Should Google Fund Nuclear Fusion?
This is not your father's fusion reactor! Forget everything you know about conventional thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature plasmas, steam turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a thing of the past. Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC), an old idea that's been made new. While the international community debates the fate of the politically-turmoiled $12 billion ITER (an experimental thermonuclear reactor), simple IEC reactors are being built as high-school science fair projects.
Dr. Robert Bussard, former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission and founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2), has spent 17 years perfecting IEC, a fusion process that converts hydrogen and boron directly into electricity producing helium as the only waste product. Most of this work was funded by the Department of Defense, the details of which have been under seal... until now.
Dr. Bussard will discuss his recent results and details of this potentially world-altering technology, whose conception dates back as far as 1924, and even includes a reactor design by Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of the scanning television).
Can a 100 MW fusion reactor be built for less than Google's annual electricity bill? Come see what's possible when you think outside the thermonuclear box and ignore the herd.
January 15th, 2007 - 13:40
Most people I’ve shown this to brush this ofrf as too good to be real. But I’ve been following IEC fusion for years at this is the most probably solution to Fusion energy I’ve seen. It is to cheap to be real for those who have waited for decades to see fusion become a possiblity. Still moderate obsticals to overcome but this deserves serious attention!
I have some questions about using p-B11 fuel over He3 but at least you don’t have to go to the moon to get it.
January 15th, 2007 - 15:49
Yea. Of all the things that people spend $100M on, this seems at least as worthy. Clinton spent $5B on an anti-drug awareness campaign. This seems like it has a lot better chance of bettering humanity, imo. It’s ridiculous that the Energy Department can’t deal with it. An example of science-dogma or politics holding us back, not sure which.
April 5th, 2007 - 15:28
Bussard, obviously a genius. My college AP Physics classes helped me a little to generally understand what he’s talking about, but the engineering behind it is way beyond me. The bottom line is that Google probably doesn’t have the balls to take on the oil companies. They would get squwarshed. Yeah sure they know how to write code, but really the toughest Google guy is a pussycat compared to the lowliest Exxon corporate executive. They would eat Google for breakfast.
June 4th, 2008 - 09:30
Go for it google!!!!!!