Steampunk fusion

[unixronin]

The latest Popular Science has an article on an tiny little private outfit in Vancouver Burnaby, BC that's trying to build a mechanical fusion reactor ... it uses an array of 200 precisely synchronized steam-driven pistons to create a contracting spherical shockwave in a ball of molten lead-lithium alloy, which is spinning fast enough to create a void in the center into which deuterium-tritium plasma is injected.  It's not continuous fusion — the machine is supposed to complete one fusion cycle per second.

At first, reading the article, I just thought, "Surely this can't work" (though some physicist PopSci talked to says that in principle there's no technical reason it couldn't work).  But then it hit me .... it's a steampunk fusion reactor.

Which would make it totally awesome if it DID work ....

Comments

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

d_h put it so well I can but agree:

"My doubt meter has pegged. By so has my cool meter."

Yup. I doubt it'll work. But won't it be so astonishingly cool if it does?