Back in 2006 former Assistant Director of the Atomic Energy Commission, spoke about Polywell Fusion at a Google tech talk. The Google video created a lot of buzz, about the little WB6 reactor, its 5 test runs before it shorted out, and the neutron counts claimed by Dr Bussard.
In the late 1960's Dr Bussard championed the start of the US Tokamak fusion program,
Dr Bussard is the former Assistant Director of the US Atomic Energy Commission, he was the father of the US Fusion effort from the 1970's into the 1980's. As the Assistant Dir. of the AEC, Dr. Bussard went to Congress and pushed the fusion research programs in the 70's that developed the Tokamak design. Though during the last 12 or so years he no longer believed the donut shaed Tokamak design would yield a break thru.
And then in August the NAVY announced funding to build a more robust copy of the device featured in the Google video, WB6. The goal, to duplicate those WB6 results with the new WB7.
Then Dr Bussard passed away in Oct. after a long battle with cancer.
Richard Nebel, on leave from Los Alamos National Laboratory has headed up the team assembled in Santa Fe New Mexico in Dr Bussards absence. The team in New Mexico has announced first Plasma.
Alan Boyle from MSNBC has blogged:
Bussard's mantle has been picked up by a small team led by Richard Nebel, who has taken a leave from Los Alamos National Laboratory to head up Bussard's EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. Backed by a Navy contract, Nebel's five-person team is trying to pick up the technology where Bussard left it.
"What's there is interesting, OK?" Nebel told me today. "And the bottom line of it is, what we've been charged to do is reproduce that. Find out if it's real. Find out if or if not all this stuff is what it seems to be."
EMC2 Fusion has built an upgraded model of Bussard's last experimental plasma containment device, which was known as WB-6. (The WB stands for Wiffle Ball, a whimsical reference to the structure of the device.) "We got first plasma yesterday," Nebel said - but he and his colleagues in Santa Fe, N.M., still have a long way to get the WB-7 experiment up to the power levels Bussard was working with.
"We're not out trying to make a big splash on any of this stuff at this point," Nebel said. But he said he's hoping to find out by this spring whether or not Bussard's concept is worth pursuing with a larger demonstration project.
The initial analysis showed that Bussard's data on energy yields were consistent with expectations, Nebel said.
"We don't know for sure whether all that's right," he said, "but it'd be horrible for Mother Nature to give you what you expect to see, and have it all be bogus."
WB4 in 2003, yes, small amounts of fusion can be had in a very small device.
WB6 in late 2005, prior to a capacitor draining short that damaged one of the magnets.
One inate element of me being human, is hope. I write this with the hope that Polywell fusion can be the energy system of the this century.
Hope that Peak Oil just became old news.
Hope that Global warming can be dealt with.
Hope that humans can explore the solar system.
Hope that we can do better than Dick Cheneys double super secret energy meetings.
I hope, therefore I am human.
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Talk-polywell, a resource for fusion geeks.
IEC Fusion, simple, elegant, and can power 76 day trip to Saturn.
IEC Fusion update..Tom Ligon: guest on "thespaceshow.com" tonite @ 10pm eastern.
Update: Dr. Bussards IEC Fusion program... the cure for peak oil ?
Univ. of Wis.: Inertial electrostatic confinement fusion.