New approach could mean break-even nuclear fusion reactions within 2-3 years

An aluminum z-pinch target tube installed in the Z machine at Sandia Labs
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Wires vs solid aluminum liner






Nuclear fusion reseach has been making false promises to to public since the mid 1960\'s where they claimed that you would not even need a meter on your house because the electricity was going to be so cheap. It is time for the public to stop funding this research and put the money into something that after 50 years is now trying to sell that it will \'break even\'.
Facebook User
Pretty short sighted... \"Electricity so cheap you wouldn\'t even need a meter\" sounds like a goal worth generations of effort to me. Better than throwing all our scientific resources into deep water drilling in the gulf, for example. I think what this culture needs is more scientific holy grails like that, not less.
Who says to \"throw all our scientific resouces into deep water drilling\"? There are many other sources that could provide all of the energy we need. A combination of wind, solar, hydro, tidal, ocean thermal, geothermal and even things like cellulosic ethanol could be a completely workable scheme. Maybe you like billions of dollars spent on a \"holy grail\" when other technologies are not only within reach, but actually on the market, but not all of us like throwing good money after bad.
Article states: \"...already proven successful in creating fusion, (as evidenced by the production of some neutrons).\" ...and therefore worth pursuing-- science takes time.
Charles Bosse
I\'m all for the pursuit of fusion power, but not because I think it is an energy holy grail. In a very real sense, these projects lead to in-depth and fundamental understandings of the basic interactions of materials and field dynamics. That said, if we spent this money on grants (lets abandon ineffective tax breaks that require kickbacks already) to put solar panels and small wind turbines on rooftops, or even on designing buildings around collecting and maintaining their own energy, we would be significantly better off as a society. Given the amazingly short time-line to the -dramatic- decline of non-renewable oil availability, we need to begin implementing what we have and move some of the lofty design goals to a smaller table for a bit.
Cathedrals in Europe took centuries to build. The grandson of a craftsman who started building the structure would be lucky to see its completion. \"Medieval life was extremely uncertain; life expectancy was short, resources were few, populations small and ever-changing due to incidents of plague and disease and often, finances were lacking. How cathedrals were built at all in these circumstances is amazing.\" Hundreds of years committed to creating a fantistic testiment to what man at the time could do, and for some reason, now people are complaining that decades are too long, even when the reward is a solution to satiating the populations ever increasing demand for power at a reasonable price. Where did patience go? What happened to attention spans?
Too funny. People actually want to abandon fusion research because it is \"taking to long?\" There is another dimension to achieving fusion energy - energy density. No other energy source could provide the energy density associated with fusion. The repercussions of conquering fusion energy production would reach much further than what solar,wind, tidal, geothermal, or any other source can yield. It is not hard to understand, the source of energy for our entire civilizations existence and most of the organisms on the planet is the sun. What is the that powered by?
> \"not all of us like throwing good money after bad.\" We\'ve subsidized renewable energy to the tune of ~ $60bn. Unfortunately we\'ve subsidized fossil fuels by ~ $550bn. That\'s half a trillion tax dollars literally up in smoke. Nuclear fission is great as far as it goes, but if we switched all base-load generation to it, we\'d be out of fuel in a year. Heavy investment in renewables is the only sane choice.
Richard Burden
Fusion research has received a few billion dollars worldwide in over 40 years. There are 7 billion people on the earth. How much is that per person per year? We\'ve been insanely stingy with fusion research. Fusion is the most concentrated source of power within our reach and the most abundant in the known universe. Nuclear fission is the 2nd best. The more concentrated the power, the more work we can get done with our available manpower. The more work we can get done, the better our ability to overcome deadly cosmic events and avoid extinction. Green energy is for dinosaurs! With wind and solar, geothermal and tidal power, biomass and other forms of low-density piddle-power, we\'ll never get off planet earth, nor will we be able to maintain the population of 7 billion already living on earth. If we \"decarbonize\" the economy, and don\'t switch to nuclear fission before we do that, we\'ll cut the human population to less than 1 billion, permanently, by starvation, exposure and squalor! If we switch now to nuclear fission, breeder reactors and spent fuel reprocessing will give us a 1,000-year supply easily, because those two technologies allow us to fission the entire mass of natural uranium, and of natural thorium, and of all the transuranics produced in our nuclear reactors, leaving only fission products. Without breeders and reprocessing, we can only fission a fraction of the 0.7% of natural uranium (the isotope U-235), plus a small fraction of the \"depleted\" U-238 that is \"bred\" into plutonium in a regular, non-breeder reactor, and we can\'t use thorium at all. The once-through \"waste\" that we bury, plus the \"depleted\" uranium-238 from the enrichment process, together contains 99% of the power of the original uranium extracted from the mine. See
Matt Fletcher
If you think fussion is just a pipe dream and can't be done just look to the sun and realize our entire existance is due to fussion power and our entire future does to. Understanding fussion is understanding one of the great energy sources of the Universe. Every star is a natural fussion reactor and seeing how our star, the Sun, produces more energy in a second than all of mankind has every produced leads me to believe it's worth looking into if for no other reason than to understand the sun (which also happens to be the largest variable in predicting the weather). One more thing and correct me if I'm wrong but isn't solar energy or solar panels just another way of collecting fussion energy much, much, much less efficiently?