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

Re: speaking of steamgeekery

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, those are ads? I don't read Russian.

I've seen other steampunk mice before that I thought better, honestly. The one with the siicone-rubber eyeball in a glass flask was great.