There are two different ways to get electricity in a Progressive Way for our energy-hungry world, the Renewable Way (utilizing a continually-renewing resource like wind or sunlight) and the Green Way (obtaining the energy without increasing greenhouse gases and otherwise harming the environment). Few industrial strength (megawatt range) energy sources manage to be both at once, but
hydrogen fusion is one that does. It is green in that it emits no CO2 and has no radioactive waste like fission reactors, and it is renewable in that it uses deuterium from seawater, which is in effect renews due to solar radiation creating more every year. The problem with fusion is that conventional
Tokamak fusion reactors such as
ITER are consumers rather than generators of electricity, and thus as yet have not even achieved break-even energy generation, much less become a usable power source.
However, there is an alternative fusion technique called
Dense Plasma Focus. It has none of the problems of Tokamak reactors and as an added bonus does not need to use a steam system to drive turbines to generate electricity as current ITER plans require; it can tap the electricity of the fusion process directly.
Now a research initiative funded partially by Google called
Focus
Fusion is attempting to make this technology a reality. Their web site is well designed and has a neat
slide show illustrating the basics of the process. They also list all the actual research on the process done to date, which is considerable. With a modest 2 million dollars, they can create and test a prototype of their device, which is already dialed-in to the academic research system. Once the tests over about two years are successful, here is what comes
next:
In this phase, over a period of three to five years, working with engineers, we would perfect the device, based on existing, proven technology to directly extract the energy from the ion beam and the x-rays emitted by the plasmoid and convert it into electricity. We will also perfect the repetitive functioning of the device, which will have to pulse a thousand times a second for a year between replacement of the electrodes.
We estimate that this reactor engineering development phase will cost about $5 million dollars.
Once a prototype reactor is developed, it will be ready to be licensed to governments and other manufactures around the world for mass production. With mass production, it is expected that the cost of each reactor will be far less than the cost of research funds spent to design the first reactor, and much less than any nuclear, coal, hydro or oil-based power plants currently available.
At that point the Fusion Age will have begun!
Supporters of the World Economic Union, let's consider giving these people our
support (it's tax
deductible in most countries that have income tax.) The first major step to creating the WEU is breaking the dependence of our technology on oil, coal, and fission reactors for electricity. Focus Fusion may well be the sledgehammer that does just that! (Hat tip to Slashdot, the old fogey, for the initial
link and previous karma-currying discussions.) (Images courtesy of Focus Fusion.)
And now we have a new contender in our corner! It is called Pro Publica, and it is essentially a muckraking free press foundation doing pro bono publico work with an annual budget of $10 million from Progressive philanthropists and foundations. It will disseminate its research via both a web site and to all media outlets who want it, like Reuters or the Associated Press. Here is a quote from its press release:
