J. Park At Microsoft

 

J. Park talks about what he has accomplished at EMC2 and what he hopes to do in the future.  

You can also watch it at Microsoft where you can see the slides shown during the talk.  

You can also see a discussion by guys who are into it at Talk Polywell.

Understand The Evolution Of Polywell

Mashpedia Polywell
 
I'm also going to add it to the sidebar under Polywell Primer.
 
H/T Choff and Betruger at Talk Polywell.

What A Commercial Polywell Might Look Like

More Polywell videos at YouTube

Polywell Report - 3 Nov 2011

The researchers at Polywell Fusion have issued a report on their progress.

Project Status More than 50% Completed

Final Project Report Submitted No

Project Activities Description Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services

Quarterly Activities/Project Description As of 3Q/2011, the WB-8 device has generated over 500 high power plasma shots. EMC2 is conducting tests on Wiffle-Ball plasma scaling law on plasma heating and confinement.

Jobs Created 12.00

Description of Jobs Created two full time plasma physicists and one full time microwave engineer. In addition, one full time equivalent electrical engineer.

It is not much of a report but it is all we have.

H/T The Boys and Girls at Talk Polywell where you can find a discussion of the nuances.

Polywell - News From Our Government

I have been too much into politics at my other blogs and so have been remiss in reporting Polywell news. This news is about a month old.

It is from pdf page 35 (numbered page 25) of Recovery Act Tracker [pdf].

10. Plasma Fusion (Polywell)

The Plasma Fusion (Polywell) project is a combined Navy/Defense-wide effort to demonstrate a fusion plasma confinement system for shore and shipboard applications. This procurement is a follow-on to initial research into small-scale nuclear fusion systems using a unique approach of energy matter conversion. It covers research, analysis, development, and testing to validate the basic physics of the advanced gaseous electrostatic energy concept. The objective of this procurement is to provide the Navy with data for potential applications of advanced gaseous electrostatic energy. It builds on previous concept-demonstration benchtop versions of plasma wiffle balls. NAWCWDChina Lake awarded one contract action, valued at $1.3 million, for this project. NAWCWD-China Lake contracting efforts complied with Recovery Act requirements, the OMB guidance, the FAR, and DoD implementing guidance.

H/T ladajo at Talk Polywell

Microsoft Looks At Polywell

Well not Polywell directly. More like a fusor. A program started by Richard Hull at the instigation of Robert Bussard and Tom Ligon.

Here is part of a message on the subject I got forwarded to me by e-mail.

On April 28th 2011, the Microsoft Corporation held its annual Hardware Summit. This year’s theme was “Envisioning the Future”. The Summit was comprised of three primary technical offerings. The first was the Hardware Summit itself with featured presentations and keynote address. The second was a vendor showcase, and finally there was also a “Garage Science Fair”. I was unaware that a decision was made at Microsoft Headquarters early on to move our offering from the “science fair”, to the “Featured Speakers” forum. We directly followed Dr. Brian Greene the keynote speaker on the first day of the forum. Our team was offered to several hundred corporate employees, as nothing less than professional scientists.

The cool and collected demeanor of our team under extreme pressure, as well as solid execution of their operational duties left the audience drop-jawed. Many of the early arrivals began snapping pictures with their cell phones, and forwarding them to other employee’s. The result is that we concluded with standing room only. Dr. Brian Greene, noted author and physicist from Oxford University was conducting a book signing on the first floor when he heard about our team. He left his signing to personally attend the rest of our presentation. Below was the write-up on the Agenda. Next Wednesday, Channel 9 from Microsoft will be here to film us in action. And we hope to do a presentation at the Pacific Science Center sometime this summer. The reactor was reviewed in detail by fire, security and nuclear safety personnel who found us to be in compliance for the show.

You can find out more about what they do at The North West Nuclear Consortium.

The North West Nuclear Consortium is a privately held youth group currently meeting in Federal Way Washington. It was created in direct response to needs expressed by both parents and students of public and private schools in South King County. They feel that Technology and Science curriculums are no longer interesting to students, due to budgetary constraints, and changes in school policy brought about by the abuse of tort law. Mr. Greninger leads a Christian fellowship at his home, and felt this was a challenge his group could not ignore. Starting in mid-2009, Mr. Greninger begin visiting a local youth camp with a “high voltage” show, in which he demonstrated large tesla coils and Van De Graaff generators, as well as other “gee-whiz” physics.

The youth group that was spawned through these shows now meets at Mr. Greninger’s home and studies one of the most exciting high end physics curriculums in the state.

You can find out more about Polywell at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

Fusors: Fusor.net

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Polywell - Positive Results

Alan Boyle has the latest on Polywell.

A Navy-funded effort to harness nuclear fusion power reports that its unconventional plasma device is operating as designed and generating "positive results" more than halfway through the project.

And that is not all:

"It's a very nice machine," he said. "I like what we have so far. It's quite well-built, relatively flexible to actually explore a lot of areas and find what's best. Achieving the plasma for fusion is obviously a tall order. ... You don't just push the pedal on a Ferrari and drive the car. Like an F-18 or a stealth bomber, you have to learn how to operate it properly."

And:

Park figures that the money provided under the WB-8 contract should last until the end of the year, depending on how efficiently the EMC2 team is able to stretch the money out. By then, the engineers in New Mexico and their backers in the Navy should know whether it's worth going ahead with the next step, perhaps even with the big demonstration reactor. Park hopes that WB-8 will be the last small-scale experimental machine EMC2 will have to build.

"This machine should be able to generate 1,000 times more nuclear activity than WB-7, with about eight times more magnetic field," said Park, quoting the publicly available information about WB-8. "We'll call that a good success. That means we're on track with the scaling law."

Don't expect weekly updates about EMC2's progress. "Currently all our funding comes from the Navy," Park said. "That's our customer. Our customer desired that we keep most of our progress confidential. ... They're somewhat concerned about making too much hype without delivering an actual product."

Go read the whole thing.

Thanks to the boys at Talk Polywell for the heads up. Good discussion of the implications there.

Polywell Update 1 May 2011

Finally there is some news about Polywell Fusion progress. From recovery.gov here is the essential news.

Projects and Jobs Information

Project Title Federal Contract

Project Status More than 50% Completed

Final Project Report Submitted No

Project Activities Description Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services

Quarterly Activities/Project Description As of 1Q/2011, the WB-8 device operates as designed and it is generating positive results. EMC2 is planning to conduct comprehensive experiments on WB-8 in the next 9-12 months based on the current contract funding schedule.

Jobs Created 11.00

Description of Jobs Created two full time plasma physicists. one full time equivalent electrical engineer.

So figure another year before the final report. In the mean time testing is ongoing.

There is a funny in the report. Note: jobs created = 11 and actual jobs created (as provided by a description of the jobs) is 3. Government accounting.

If you would like a fuller discussion of what this report means may I suggest a visit to the Talk Polywell board.

Fusion - A New Hope?

A private company has just gotten a $50 million cash infusion for its fusion experiments.

A private company in Foothill Ranch that is reportedly experimenting with nuclear fusion power has raised $50 million in funding, according to a report from Socaltech.com.

Little more information was available Monday about the experiments at the company, Tri-Alpha Energy, or the funding itself. In the past, Socaltech reported, Tri-Alpha has received funding from Goldman Sachs, Venrock, Vulcan Capital and New Enterprise Associates.

Tri-Alpha's experiments, based on the work of UC Irvine plasma physics professor Norman Rostoker, have been rumored for years, but the company has not revealed the nature of its experiments to the public.

Solcaltech calls it a "stealth developer of advanced plasma fusion technology.

Well not exactly stealth. I reported on the work of Rostoker and Monkton in additions to something I first posted in November of 2007. Still, the fact that they are either getting new money or a release of promised money is good news. The more different ideas we explore on the way to practical fusion the sooner we will reach that goal. Because this is an experimental field. And as Einstein once said, "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

Tri-Alpha Energy, Polywell Fusion, and Dense Plasma Focus are all working on the holy grail of fusion physics. The combining of Hydrogen (a proton when ionized) and Boron 11 which is a fusion reaction that gives off very few neutrons and whose reaction product is high energy (relatively) charged particles which would allow converting the resultant energy directly to electricity. This greatly lowers the cost of a power plant. Consider that for a fission (currently Uranium) power plant 80% of the cost is in the steam plant which is used to convert the heat output of the reactor into electricity or shaft horsepower in the case of a ship.

One other point. Consider the millions being spent on these fusion experiments with the billions being spent on ITER which is currently in big financial trouble. The reported fix is to steal money from small research projects in other disciplines.

Of course I like Polywell Fusion. You can learn the basics of fusion energy by reading Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering

Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

And the best part about Polywell? We Will Know In Two Years or less.

Second Hand Report From The American Society of Naval Engineers Symposium

rschaffer8 at Talk Polywell gives a third hand report of a second hand report about the symposium.

The American Society of Naval Engineers held a symposium on "Engineering the Total Ship" on July 14 and 15. The session titled “Technology for the Future Navy” was moderated by Dr. John Pazik, Director, Ship Systems and Engineering Division, Office of Naval Research. I was not in attendance at the meeting, but a colleague in his meeting report and follow-up discussions with me indicated that Dr. Pazik made several favorable references to Polywell Fusion to the point where my colleague immediately did a google search to find out more. Although I don’t know specifically what Dr. Pazik said and I don’t know who was in attendance at this session, I believe it is significant that he would mention it in this forum. The meeting was attended by about 130 naval engineers and analysts including nine admirals constituting the leadership of the Navy’s engineering establishment. Ron O’Rourke, a very influential naval analyst for the Congressional Research Service was also in attendance. I do not know if Dr. Pazik’s comments reflected any preliminary results of the ongoing ONR funded research at EMC2. However, I don’t think Dr. Pazik would jeopardize his professional reputation or ONR’s before such an influential audience if he did not believe Pollywell Fusion had genuine technical potential. More information on the symposium is available at: Engineering the Total Ship

I think this means the experiments to date show promise. I will try to get more details.

BBC Covers Amateur Fusion

My friend Famulus whose blog is Prometheus Fusion Perfection has just had his efforts (and in part mine too - I helped him with a Polywell research proposal) picked up by the BBC

Mr Suppes, 32, is part of a growing community of "fusioneers" - amateur science junkies who are building homemade fusion reactors, for fun and with an eye to being part of the solution to that problem.

He is the 38th independent amateur physicist in the world to achieve nuclear fusion from a homemade reactor, according to community site Fusor.net. Others on the list include a 15-year-old from Michigan and a doctoral student in Ohio.
The fusion reactor in the Brooklyn warehouse Mr Suppes has spent the last two years perfecting his reactor

"I was inspired because I believed I was looking at a technology that could actually work to solve our energy problems, and I believed it was something that I could at least begin to build," Mr Suppes told the BBC.

Here is sort of an offhand reference to the proposal work I did with him. Let me add that we were assisted by a knowledgeable physicist friend of mine who wishes to remain out of the spotlight for now. Our physicist friend is also working on an amateur fusion experiment.

Mr Suppes is hoping to build a break-even reactor from plans created by the late Robert Bussard, a nuclear physicist who drew up plans for a fusion reactor that could convert hydrogen and boron into electricity.

Work on a scaled up version of a Bussard reactor, funded by the US Navy, has already been taking place in California.

But Mr Suppes believes he will be able to raise the millions of dollars it takes to build a Bussard reactor because he feels someone with enough money "will feel they cannot pass up the opportunity" to find out if it will work.

Iter said it would be wrong to dismiss out of hand the notion that an amateur could make a difference.

"I won't say something that puts these guys down, but it's a tricky situation because there is a great deal of money and time and a lot of very experienced scientists working on fusion at the moment," said Mr Calder.

"But that does not eliminate other ideas coming from a different group of people."

The work is actually going on in New Mexico but other than that they have most of the details correct. I'm hoping that he connects with enough money to do his proposed prototype reactor. Because I'd dearly like to help.

You can learn the basics of fusion energy by reading Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering

Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

The American Thinker has a good article up with the basics.

And the best part? We Will Know In Two Years or less.

Smaller, Cheaper, Tokamak

The Italians and Russians are working on a cheaper version of ITER.

Russia and Italy have entered into an agreement to build a new fusion reactor outside Moscow that could become the first such reactor to achieve ignition, the point where a fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining instead of requiring a constant input of energy.

The design for the reactor, called Ignitor, originated with MIT physics professor Bruno Coppi, who will be the project’s principal investigator.

The concept for the new reactor builds on decades of experience with MIT’s Alcator fusion research programme, also initiated by Coppi, which in its present version (called Alcator C-Mod) has the highest magnetic field and highest plasma pressure of any fusion reactor, and is the largest university-based fusion reactor in the world.

Bruno Coppi was an associate of Dr. Robert Bussard (of Polywell fame) when they worked together on the Riggatron concept [pdf].

Clearing Up Misconceptions

Rick Nebel who is in charge of the Polywell Experiments at EMC2 comments on Alan Boyle's article on progress in Fusion Power on MSNBC's Cosmic Log.

As usual, I seem to have created some misconceptions by my comments. First of all, what we said on our website is that the work on the WB-7 has been completed. We did not discuss the results. If you would like to conjecture what those results are, let me suggest that you notice the fact that we are working on the WB-8 device. The WB-8 was not a part of Dr. Bussard's original development plan. This device came about as a result of the peer review process which suggested that there were issues that needed to be resolved at a smaller scale before proceeding to a demo. This was a conclusion that EMC2 heartily concurred with. I don't want to leave people with the impression that everything on the WB-7 is identical to the WB-6.

Secondly, in our contract with the DOD, EMC2 owns the commercialization rights for the Polywell. However, commercialization is not something that we can do with our DOD funding. That is what we would like to look at with any contributions from the website. This will enable us to:

1. Design an attractive commercial reactor package.
2. Identify the high leverage physics items that most impact the design (i.e. how good is good enough).
3. Give us a base design when we are ready to proceed to the next step.

rnebel (Sent Wednesday, March 24, 2010 9:12 PM)

I think it is evident that the Polywell people are making progress. Will it actually lead to a viable fusion power machine? There is no way to know for sure until the experiments are done. I am hopeful. It seems like Rick is hopeful as well and with better reason. He has the data.

Some of my more recent articles on the subject:

Rick Nebel has a few things to say:
Polywell - No BS - No Excuses

Pictures of past and future Polywell efforts:
WB-D

Where the money for commercialization will come from:
Venture Capital Likes Fusion

H/T DeltaV at Talk Polywell

Polywell - No BS - No Excuses

Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log has a new article up on Polywell Fusion.

You won't hear Rick Nebel talking about fusion as a challenge requiring billions of dollars and decades of experimentation. For the past couple of years, Nebel heads up a handful of researchers following the less-traveled path to fusion at EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. in Santa Fe, N.M. That path involves creating a high-voltage chamber to sling ions so energetically at each other that at least some of them fuse and release energy.

EMC2 recently created a buzz in the fusion underground by reporting on its Web site that a series of experiments was able to "validate and extend" earlier results reported by the late physicist Robert Bussard. The company is now using a $7.9 million contract from the U.S. Navy to build a bigger test machine, known as WB-8. (WB stands for "Wiffle Ball," which refers to the shape of the machine's magnetic fields.)

What's more, Nebel and his colleagues are now seeking contributions to fund the development of what they say would be a 100-megawatt fusion plant - a "Phase 3" effort projected to cost $200 million and take four years.

"Successful Phase 3 marks the end of fossil fuels," the Web site proclaims.

Success isn't assured. The WB-8 experiment could conceivably show that the approach pioneered by Bussard, known as inertial electrostatic confinement fusion or IEC fusion, can't be scaled up to produce more power than it consumes. And if Nebel's team comes to that conclusion, he doesn't plan to pull any punches.

"No B.S. and no excuses," Nebel told me over the weekend. "If it looks like we have a problem with this, we're going to tell them."

Now that is a really different attitude from what has gone on in ITER. It was obvious to me a few years ago that the program was in trouble. But only in the last year have they admitted it by slipping the schedule by almost three years. So far.

You can read my earlier post on what I learned from EMC2 at WB-D which has some nice pictures of experiments and their proposed 100 MW device.

Investing In Polywell

Famulus at Prometheus Fusion had a close encounter with an angel investor from Europe. He gives an account of his interactions. Famulus was kind enough to ask me for some assistance with his proposal. I also got one of my physicist friends (Dr. Mike) to help out.

Famulus needs to raise funds to continue his experiments. He is getting close to his goal.

Donate Here.

Open Source With Superconductors

My friend Famulus is building an open source Polywell with super Conducting magnets. It would be the first superconducting Polywell in the world as far as anyone knows. Follow the link to see pretty pictures of the plan.

Here he discusses power supplies for the coils.

All very impressive. I wish I was there. There is a slight hitch. Famulus has run into a money problem.

As of the last time I checked he had 25 donations and only needs $1,958 to reach is goal. You can check his latest fund raising stats and donate at the link. And click on the "Updates" link at the top of the page. There are 6 of them.

But that is not the only motivational trick he has in his bag. He has custom T shirts too! I think he needs a better slogan for the shirt. Maybe I Helped Fund An Open Source Bussard Fusion Reactor And Got The Shirt As A Bonus. With suitable type faces.

And just in case you haven't heard of Polywell I can bring you up to speed. You can learn the basics of fusion energy by reading Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering

Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

The American Thinker has a good article up with the basics.

And the best part? We Will Know In Two Years or less.

I'm a big fan of small fusion projects. Especially after hearing what Plasma Physicist and author of Principles of Plasma PhysicsDr. Nicholas Krall said, "We spent $15 billion dollars studying tokamaks and what we learned about them is that they are no damn good." No I'm not against ITER, totally, but it is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. For a project that will not be done (regular power production) for 40 to 70 more years. With that kind of schedule we can afford to wait for some breakthroughs.

Oh yeah.

Pledge Some Money to help keep amateurs on the cutting edge.

Shake Up On The Way

For those of you not familiar with Latin "iter" means "the way". And the ITER Fusion program now headquartered in France is undergoing a top management shake up.

In an effort to put the world's largest scientific experiment back on track after delays and cost overruns, Europe is shaking up the agency overseeing its portion of the multinational ITER reactor.

On 16 February, Frank Briscoe, a British fusion scientist, will take the reins as interim director of Fusion for Energy (F4E), the agency in Barcelona, Spain, that manages Europe's ITER contribution — the largest of any partner's. Briscoe replaces Didier Gambier, a French physicist who joined the F4E as director when it formed in 2007. Gambier was originally appointed for a five-year term.

The European Union (EU) is also formulating a plan to complete construction on the multibillion-dollar machine in 2019, a year after currently scheduled, Nature has learned.

ITER aims to prove the viability of fusion power by using superconducting magnets to squeeze a plasma of heavy hydrogen isotopes to temperatures above 150 million °C. When full-scale experiments begin in 2026, the machine should produce ten times the power it consumes.

It seems the shake up is due in part to unhappy customers. You know - the people putting up the money.

Europe has faced increasing criticism from ITER's six other international partners: Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, China and the United States. A budget proposed last week by US president Barack Obama would slash America's funding for ITER in 2011 by 40%, to US$80 million; it cited "the slow rate of progress by the [ITER Organization] and some Members' Domestic Agencies". And on 2 February, Evgeny Velikhov, a Russian fusion researcher and head of ITER's council, called Europe a "weak link". "Unfortunately, their organizational structure is very poor," he told Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview that appeared on a Russian government website.

Finishing ITER in 2019, a goal that the F4E is now working towards with industrial contractors, would involve risks such as producing components in parallel, but scientists think that those risks can be managed. "There should be no doubt that Europe is trying hard to get ITER ready in the shortest time that is realistic," says one senior European scientist. The new schedule will be presented to other ITER partners at a meeting on 23–24 February in Paris.

In a recent post, Spiraling Out Of Control, I discussed some of the financial problems at ITER. And for those of you interested in the technical problems may I suggest (actually highly recommend) the Talk Polywell link at the end of that article.

And let me leave you with a few words from a Polywell Fusion fan who is no fan of Tokamak designs (ITER and similar devices): Plasma Physicist and author of Principles of Plasma Physics Dr. Nicholas Krall said, "We spent $15 billion dollars studying tokamaks and what we learned about them is that they are no damn good."

And the best thing about Polywell is what Physicist Rick Nebel, who is now herding the project, has to say about it: We Will Know In Two Years or less.

Spiraling Out Of Control

I have covered the troubles the ITER fusion project is having in ITER Gets Clipped which covered the American view of ITER's troubles. The The European Voice is taking a look at the problems from an European view.

ITER's projected costs have soared since the first estimates were made in 2001. Contributions will generally be made in kind (through provisions of construction materials, reactor components, labour and expertise). The EU's total in-kind contribution was estimated at €1.491 billion in 2001. By 2008, when the EU's Fusion for Energy agency, which was set up to manage the EU contribution to ITER, reviewed the costs, the estimate had risen to €3.5bn.
Rising costs

Concerns about the ballooning budget led the Commission last year to set up an expert group tasked with reviewing the construction costs. The group's report, released to member states last month and seen by European Voice, said that the construction costs alone could rise as high as €1.5bn (compared to a 2001 estimate of €598 million).

The report said that the increase was a result of “omissions or underestimates” in the original estimates, inflation in concrete and steel prices and “changes in specifications”.

The Commission has set up a task-force to identify sources of additional funding for ITER. One option being considered is a loan from the European Investment Bank.

The latest budget numbers I have seen have the project estimate at around $7 billion US (€5.1 billion).

Interesting that the budget was low balled to get things going and then things started spiraling out of control. Making up for missing resources in out years always costs a lot more than budgeting for them from the start. We see this in the space program all too often. The reason is that you have people you have to keep on board while changes are being made. What we in engineering like to refer to as "the burn rate" - the amount you have to spend to keep going while actual progress halts to make the changes. Every day's delay can cost millions of dollars. Then there is the problem of bringing new people up to speed. Adding people to a late project will often increase the delay over what making do with the people you have will cause. It is easy to get into a regenerative mode where you can never finish at an acceptable time with an acceptable budget. Another thing that happens when you add new people to a project is that the design suffers because the new people never know as much as the old hands.

Fredrick Brooks originally looked at this problem with respect to big software projects. He published his observations in a 1975 book called The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering.

It is probably the best book on big project management ever written so far. I have used his insights often in my engineering career. Management will hardly ever listen to these types of insights at the beginning. But occasionally you can get them to accept the insights provided once a project is in trouble.

Let me add that the much smaller Polywell Fusion project is not having any such difficulty. Physicist Rick Nebel said of his WB-7 experiment: it "runs like a top". Rick has been mum about WB-8 progress. Since he has the same team that did WB-7 working on WB-8, I expect he will deliver the knowledge required on time and within budget. Of course he has an advantage. It is easier to keep a small project ($ millions) on time than it is to do the same for a large project ($ billions). If the experiments look promising I expect that he will have a lot more trouble getting a real power plant operational. The logistics get harder.

You can look at recent list of the design problems ITER faces at Talk Polywell.

Nerd Night Report

Here is the first sketchy report on last night's nerd night in New York.

If you've never been to a Nerd Nite before, here's how it goes down. Take a college PowerPoint seminar on bird migration or muscular dystrophy or nuclear fusion or what have you, and hold it late at night in a hip bar in DUMBO. Allow anyone to present on any scientific subject, regardless of obscurity, social appropriateness, or sobriety. Yes. It is exactly as crazy and surreal as you imagine. And it is great.

Tonight's lectures were on open source Bussard reactors, the neuroscience of visual perception in the context of art, the anti-ergonomic effects of running shoes, and teledildonics. I think you can probably imagine how each of those went.

Perhaps most notably, this is the first large social event I've been to in NYC in which I've actually succeeded in getting to meet and hang out with random strangers in my general age cohort. Maybe I don't completely suck at making new friends after all.

I missed nerds so much.

Here is my original announcement of Nerd Night with fusion.

Nerd Night

Famulus of Prometheus Fusion will be featured at Nerd Night, Friday, January 15th, in NYC.

*Presentation 1

Fusing the Atom and Living to Tell
by Famulus

Description: We have built an open source nuclear fusion reactor and fused the atom. This is the story of a remarkable fusion device called the Farnsworth Fusor and its successor, the Bussard Reactor (aka. Polywell). The Bussard Reactor holds the promise of clean cheap abundant energy from fusion. This is a story of research on the edge.

Bio: Famulus is an entrepreneur, hacker, and rails developer. In 2008 he learned of the Bussard fusion reactor and left the software world to try and build a working Bussard Reactor.

If you have the time and the inclination a night out with the nerds could be fun. And if you want learn the basics of fusion energy so you can ask intelligent questions you can start by reading Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering

Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

The American Thinker has a good article up with the basics.

And the best part? We Will Know In Two Years