Focused Fusion

By their nature, corporations and government bureaucracies have a stake in keeping things going the way they always have been going. New technologies that threaten to replace the existing order jeopardize hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in revenue.

It is therefore easy to see why a technology such a fusion - a threat to the petroleum industry - would be sabotaged at worst, and under funded at best.

Jim at the Energy Blog, always leading the way on news that is threatening to the Oil industry, today points out an under funded Fusion project.

About Focus Fusion

Developers, led by Eric J. Lerner, are developing Focus Fusion, a fusion process to generate electricity that is expected to be relatively cheap, highly efficient, and small enough to fit into a garage. The process which channels hydrogen-boron fuel through a plasma focusing device, uses a smaller, more elegant approach than is currently being pursued by conventional fusion researchers. This device could be fired up and shut off with the flip of a switch, with no damaging radiation, no threat of meltdown, and no possibility of explosions

Focus Fusion reactors are small and decentralized, ideally suited for distributed power generation. Focus Fusion reactors can fit into a garage. Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LPP) Focus Fusion project aims at developing an electric generator with a projected output of about 5 MW, sufficient for a small community. The Focus Fusion process can produce electricity directly without the need to generate steam, use a turbine or use a rotating generator. The reactors are extremely compact and economical, with expected costs of $300,000 apiece. As the fuel is an insignificant cost, electric power production is estimated at about one tenth of a cent per kWh, fifty times cheaper than current costs. Because it can be shut off and turned on so easily, a bank of these could easily accommodate whatever surges and ebbs are faced by the grid on a given day, without wasting unused energy from non-peak times into the environment, which is the case with much of the grid’s energy at present. On-site personnel are not needed on a daily basis, maintenance would be rare. One technician could operate a dozen facilities by themselves.

There is much more, read on…