Congress - we will redo WB-6 with an improved and better version (WB-7) which should give 5x more output, and run about 50 tests to quiet dissent. AND we will convene a review panel of very high-level and internationally distinguished people to spend about 6 weeks going over this to recommend for or against proceeding sith a full scale demo.

This may or may not happen. If it does, I have little doubt as to the panel recommendation, as the data and insight from WB-5/6 is just too clear. We really have solved the last engineering physics problem that has plagued our work for 12 year s or so. Yes, there is much left to do, iespecially in controls and diagnostics, but these are predictable things not dependent on beating the Paschen curve.

And we still have to develop some reliable e-guns and i-sources, again predictable enginering that costs both time and money, but not new physics.

Why a full-scale demo? Because the system scales oddly: Fusion output goes as the 7th power of the size and Gain goes as the 5th power. Thus there is very little to be gained by building a half-size model; it is too weak to give anything definitive about power production or gain. And our tests were always at about 1/8 to 1/10 scale of the full scale demo. We told the DoD from the beginning that the real program would cost about 150-200 M, since 1987, and they all knew this. However, since the DoD has no charter to do such work, and the political realities were that a big DoD program would attract the ire and power of the DoE to kill it, it was never funded beyond about 1/8 the level required.

So we did what we could and finally DID prove the physics and associated engineering physics constraints, scaling laws, etc, albeit at 1/8-1/10 scale. So what? Doubling the size will not tell us anything we don't already know. The next intelligent and logical step is to build a machine big enough to make net power. And THAT is the same 200 M we have quoted to the DoD since the beginning.

As for energy companies "stampeding" to support us - It is clear that a view like this is ignorant of the reality of energy companies. There is only one thing the oil cvompanies want, and that is to sell oil, and more oil. So long as the fields pump, the oil companies will squeeze. They have NO, absolutely NO interest in anything new, ins spite of all their foolish ads in magazines for wind mills and solar-PV roofs. It is all just show and tell. I know these guys, and there is no way they would support anything that might get in the way of oil. The only way to stop oil, from their view, is when it does run out. And then they''ll go for deeper drilling, new fields, Gulf geopressure gas, LNG, etc, etc, and keep raising the price, until finally foolish solar and windmills become competitive.

And we are paying the equivalent of $ 500/bbl oil costs. But Exxon and Halliburton are getting richer all the time.

Yes, we would like to build the demo plant, and yes, it will cost about 150 (DD) to 200 M (pB11), and who knows if any investor singly or a group can or will come up with the money. One of the biggest obstacle is the world-wide tokamak lobby, which perpetuates the fraud that Hirsch, Trivelpiece and I foisted on the country in the 1970's when we started the big tokamak ball rolling.

Magnetic confinement fusion is a misnomer, as magnetic fields can NOT confine a plasma, only constrain its motion towards walls. The entire history of the MagConf program has been to reduce transport to neo-classical (not turbulent or instability-driven) losses. And THEN the machines are all inherently and inevitably huge and cost too much and make too much power to ever be economically useful --- as the utilities have been telling the AEC/DoE for 30 years. No matter, the global tokamak program provides jobs for hudreds of thousands of people in many countries, and is a safe place to put political pork funding, simply because it IS NO THREAT TO OIL - it won't ever work, but it sounds good to the untutored public..

As for us; our company still exists, but we will not likely run any demo program - that will be up to others to carry it on, if we all get the chance. Meanwhile, my objective is very simple. I detest the energy stranglehold of our companies on our people, and am going to try to give our idea away at the soonest possible moment. To anyone, anywhere, who might want to undertake its development. And we'll be happy to help in any way we can, if a serious interest develops anywhere in the world.

I think the US, UK, France, et al are lost causes, because of theri commitment to the failed tokamak effort, as is probably Germany, and maybe others, too. China may be a possibility, as it is quite independent even though part of the ITER mess, Russia may be considererd, and countries like Spain, Brazil, Italy, Argentina, and others may logically have an interest.

I believe that the survival of our high-tech civilizations depends on getting off of fossile fuels ASAP, and - if we do not - we will descend into a growing series of "oil wars" and energy confrontations that can lead only to a huge cataclysim. Which CAN be circumvented if only we build the clean fuison machines in time. Our patents are in final form, and I am giving a paper in the Fall, and trying to get a large technical description together for a major paper by summer. We shall see.

One final word: Actually our device is really not a variant of Farnwworth/Hirsch, but of Elmore/Tuck/Watson who propeosed the inversion of Farnsworth/Hirsch long ago (ca. 1967). Their problem was the interception of circulating electrons by grids - we removed the grids and replaced them by B field insulated coils - thus our "grids" are the coils themselves.. And we do know how these work, at last.

Good luck to all of us.

Cheers, RW Bussard"

[originalpckelly]

6. The last part explains so well why it is happening...

this poor poor fella!

"Magnetic confinement fusion is a misnomer, as magnetic fields can NOT confine a plasma, only constrain its motion towards walls. The entire history of the MagConf program has been to reduce transport to neo-classical (not turbulent or instability-driven) losses. And THEN the machines are all inherently and inevitably huge and cost too much and make too much power to ever be economically useful --- as the utilities have been telling the AEC/DoE for 30 years. No matter, the global tokamak program provides jobs for hudreds of thousands of people in many countries, and is a safe place to put political pork funding, simply because it IS NO THREAT TO OIL - it won't ever work, but it sounds good to the untutored public..

As for us; our company still exists, but we will not likely run any demo program - that will be up to others to carry it on, if we all get the chance. Meanwhile, my objective is very simple. I detest the energy stranglehold of our companies on our people, and am going to try to give our idea away at the soonest possible moment. To anyone, anywhere, who might want to undertake its development. And we'll be happy to help in any way we can, if a serious interest develops anywhere in the world.

I think the US, UK, France, et al are lost causes, because of theri commitment to the failed tokamak effort, as is probably Germany, and maybe others, too. China may be a possibility, as it is quite independent even though part of the ITER mess, Russia may be considererd, and countries like Spain, Brazil, Italy, Argentina, and others may logically have an interest.

I believe that the survival of our high-tech civilizations depends on getting off of fossile fuels ASAP, and - if we do not - we will descend into a growing series of "oil wars" and energy confrontations that can lead only to a huge cataclysim. Which CAN be circumvented if only we build the clean fuison machines in time. Our patents are in final form, and I am giving a paper in the Fall, and trying to get a large technical description together for a major paper by summer. We shall see.

One final word: Actually our device is really not a variant of Farnwworth/Hirsch, but of Elmore/Tuck/Watson who propeosed the inversion of Farnsworth/Hirsch long ago (ca. 1967). Their problem was the interception of circulating electrons by grids - we removed the grids and replaced them by B field insulated coils - thus our "grids" are the coils themselves.. And we do know how these work, at last.

Good luck to all of us."

[Occulus]

67. I think someone or someones Very Rich needs to be appealed to

There has to be a way to directly contact these people. I mean, the tiptop income people don't make the direct decisions. They control through influence. I'm thinking it's rare for they themselves to call one of 'their' companies and tell them to 'do it'.

But they have a lot lot lot of money- more than enough to pull together and do something spectacular.

So why don't they?

[SpiralHawk]

7. When the Big Heads begin digging into the secrets of the Sun (fusion), then

then their arrogance and short-sightedness will trigger the cataclysmic turning of the ages. That's the prophecy.

- Paraphrased from the teachings of a wise old Seneca grandmother.


Just thought you'd all like to know.

Fusion has always sounded very promising to me, but...there are warnings about it from way back. The warnings, as I have heard them, suggest that greed and speed will be the big upsetting factors -- not fusion in and of itself. - SH

[originalpckelly]

9. This is a type of system built by school age children all the time for science fairs...

but Dr. Bussard has figured out a way to dramatically improve these devices, and he has created a non-radioactive isotope generating method of Fusion.

[StraightDope]

17. "...begin digging into the secrets of the Sun"

We already have been, for 50 years. It's called the H-bomb.

[originalpckelly]

29. We've already had fusion reactions...

just aren't sustainable for long periods of time.

[Opusnone]

8. Let China fund it

it will end up here eventually if it works.

Check your weekly WalMart circular for great savings!

[originalpckelly]

10. He's literally hoping that will happen if this country keeps fucking up!

It won't end up here however, because China will use the technology to be a superpower putting our power to shame. They can tell the ME to fuck off.

[Opusnone]

11. China is already a superpower if you didn't know

Start taking Mandarin lessons, I say.

If the technology is legitimate, there are trillions of dollars available to fund it.

[happydreams]

12. Are you familiar with Tesla? Anybody finding out a way of competing with

the oil companies is going to be treated like the plague.
Tesla was funded by Morgan until Morgan found out he was going to make energy free, or close to it. Then the funding was cut.


K&R

[originalpckelly]

13. Well, Dr. Bussard's research wasn't cut off particularly because of that...

All research in that area was killed in DoD budget! So it could be other neat projects too.

[originalpckelly]

14. Here is his posting from the Fusor Forum:

"Our company, EMC2, has been working since 1987 on the R&D of Iour polyhedral IEF concept for fusion; mostly under DoD support. Final tests were made last Oct/Nov on a unique new design, based on unexpected discoveries made in Spring/Summer 2005. This final machine, WB-6, showed 10x lower e- losses than any predecessor and produced DD fusions at a rate over 100,000x times higher than the data of Farnsworth-Hirsch in the 1960's for same drive conditions.

We have now proven the engineering and physics scaling laws that allow design of full-scale net-power systems, whether on DD or pB11. USNavy budget line item that supported our work was zero-funded in FY2006, and our lab had to shut down and close one week after achieving these results! We are probably the only people on the planet who know how to make a real net power clean fusion system, and we are out of support! Somewhat ironical!

The next logical step MUST be a full-scale net-power demo system, simply because there is not much left to do at small scale; when it is realized that the fusion output of these devices scales as the 7th power of the size, and the gain scales as the 5th power.

These outlandish scalings (inherent in the engineering physics of the thing) make it useless to build half-scale systems (for example). Unless you are AT the net-power size, you are nowhere in power and gain, even though the physics IS relevant. We have always been limited to about 0.1 scale, and have learned nearly all there is to know about the system's basic operation.

Thus, we have the ability to do away with oil (and other fossil fuels) but it will take 4-6 years and ca. 100-200 M$ to build the full-scale plant and demonstrate it. Anyone care?

R.W. Bussard"

http://www.fusor.net/board/view.php?site=fusor&bn=fusor_announce&key=1143684406

[Gregorian]

16. That is an amazing post!

Aside from never having heard those scaling powerr figures, what is almost as startling is the fact that we are only several days of "Iraq war" away from being able to complete a fusion proto.

I had no idea we were that close. We use so much petroleum for things other than combustion, we absolutely must have fusion.

I don't know the details of fusion, but I have read that it's not totally benign. There are byproducts. But modern society is going to have it's byproducts.

[originalpckelly]

24. Actually the neat thing about this is that the fuel cycle he's working with...

doesn't produce bad radiation. So it won't fuck up the environment.

[TheBaldyMan]

48. I hate to disagree with Dr. Bussard but that may not be true

the neutron flux created by fusion would have the potential to irradiate the surrounding environment, including the construction materials. This could cause transmutation of nuclei into radioactive isotopes. This has already been observed at a very small scale with neutron radiation experiments.

The Doctor said as much in his lecture, to paraphrase, his IEC reactor could neutralise radioactive waste.

I hate to pour cold water on the concept but his claims for fusion power plants sound suspiciously like the claims made for atomic power in the 40s & 50s.

Having said that I think the concept should at least be confirmed on a similar scale if not with a demonstration steady-state reactor. I think that the steady state reaction will run into the same problems as the tokamak experiments. Namely the high vacuum that is needed is very difficult to achieve terrestrially. I still think it's worth a try.

[Gwerlain]

64. You didn't absorb the import.

You might have watched it, but the import of crucial points eluded you- no disrespect of you is meant, this is pretty complex stuff. There is no neutron flux with B-11/p fusion. Only helium nuclei and protons are created. There aren't any neutrons left over. This is actually the most usable type of fusion, but its probability density isn't practical in a Tokamak; there, they use D/T (deuteron/triton) fusion, which releases neutrons, because it is easiest to initiate, but the disadvantage is that the neutrons aren't charged, yet they carry away the bulk of the energy in unusable form, which must be converted to heat to be reclaimed and therefore requires vast technical engineering efforts to gather (messing with grabbing heat out of a plasma, without cooling it so much it stops fusing, is pretty heavy-duty stuff). Because B-11/p fusion is possible with electrostatic containment, not only is the power density of actual recoverable usable power far higher, but the reaction is clean. This is the ideal means of getting the deed done.

As I said in a prior post, you almost couldn't pick anyone as well qualified to speak about or work on fusion; this guy has been in on it since the inception of the controlled fusion effort in the US. He's spent his life working in the US fusion physics community.

I didn't see him talking about neutralizing radioactive waste; I saw him talking about not creating it in the first place.

[TheBaldyMan]

68. He did mention using the reactor to 'neutralise' waste

I can't think of any way this would be possible with the B₁₁p⁺ reactor, only with the H₂H₃ reaction unless the EM radiation is in the hard X-ray or gamma ray spectrum. These high energy photons may have enough energy to transmute nuclei, although I'd have to do some calculations to check if that was possible. If this were possible then there would still be a potential for irradiation of the surrounding environment. The EM radiation would still have to be thermalised by some moderating material because of the penetrating nature of hard X-rays and gamma rays.

The reason I mentioned the Tokamak experiments is because they have tried to maintain a steady state reaction but they have found that the high vacuum needed is one of the engineering problems that stops a continuous reaction from happening. In the lecture a random walk of particles outside the potential reaction site was mentioned, this is made worse by the presence of gas particles in the chamber. IOW the gas molecules are extra particles to collide with. In essence the chance of a reaction is decreased and makes it harder to achieve let alone maintain a reaction.

The best (highest) levels of vacuum achieved in the laboratory still pale into insignificance compared to the level of vacuum encountered a few hundred kilometers above the earths surface.

edited for spelling

[Gwerlain]

70. Errrmm,

photons can't transmute anything. Please don't try to discuss physics if you don't know enough to know that. I do. And I can cite sources to prove it. If you're going to have this conversation with me, I'm going to insist it be on a factual basis. Please cite your source for claiming that gamma or X-ray photons can cause transmutation. I cite Isaac Asimov's popular science book, The History of Physics, for starters, saying that transmutation cannot be driven by any photon, no matter how powerful; if you'd like something a little more substantial, let's try Richard Feynman's Lectures in Physics, volume III (commonly known to physics students as "The Red Books"). I can bring chapter and page number, if you need it; I'm not bothering unless you want to have an argument, and quite frankly, I'll just go report it to the moderators and give chapter and page number so there can be no mistake. These are not matters of opinion.

I'll also point out that motion of molecules is heat; and motion of molecules is what you get from this (specifically, of helium molecules away from the reaction site). There is no thermal radiation involved. Nor is there EM radiation of any other kind involved, either.

Vacuums have gotten a lot better since you read the turn-of-the-twentieth-century popular science book you got that statement about vacuums out of; we can now produce a vacuum harder than anything in the solar system with a bit of time and a good molecular scavenger pump. Perhaps you didn't catch the reference to the extremely good milliTorr-level vacuum that the Dr. referred to in the lecture, near the end of the slides.

I'd like the precise time index where there is a reference to "neutralizing" waste, please. I suspect something is being taken out of context.

This is, after all, the reality-based community. Let's try to stick to reality.

[TheBaldyMan]

71. Admittedly I am a bit rusty, I haven't studied physics since the mid '90s

but I was studying astrophysics and it is fairly accepted that photons are intimately related with both fusion and fission nuclear reactions. As one example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-process">the P-process in stellar mechanics.

I would dispute your definition of heat, it is a much more general concept than the example you cite. In the topic of HE plasmas and fusion reactions I'd posit that the statistical definition of temperature is more useful. That is defined as the average amount of energy of each particle. There is a great deal of radiation involved. If nuclei undergo a fusion reaction the change in binding energy must be lost, usually in the form of beta, neutrino or gamma radiation.

I did review the google video and as Dr. Bussard states the pressure vessel did achieve a respectable 1 nanotorr (10^-9) vacuum (approx. 00:49:40) , so I am more than willing to concede that point and thank you for pointing out my error. For comparison, low earth orbit ~ 10^-9Torr , surface of the moon ~ 10^-11Torr, deep space ~ 10^-17Torr. Sorry I don't have my dusty 20th century textbook on hand to verify these details, you'll just have to take my word for it. :7

While reviewing the video I took note of Dr, Bussard's claim for the neutralising nuclear waste, it is in the period between 01:02:40 through 01:03:50 ,he did skip over it and it was quite easily missed and was far more clear on the overhead display.

I hope my post raises more questions than it answers and I am interested in your views on this matter.

[Gwerlain]

72. The processes you are talking about...

are not majority processes, and have absolutely nothing to do with fission. The P-process is a proton-capture process, not a photon-mediated transmutation, and has only to do with minority processes in supernova explosions, at temperatures and pressures far, far beyond anything you're going to see in a fusion reactor. Specifically, the individual energies of the photons have nothing to do with the reaction; it is the totality of the number of photons and the pressure they place the protons and other particles (nuclei) under that drives the reaction (i.e., it is a thermonuclear reaction). And in any case, even if such processes were to occur in the fusing plasma, that doesn't imply, as you appear to maintain, that they occur to the infrastructure of the reactor resulting in creation of radioactive waste.

Your "statistical definition of heat" is the Boltzmann-Maxwell statistics, where "heat" is defined as the average kinetic energy of the particles in a gas. As I said, motion of particles (it was late, and I said "molecules;" while this is technically true, I should probably have said "particles" or "nuclei," or even "alpha particles"). On the other hand, you do make a good point about gamma; but if I understand what Dr. Bussard is trying to accomplish from an engineering standpoint, I believe that the gamma (at least those that escape the plasma) are essentially lost energy. In any case, they are not neutrons, nor can they transmute the infrastructure of the reactor, which was the point of this exchange in the first place. The shielding to contain them would be a necessary component of the reactor, but it would not become radioactive.

While I confirm the presence of the claim that a fusion reactor can "burn up nuclear waste" on the slide, in the absence of any detail in the talk, any discussion of this point is nothing but speculation unless you have another source for the claim which contains more detail. He does mention it in passing but gives no details at all. I am familiar with the use of the integral fast reactor to do this, but that is a fission reactor, and the result is isotopes that are supposedly only active for circa 200 years; please note that although the half-life is shorter, this in turn implies that the total radiation flux from such material is very high, making it extremely dangerous. One therefore exchanges a shorter (but still longer than a human lifetime) period of activity for a much higher risk should there be any exposure. And this is a general characteristic of radioactive materials; the shorter time it is active, the more dangerous it is. I suspect, without any proof, that Dr. Bussard was referring to the use of the reactor as a neutron source (which the Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor, a progenitor of Dr. Bussard's design, is) by doing D-D or D-T fusion rather than B11-p fusion to create the neutrons that can be used for this purpose. And again, if this design can do B11-p fusion, which does not create dangerous neutrons, why (other than in one or a few installations, specially designed for the purpose of transmuting nuclear waste) would one use a reaction that makes them?

You did at least make me do a bit of research rather than rely on my memory. Nevertheless, your original point that this device will make dangerously radioactive waste products does not appear to have survived; which was, after all, my main argument with your post.

[buddysmellgood]

74. My compliments to you both for a civil and enlightening discussion. Thank you.

[Gwerlain]

75. Well...

I guess we could both have been a bit more civil, and for my part, I offer my apologies. I get a bit testy with "Nuculer is teh evul!" posts.

It's dangerous; it's no magic bullet solution; it requires careful evaluation, careful engineering, and good human factors analysis. But we have to be cognizant of its advantages, as well, and of the real disadvantages of other methods, such as fossil fuel, hydroelectric, and fission. IMHO, there is no one magic bullet solution; we will need a spread of different solutions, ranging from conservation measures to fusion to wind and solar renewables. I think it may be irresponsible at this time to rule anything out.

[buddysmellgood]

80. I thought it was a good impassioned debate. You were both direct and represented your

positions well. No sarcasm intended.

[Gwerlain]

81. Well, thank you! n/t

[TheBaldyMan]

76. this would be OK if the 11B+p reaction was the only one that was going

to occur, however at the ideal temperature for the ¹¹Bp reaction other nuclear reactions can, indeed will inevitably occur, notably 2p -> D and 2D -> T reactions as well as other light element fusion reactions, some of these reactions will involve neutron emission albeit at lower rates than the particular optimum energies involved in their respective reactions. Remember you are talking about a plasma that is a very complex system, various fusion reactions will occur within the plasma. The reactions would also be significantly dampened by brehmstralung radiation as well. The plasma will not be opaque to electron or photon emission as would happen at much higher densities that are involved in stellar mechanical reactions.

I would have to disagree with you utterly, at the energies involved not only will other reactions occur, the nature of the various reactions dictate that neutron emission is inevitable. That is the only way that Dr. Bussard can possibly justify his claim for radioactive waste being 'burned' in his reactor.

[Gwerlain]

77. Here we go again.

If the fuel is boron-11 and hydrogen-1, and only helium-4 (alpha particles) result, where are the deuterium and tritium to create 2p->D and 2D->T reactions going to come from? Again, what does whether the plasma is opaque to electron or photon emission have to do with whether there will be neutron production, or whether there will be radioactive contamination created by transmutation in the reactor infrastructure? Or bremsstrahlung radiation, which is merely more photons? Just because it is a complex system means it will do things that we have never seen anywhere else? Where are these neutrons going to come from?

You are "disagree utterly" without any grounds for doing so. Please present hard evidence to support your views.

[TheBaldyMan]

84. consider this thought experiment ...

The IEC fusion reaction has been built, it is filled with one mole of ¹¹B ions and one mole of p ions, the pressure gradient is exactly as Bussard predicts and is at 550 keV (the optimal temperature that maximises the cross section for the Boron-proton reaction)

The plasma inside the containment field contains nothing but Boron ions and protons in equal numbers, as soon as reactions start some Boron ions will interact with protons and this will be the predominant reaction but is not the only reaction possible.

What happens when two Boron ions collide or when two protons collide? Two ¹¹B will most likely not have the energy to react with each other however with two protons there is a chance that they will interact because the cross section is not vanishingly small, the reaction would be p+p -> D + e⁺+ v , ie two protons combine into Deuterium, a positron and a neutrino. The deuterium produced doesn't disappear, it is added to the mix of ions in the plasma. Now the possible ingredients for fusion contain three extra possible particles.

As time goes on the amount of D ions will increase and these will interact with existing ions in the plasma, D colliding with ¹¹B, p and other D.

possible interactions that can happen now are:

• p+p -> D+e⁺+ v
• D+D -> T+p
• D+D -> n+³He
• p+¹¹B -> 3 alpha particles

The possible types of light nuclei increases with time to include tritium and possibly Lithium

None of these reactions are more prevalent than the Boron reaction but are present, the Boron reacton also has a transient Carbon nuclei as an intermediary stage in the main reaction which can be interacted with. The plasma will also be awash with gamma radiation of the exact energies involved in the nuclear reactions and intermediary trainsient states of the nuclei.

To suggest that the ¹¹Bp reaction is the only one that can and will happen is nonsense. You would have to have brazillions of Maxwell demons, each sitting on each proton steering the proton away when it approached a non-Boron nucleus.

With any steady state reactor vessel the build up of these secondary products would be inevitable. The secondary products interacting would be the source of the neutron flux.

btw you still haven't answered my question, why does Bussard claim that the reactor can reduce nuclear waste and what process does this involve?

on edit: maybe we should move the debate over to the science forum?

[mom cat]

23. We blow that much money in Iraq every day!

[Gregorian]

15. I know the head mechanical engineer from Lawrence Livermore's project.

Back in the 80's he said we were only a few million dollars away from completing their fusion program. That one used laser containment. And we defunded it.


Sorry I haven't looked at the links. I'm curious what this Bussard has to say. I'm sick as a dog. Yuck! I wish we had health care in this stinking country. But that's another subject.

[Junkdrawer]

18. Big Oil will fight him at every step....China will embrace the technology...

with open arms.

China will either fund it or steal it.

[Gregorian]

19. His Google talk is very convincing.

He discusses the geometries of the differing fusion process attempts, and the physics of how they all work, why they don't work, and why his does. And how they have overcome the devil in the details in his process. It helps to have an engineering background, or physics degree, in order to understand his talk.

It's funny that he mentions how the Livermore attempt was never viable. And how monstrous is was. I find it funny because I actually have pieces of that fusion reactor in my shop at home here. I use them for welding tables. It was a monster.

This was nearly a century long process. From 1924 until now, the geometries and details have been evolving. Trial and error. It sounds like this is too good to be true. Easy to control. No radioactive byproducts. They had a publicity embargo for the last 11 years. So this is the first we've heard their report.

I'm still only half way through the google talk. It's basically plasma geometry and containment geometry evolution.

It's classic silicon valley garage stuff.

[originalpckelly]

27. Only this isn't some dork off the street and he's been funded...

in an almost under-the-table fashion.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

20. Bussard is my Maiden name...

I was like what the?! It's not a very common name. I'm probably distantly related to the guy some how.
Duckie

[hootinholler]

31. It is around here...

Lot's of Bussards, they pronounce it like the bird. We even have a Bussard Rd. here in Frederick County Md. I was asking someone where Bu-sard rd is and they didn't know I spelled it and they said You mean buzard Rd!

-Hoot

[YellowRubberDuckie]

47. We don't pronounce it like the bird.

We pronounce it like Bu-sard. But my nickname in high school was Buzzard.
Duckie

[Gregorian]

26. He doesn't see gov't funding for this.

As a prior assistant director of Los Alamos labs, and having gov't experience, he knows this must be privately funded. He kept mentioning China as being the one to be able to knock this thing out with relative ease. Mostly because all of the engineers in this kind of subject are old. We have geared up for silicon, not particle physics. He also mentions how we have cut energy funding in our country while funding Iraq wars and 700 mile fences.

It'll happen. The physics is done. The benefits are needed.

Aside from being able to retrofit into existing nuclear and fossil fuel power plant facilities, it can be used to actually burn up nuclear waste. And it's useful for the high energy consumption that is required in order to desalinate water.

Hopefully the engineering on this will be funded, and won't hit any major snags. At least he seems to think he has ruled out the design problems.

Pretty cool.

edit- Here we go. A few things from one of his slides-
Cheap fuel-free electric power
Clean low cost system
Ethanol replaces gasoline (not sure how that works?)
Burn up nuclear waste
Fresh water from sea
Practical space flight (4 weeks to mars)
Global economic stability


Destroys world market for gasoline

[Junkdrawer]

30. I wonder if Richard Branson or Al Gore has seen this?

Didn't Branson just commit billions to fight Global Warming? :shrug:

[thingfisher]

32. Sounds like a possible

answer to our "addiction to oil" Mr. President!:sarcasm:

[originalpckelly]

33. Good idier. I might look up the Branson foundation...

he's donated all of the profits from his airline to GCC research. This is so obviously in that category.

[originalpckelly]

34. Here is the magic bullet from the website:

"Partnership Opportunities:

Virgin Group would welcome potential partners that are interested in future investments in the area of renewable energy."

If it works, this is definitely in that category.

[Odin2005]

35. $500-$4000? Call be cynical but this sounds like BS.

[originalpckelly]

36. You didn't even pay attention. His figures were in the millions...

out of which air did you pull "$500-4000"???

[Junkdrawer]

37. The science fair version of the Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor...

It's from the Wiki article...

[originalpckelly]

42. I gotcha, no this isn't BS I found his contract with the navy on a military website:

http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/1998/c05081998_ct219-98.html

"Energy Matter Conversion Corp., Manassas Park, Va., is being awarded a $9,255,259 cost-plus-fixed-fee expansion contract for research on clean, small-scale inertial-electrostatic-fusion for U.S. Navy advance energy systems. Work will be performed in Manassas Park, Va. (90%), Del Mar, Calif. (5%), and Albuquerque, N.M., and is expected to be completed by October 2000. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. A Naval Research Broad Agency Announcement #97-024, dated June 17, 1997, solicited bids, with four proposals received. The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Va., is the contracting activity (N00014-96-C-0039, Modification P00007)."

[Junkdrawer]

38. I Googled up these plans...

http://www.brian-mcdermott.com/what_it_takes.htm

[drm604]

39. That's the cost for the F-H fusor, which does not produce net energy.

That $500 to $4000 figure is the cost to build a Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor, which does not produce net energy (it consumes more power than it produces). It's an engineering school or hobbyist level project. The design has been known for decades.

What Bussard claims to be working on is a vast improvement over that. It will produce net energy and costs much more than that, apparently in the hundreds of millions.

[Squeech]

40. Agreed

We need to support this, and bring it to the attention of powerful people. I'm thinking Dingell as well as Gore.

[Deja Q]

41. How would it kill big oil?!

We still need cars to get around; nobody wants to put in more mass transit systems.

Petrochemical fertilizers come to mind.

Can't make plastic out of plasma confined in an electrostatic field...

[originalpckelly]

46. It would allow poor equatorial countries to have enough energy...

to make Ethanol.

Watch the last half hour of the Google video, he talks about the applications of the technology.

[Junkdrawer]

49. I think we should save the world's oil for non-energy uses..

Burning oil is dumb.

[Porcupine]

65. CO2 + Heat + Hydrogen can make hydrocarbons

as long as you have cheap heat and electricity. You could make gasoline with a solar collector (parabolic type), cow shit and hydrogen from wind power if you wanted to. You just can't make it economical until the heat and electricity get cheaper. Hypothetically a fusion power unit would be safe enough and powerful enough that you could use it as a driver for these kind of transformations.

[Ready4Change]

82. Sure you can.

If you can afford the energy, you can make nearly anything via brute force. Things get complex when you can't just add more energy, and instead need to find cleverer ways of doing things.

With fusion, you can have plenty of energy to toss around.

[robcon]

43. My bullshit alert is on high with this "breakthrough."

Sounds like nonsense to me.

[originalpckelly]

45. Check the post below, he did have a government contract to do this...

It isn't a bunch of BS, well at least the part about his government contract.

[Gwerlain]

63. Bussard's the real deal. He has the credentials.

He's not Joe Blow working in the basement; he was the Atomic Energy Commission (predecessor to the Department of Energy) Assistant Director of the Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction Division in the early 1970s. Between him and Robert Hirsch, who was the Director of the same Division, they founded the US Tokamak fusion effort. He's a PhD physicist, the conceptual inventor of the Bussard Ramjet, a proposal for an interstellar propulsion system that uses a widespread conical electromagnetic field to collect interstellar hydrogen and confine it into a "pinch" where the temperature and pressure is high enough to initiate fusion and provide propulsion. Star Trek popularized the concept. He's been involved in the US fusion research community since its inception. There are few physicists as well qualified to work on fusion as Robert Bussard. You might as well express doubt about Richard Feynman's qualifications to comment on electrodynamics, or Albert Einstein's qualifications to speak about gravity. There may well not be anyone better qualified to work on or speak about fusion alive today.

I've been doing research all evening, and I'm relatively convinced that, provided some scaling or turbulence effect doesn't interfere, his concept will work, and will be considerably cheaper and far more practical than the Tokamak proposal. I believe based on his talk that the only geometry likely to work is an octahedral arrangement of the electromagnetic containment elements; this is the only regular polygon that has an even number of faces adjacent to every vertex. OTOH, I did see some arrangements that combined triangles and squares that might work. His point about requiring a balance of north and south magnetic poles around every vertex makes a great deal of sense when you consider Maxwell's equations, and it's something that a lot of physicists are likely to overlook since it is first-year material, far more oriented toward the engineer than the physicist these days.

Your bullshit alert seems to be set incorrectly. I'd check it over.

[originalpckelly]

44. Dr. Bussard did indeed have a contract with the Navy:

http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/1998/c05081998_ct219-98.html

"Energy Matter Conversion Corp., Manaus's Park, Va., is being awarded a $9,255,259 cost-plus-fixed-fee expansion contract for research on clean, small-scale inertial-electrostatic-fusion for U.S. Navy advance energy systems. Work will be performed in Manassas Park, Va. (90%), Del Mar, Calif. (5%), and Albuquerque, N.M., and is expected to be completed by October 2000. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. A Naval Research Broad Agency Announcement #97-024, dated June 17, 1997, solicited bids, with four proposals received. The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Va., is the contracting activity (N00014-96-C-0039, Modification P00007)."

It is from the government's .mil address. It is the DoD.

So in other words, his story about peace meal funding checks out!

[robcon]

50. The fact that he is outraged that the govt. stopped funding is silly.

If the govt. stopped funding it, and there was a breakthrough, they could patent the process and make mega-bucks.

I don't believe for a second that a breakthrough has occurred or was suppressed. Phony story, IMO.

[mark_rrrrr]

51. Patent

They did patent the process. It seems to be a very strong patent because they patented a geometry for containing the plasma. But they don't have the money to make the real machine. They don't want to do it and don't need to, because they are going to make a fortune of the royalties anyway.

Watch the Video!!!!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606&q=bussard+fusion&pr=goog-sl

[sarcasmo]

52. Kick to the top since it is to late to Nom.

[sarcasmo]

53. Get a Patent and then sell stock. I will be first in line to buy shares.

[Bushwick Bill]

54. Nine critical questions to ask re: alternative energy.

Before we instantly accept alternative energy lifeboats that will let us keep our current lifestyles, don't you think it wise to see if they float?

Here are nine questions that you must ask of yourself, and anyone who claims that they have found a perfect alternative to oil. After answering these questions, you may have a better idea about whether you want to jump (or throw your family) into something that might sink in short order.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052703_9_questions.html

If this worked, we would just consume our planet into oblivion, anyway.

[Gwerlain]

55. OK....

here's the deal.

First, although Dr. Bussard is fairly certain that it will scale as he believes, it is not certain until it is built. There is a significant risk that other scaling effects will synergize with the desirable ones and make it not work the way he expects. Nevertheless, it is important that it be tried.

Second, this is not the only such idea out there. There are two other sites: http://focusfusion.org/log/index.php">here and http://www.electronpowersystems.com/">here. Both are what I refer to as "microfusion" schemes, unlike Dr. Bussard's idea, which requires a certain amount of size to work properly.

I believe that ITER is useful, if only in terms of learning the nuclear engineering principles.

I note that several skeptics have mentioned neutron contamination (to be more technically correct, the creation of radionuclides in the surrounding material of the reactor due to neutron bombardment and nuclear transmutation, eventually resulting in the creation of radioactive reactor components which must be disposed of as nuclear waste), which if Dr. Bussard is correct, and D-D (deuteron-deuteron) fusion is exclusively used, is not a consideration- the neutrons all wind up inside helium nuclei, which are no more dangerous than any helium nuclei (and we give helium-filled balloons to our children to play with, so figure it out). The reason that neutron bombardment occurs in Tokamaks is because D-T (deuterium-tritium) reactions are used, because they require less energy input, but these reactions have the disadvantage of yielding neutrons as well as helium nuclei. (If there are any nuclear engineers or fusion physicists reading this, you will note that I have grossly simplified, perhaps even oversimplified, the details, but I seriously doubt anyone wants to have a deep technical discussion about nuclear physics on the political web site's message board- feel free to strike up a conversation elsewhere with me. This discussion has the advantages of general accessibility, correctness within the limits of its simplification, and conciseness.)

Thank you for bringing this out. I'll be looking into it extensively. This thread will probably die before I get done- I'll get back about it pretty soon. Frankly, I've been waiting for something like this. It was clear to me, just based on the types of things we've discovered over the past couple of centuries, that we've all been overlooking some simple principle underlying this that would abruptly change things. Fusion is just too simple and obvious not to be relatively easy to do- once you know the trick. It sounds to me like Dr. Bussard may have found the trick. But we won't really know until someone tries it out properly.

[karlrschneider]

57. Interesting comments (and links) - I'm not a nuclear physicist, just an

aeronautical engineer out of college for 40 years but your mention of "certain size" struck me as analogous to the "Reynolds Number" in aero/hydrodynamics (a dimensionless number) that makes extrapolation from "micro-to-macro" behavior of matter somewhat problematic. As you surely know, but for the benefit of readers, that basically means that a small model of something doesn't necessarily
mirror or predict similar behavior of a much larger scaled version - at least when interacting with the same medium. I suspect there's an equivalent phenomenon concerning small vs. large fusion devices.

But I essentially agree with your last point...fusion is too, well, 'universal' to be ultimately incomprehensible. It's very possible we've simply overlooked some small detail or idea that would solve the problem; it may turn out to be one of those "thwaking ourselves on the head and saying 'how the hell did we miss THAT?'..."

Anyway here's a :kick:

[Gwerlain]

56. Looks good.

I looked it over. The basic ideas are obviously correct. Dr. Bussard is in the right place, talking to the right audience about this. Keep your eyes on this one; it's likely to work. And I don't think the government is going to get the chance to interfere, either.

ETA: Nor the energy companies.

[pitohui]

58. if it was that cheap, the gov't couldn't kill it

it sounds like what he is asking for is $200 million, which is not cheap, everyone who ever worked in every member of my family going back to the dawn of time in my ancestry has not earned a total of $2 million dollars -- if we expand beyond direct lines of descent and include all of my great-great-greats, then (thanks to a few outliers) then PERHAPS the entire financial earnings of everyone i'm related to in all of human history is $100 million (i can think of about $30 million)

$200 million is an undreamed-of sum of money

that's the problem

china is killing themselves with coal, why wouldn't -- why shouldn't -- they fund this research if there is anything to it?

sure i'd love to be in on the ground floor but if something is financially out of reach, it is not cheap, it is financially out of reach

[Redstone]

60. Once again, you provide a voice of reason. Thanks for posting in this thread.

Redstone

[Redstone]

59. Another fantasy combined with conspiracy-theory paranoia. YAWN....

Redstone

[Gwerlain]

62. Nawwww,

simple indifference, NIMBY syndrome, NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome, and the stupidity of thinking, "if the US Govt spent $18 billion and got nuthin', there must be nuthin' to git."

Everybody assumes that we know everything there is to know about electrostatics because Faraday found it in the nineteenth century and there's been lots of time since then. Nothing could be further from the truth. Physics progresses along lines of least resistance, and once the equations are known, the physicists move on and the engineers move in. The engineers only ever figure out about 10% of what's really going on, because it's all they see an application for. Tesla knew things about electrostatics that were ignored until they started trying to make switching power supplies. I'm an EE, and I'll tell you that switcher design is considerably more an art than a science at this point. Most of them are unstable at best, and certainly nothing for Joe Blow to fool around with in his garage- you can be killed or seriously injured messing with something you can run with a lantern battery.

Bussard has rediscovered several principles of electrostatics that most physicists learn in high school and promptly forget. The physicists are all messing with Tokamaks, because that's where the money is- and the money isn't being doled out by physicists, or even engineers, but by lawyers and accountants. So, how many lawyers does it take to design a fusion generator? Good question. So far, the answer seems to be, it doesn't matter how many lawyers you ask to design a fusion generator, they can't. Ummm, gee, well, that's a real surprise, ain't it? :sarcasm:

[Blue_Tires]

61. too late for me to rec

ttt

[SimpleHarmonics]

66. Let me the first to quote Jurassic Park

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should."

I'm not a luddite, and I follow the physics as much as i can follow football (american or not), but even Einstein expressed urgency about the atomic bomb when the war was going on, only to regret it later. And if my memory is faulty and Einstein didn't regret it, many of the scientists in the Manhattan project felt disillusioned, or openly predicted the fatal consequences of abusing the bomb.

While the fusion device seems like a very promising solution to the problem of Big Oil, the quote by Dr. Bussard regarding a full-scale test as "necessary" to show the "full" power of this device makes the hairs on the back of my neck start tingling. Sometimes those of us in favor of technology (and I for one *hope* this fusion device is what it _sounds_ like) tend to forget that we *do not* know the long term effects of the usage of this technology. We all (most people anyway) thought that nuclear "Clean" power was not *that* harmful, then the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island "events," along with other, _late_ after effects of both these accidents and the fallout from the atomic tests of the last century started manifesting themselves. We Americans, in particular, but likely human in general, have an unhealthy obsession with quick solutions, grand solutions, and impressive "see, we were right" kinds of solutions, and I _must_ say again, “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should."

I only ask that we act with caution-filled hope, not with blind faith in science. We KNOW how much trouble blind faith can get us into.

[Gwerlain]

69. Well, perhaps it was not clear...

...but we're nearly at the point where we're faced with the choice between fission reactors, like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, or global warming. Some idiots think it is reasonable to propose that we "return to a less technological lifestyle," without considering the hundreds of millions or billions of people who would die if we attempted it; nor considering what those people would do to our world and to the rest of us in order to avoid it. Others believe that it is inevitable; whatever, there were always people when I was younger who claimed war between the US and USSR was inevitable, and that never happened. I take such prognostications with the same dose of salt I use with "end times" predictions.

On the other hand, while Chernobyl was an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions, Three Mile Island was one of the largest non-events in the history of nuclear power. The Brown's Ferry fire was a hell of a lot scarier; TMI just got more publicity, and just happened to coincide with the release of The China Syndrome. The reactor was essentially destroyed, but the containment performed its function and prevented the vast majority of the radiation from escaping. The fact that it's even possible to sanely argue against a rise the incidence of cancer downwind from TMI is totally incomparable to Chernobyl; people downwind of Chernobyl DIED RIGHT NOW IN AGONY. No question about it, and absolutely no comparison possible with TMI. Chernobyl's containment was not designed to handle the catastrophe that reactor underwent, and the reactor design itself was considerably shorter on safety margin than any reactor ever approved for operation in any Western country. Serious design problems existed at Chernobyl as a result of miscalculations by the nuclear engineers who designed it. They were politically and financially driven, and the USSR never did have the kinds of liability considerations that US and other Western nuclear engineers take for granted in their designs. The Soviets paid in spades for their risky design. There are many who believe it contributed as much as Afghanistan and Star Wars to the end of the Cold War.

Compared even to TMI, the risks of a fusion reactor are minimal, to say the most; compared with Chernobyl, the risks are non-existent. Fusion reactors don't contain the massive concentration of nuclear fuel that a fission reactor must, and by and large, that fuel is relatively benign compared to the plutonium, uranium, or even the thorium that might be used in a fission reactor. The primary danger in a fusion plant would be the same as in a coal- or oil-fired plant: a steam explosion. And not radioactive steam, either, particularly this design, which does not make the neutrons that can make parts of the reactor radioactive over time. Furthermore, unlike the fission fuel, which becomes highly active and even undergoes active fission as more of it is concentrated at normal pressure and temperature in one place, the pressures and temperatures at which fusion proceeds are under such unusual conditions that any failure of the reactor results in immediate termination of the reaction; there can be no fusion equivalent of the Loss Of Coolant Incident, the Cold Water Accident, or other nightmare scenarios that make fission so scary.

There is no "blind faith." There is engineering. It is more or less reliable, depending on how well the underlying science is understood, how well the materials science is understood, and finally how well the human factors engineering is done. A pair of scissors is a dangerous implement, and you should not run holding them. There isn't any reason to worry about whether we "should" when it comes to fusion, particularly not in the face of global warming, and the resurgence of pressure to build relatively dangerous fission power plants. If we can do fusion, it is infinitely preferable to any method of power generation we currently have, hands down, no questions, no doubts, no horsesh*t.

No method of generating enough electrical power to run a city can be totally safe. It's simply not possible. The dam can fail in a hydroelectric plant. The steam in the boiler in a coal- or oil-fired plant can explode if the fire gets out of control. Someone can fall across the bus bars and get fried. Or get caught in the machinery of the turbine or generator. But if you're going to generate electrical power in quantities great enough to run a city, thermonuclear fusion is the safest way we know of, bar none.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

73. LOL

It's all so simple!

:rofl:

[Junkdrawer]

78. I have a friend who's a physicist at a major university...

he's looking at it now.

[Junkdrawer]

79. Here's what he said:

Dr. Bussard has a great reputation.

The physics sound plausible, but the devil is always in the details.

Many great ideas work in small scale, but encounter unexpected problems when they are scaled up.

The Nobel prizes that await anyone who solves the fusion problem guarantees that this idea will now be looked into by many, many labs here and abroad.

---

I found the last point odd - but I guess fame among their peers is what drives physicists.

[Gwerlain]

83. Your friend is wise, experienced, and...

knowledgeable in the ways of scientists. I didn't find the last point in any way surprising. I would not be surprised if new effects were found when the design was scaled up. Nor would I be surprised if it turns out that more work is needed. OTOH, I also wouldn't be surprised if it works just like Dr. Bussard thinks it will. Could go either way. But I think this one has an excellent chance of working.

[NewJeffCT]

85. Outside of the US...

People that win things like Nobel Prizes are treated like national heroes. Here, it's "ho hum" and a comment about pointy-headed intellectual elites.