The Holy Grail?

[unixronin]

The holy grail of sustainable power generation is clean fusion.  Cheap and abundant fuel, no chance of a criticality or meltdown, no radioactive waste that has to be stored for thousands of years, and any breach of the reaction chamber instantly quenches the reaction.  The basic underlying physics is conceptually simple, but making it actually work and produce net power in a harnessable and commercially viable way been an engineering nightmare.

Robert Bussard just may have finally solved the problem.  Over a year ago, in fact.  But the US Government won't fund him, apparently because scientists at the Department of Energy — which has its own rival development process — have stated they believe his process can't possibly work.  (But then, they've been unable to make theirs work either.)

Bussard’s work should be funded, agreed Frank Shoup, director of the systems engineering institute at the Naval Postgraduate School.

“I’m not an expert” in fusion physics, Shoup conceded, but he has followed Bussard’s work.

“It relies on a new principle in developing fusion energy,” he said.  “The fuel is totally abundant and cheap, there are no noxious byproducts like radioactive waste, it doesn’t produce carbon and it doesn’t pollute.

“The quick answer is, if it works, the payoff is so large it is worth funding to find out if it works,” he said.

Compared to what we're spending in Iraq, the funding Bob Bussard needs to develop this is pocket change.  Bussard needs $2 million.  The Bush administration spends that much in Iraq every eight minutes.  It's not merely "worth funding it to find out if it works"; if there's even a chance that this breakthrough could work on a large scale, not funding it is not merely short-sighted, it's insane.  Sustainable clean fusion offers a chance to completely stop burning all fossil fuels, and to solve the entire world's energy problems essentially forever, with no need for proliferation of nuclear fission technology.  What's more (and this should be a major argument, from the viewpoint of the US Goverrnment), given a viable clean fusion process, the ONLY reason for maintaining a nuclear fission program would be weapons programs.  (Radioisotopes for medical use can be made in an accelerator.)

Then again, maybe that's a possible reason why the US Government might not want a viable fusion process to be developed.  The US Government likes its nuclear weapons.  It might be embarrassing if the United States, too, was unable to pretend that its continued nuclear fission program was solely for peaceful purposes.

Comments

[zaitcev.livejournal.com]

I am easily getting pissed off when I hear about that crackpot Brussard. The appeals to the public are especially disgusting. If he wants gullible people to send him money he ought to publish his Pay-Pal e-mail instead of making the case for spending my tax money on his delusions. Perpetuum mobile research is very cheap as well, and it's not an argument for funding it.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

So Alaric isn't going to bite on this.

What is your reason for call Bussard a crackpot?

[zaitcev.livejournal.com]

What he is doing is not a perpetuum-mobile, and not even low-temp fusion, but it's retarded nonetheless. And the appeals to the public is the admission that the idea can't stand on its own legs.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

What's retarded about it?

The money the US spends on fusion research compared to, say, oil exploration, is pocket change. Fusion research has always been the red-headed stepchild. It's not like Bussard is asking for a huge amount of money ... as noted earlier, the US spends the same amount in Iraq every eight minutes. Compared to the federal budget, it's literally in the noise level. It would be stupid not to research an idea that could work when it costs so little to do it and the potential payoff is so huge.

We all know the government acts in stupid and politically-motivated ways. Are we to judge an idea by whether the government funds it? If we do, then Linux is worthless, but the Iraq war is the most precious thing to happen so far this century. And stem cell research, well, that's clearly complete crap, isn't it? The government not only won't fund it, but has legislated limits on what people can do with it at their own expense. Surely that has to mean it's a really, really bad idea.

[zaitcev.livejournal.com]

If the idea could work, your argument migh've had a certain validity to it. But Brussard hasn't shown that it can, at least to me. In this case it's the same as perpetuum-mobile, only at this time the public is not in position to evaluate the low-cost confinement schemes (which makes appeals to the public so outrageous).

I'd like to agree with you that govenment's willingness to pay for "research" is useless as a proxy to determine the "research's" potential effectiveness. In fact, government often pays (directly or indirectly) to investigate something about which we either do not know if it's going to be practical, or something which might not be practical at all. But Brussard is neither. He's not studying fundamental physics of the reactions. He's trying to solve an engineering problem of confinement, and so far he didn't produce anything (as far as I am aware).

Not all points which you mashed into the same paragraphs are equally valid, however. The Iraq "war" (which actually is a battlefield in the war the Islamists are waging upon the civilization) is of utmost importance. If we knew that we could win by shutting down all universities, it would be a price well worth being paid, because the very survival of civilization is in the balance here. Fortunately, we are not at that point and are unlikely to ever get there. I only mentioned that to give you some perspective, and as a warning to construct your strawmen more carefuly in the future.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

If the idea could work, your argument migh've had a certain validity to it. But Brussard hasn't shown that it can, at least to me.

Neither has anyone shown it can't. Equally truly, none of the fusion research that the government is funding has yet been shown to work, either. In fact, the very reason Bussard's trying to make his approach work is because so far, all the tokamak projects have failed to work. If we had a working fusion solution now, there'd be far less urgency to explore others. But we don't.

So on the basis of this argument, Bussard's approach actually has a lot more potential validity than the tokamak-based approaches, because unlike all the tokamak projects, his has not yet been shown not to work.

[zaitcev.livejournal.com]

Tokamak is crap too. You don't have to evangelize that.

Dammit, premature send ....

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

To continue what I intended to write:

The Iraq "war" (which actually is a battlefield in the war the Islamists are waging upon the civilization) is of utmost importance.

Before you start tossing accusations of straw men around, consider that I did not say the ideological conflict between Islam and the non-Islamic world was not important. I strongly question, however, that the war in Iraq is playing any positive part in winning that conflict.

(On the contrary, there's significant evidence that it's been a huge recruitment boost to Islamic terrorist groups throughout the region, if not worldwide. I have grave doubts that it is doing us any net good. We went in with incompletely defined goals and nothing resembling an exit strategy, and while we've won tactical victories pretty much wherever we can get a stand-up fight, strategically and geopolitically it's ... well, let's just say it's not looking real good. I am highly unconvinced that either the US or Iraq is better off now, long-term, than before we went in. And that's even WITHOUT the Bush administration rattling sabers at Iran as well.)