Mar
11
Will There Be Enough Fuel For Fusion?
March 11, 2010 | 2 Comments
The National Ignition Lab expects to fuse a compound form of hydrogen made of tritium and deuterium later this year releasing high energy neutrons that should, for the first time, produce more power than the laser itself has put in.. It’s the first large scale and credible attempt after 5 decades of effort and investment.
The [...]
Feb
3
192 Lasers Focused On a Dot
February 3, 2010 | 1 Comment
192 laser beams will focus on a target the size of a pencil eraser to trigger a self-sustaining fusion reaction. It seems likely that the planned combined shots at fusible fuel will take place in the second half of 2010. It means more apprehension for the ITER supporters, and a lot of hope for the [...]
Jan
26
MIT and Columbia May Have a New Fusion Path
January 26, 2010 | 1 Comment
An experimental fusion reactor at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center on the MIT campus called the Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX uses a half-ton donut-shaped magnet about the size and shape of a large truck tire, made of superconducting wire coiled inside a stainless steel vessel.
Used in a new experiment that reproduces the magnetic [...]
Dec
23
Cold Fusion Is Getting Hot
December 23, 2009 | 1 Comment
With some minor trepidation cold fusion is in the headline. The words still evoke some pained feelings, but the objective minds haven’t waited, the research has plowed on. Brian Wang at his NextBigFuture site caught the release of the information made available from the 15th International Conferences on Cold Fusion (ICCF) held in Rome this [...]
Dec
21
Bussard Fusion (IEC) Progress Is Accelerating
December 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment
The University of Wisconsin hosted the 11th US-Japan Workshop on Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion on October 12th and 13th in Madison Wisconsin. Over the two days some 28 presenters covered the activities, progress and plans spread over the eight U.S., Japanese and Australian leading Inertial Electrostatic Fusion (IEC) research universities. Plus Los Alamos National Lab [...]
Nov
13
New Life for the Old Tokamak
November 13, 2009 | 2 Comments
From two different places the old tokamak confinement method has gotten a new lease on life. Well, its life is set by the ITER effort paid for by governments across the planet with tens of billions of dollars. It might make one cringe or celebrate, depending on one’s view towards the basic tokamak concept to [...]
Oct
20
The Lerner Fusion Machine Is In Testing
October 20, 2009 | 2 Comments
Thursday October 15, 2008 saw the Lerner fusion device at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, now named FoFu, startup and run at just under half input power.
After seven years of theoretical work and raising money, five months of design, five months of construction and assembly, and a week of testing, Eric Lerner and his team now have [...]
Oct
7
A Bussard Fusion Update
October 7, 2009 | 6 Comments
It’s quite a relief to see some activity on the Robert Bussard Fusion effort led now by Richard Nebel. Friday saw the news that the federal contract “Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition” document make it out to confirm essentially what everyone had expected. The divergence from the established norm is the newly [...]
Oct
5
The New Cold Fusion
October 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment
This is no table top idea still confused about chemical or physics properties – the muon catalyst fusion method is well understood and has been until a decade or so ago, widely researched. The idea came before 1950 from Andrei Sakharov and F.C. Frank, who predicted the phenomenon of muon-catalyzed fusion on theoretical grounds. Luis [...]
Sep
14
Bussard Fusion Gets Major Funding
September 14, 2009 | 5 Comments
Using Recovery Act funds the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, Calif., is contracting with the late Dr. Robert Bussard’s firm Energy Matter Conversion Corp., (EMC2) of Santa Fe, N.M., for research, analysis, development, and testing in support of the Plan Plasma Fusion (Polywell) Project. The Polywell and IEC or internal electrostatic [...]
