Nuclear Fusion: Behind the Scenes Plays to Commercial Fusion:--Before ITER Gets Off the Ground

Two of my favourite blogger Brians--Brian Wang and Brian Westenhaus--have recently posted articles about Bussard Fusion, and nuclear fusion in general. Today's post from Brian Westenhaus includes some interesting quotes about the future of fusion energy:

...Bussard’s technology is different. It and many others concepts are different in that in some cases the process will be aneutronic or direct conversion from nuclear fusion to electricity with no heat production. The heat conversion and other massive installations to handle the atomic heat output and electrical generation are expected to be unnecessary. In the Bussard system there is just electricity and a trickle of radiation, which stops the moment you turn the fueling off or over fuel it. It just fizzles out like the old vacuum tubes. And they’re small, such as fitting on ships, inside office buildings and even airplanes.[SF Author Karl Schroeder]

...""Within five years, large companies will start to think about building fusion reactors," Wal van Lierop, CEO of Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, said in an interview at the Clean Tech Investor Summit taking place here this week. In three to four years, scientists will demonstrate results that show that fusion has a 60 percent chance of success, he said."[Venture Capitalist Wal van Lierop]___NewEnergy

Brian goes on to discuss van Lierop's venture play with Canadian company General Fusion, a company aiming to build small 100 MW fusion reactors providing power at a competitive cost of US $0.04 per kwh. There is much more at the NewEnergyand Fuel link above.

Brian Wang at NextBigFuture took a look at progress in Bussard Fusion last month, and more recently looks at the other small fusion projects that venture capitalists are backing--including General Fusion mentioned above. He describes the General Fusion approach:

GF will build a ~3 meter diameter spherical tank filled with liquid metal (lead-lithium mixture). The liquid is spun to open up a vertical cylindrical cavity in the center of the sphere (vortex). Two spheromaks (magnetized plasma “smoke ring”) are injected from each end of the cavity. They merge in the center to form a single magnetized plasma target. The outside of the sphere is covered with pneumatic rams. The rams use compressed steam to accelerate pistons to ~50 m/s. These pistons simultaneously impact the outside of the sphere and launch a spherical compression wave in the liquid metal. As the wave travels and focuses towards the center, it becomes stronger and evolves into a strong shock wave. When the shock arrives in the center, it rapidly collapses the cavity with the plasma in it. At maximum compression the conditions for fusion are briefly met and a fusion burst occurs releasing its energy in fast neutrons. The neutrons are slowed down by the liquid metal causing it to heat up. A heat exchanger transfers that heat to a standard steam cycle turbo-alternator to produce electricity for the grid. Some of the steam is used to run the rams. The lithium in the liquid metal finally absorbs the neutrons and produces tritium that is extracted and used as fuel for subsequent shots. This cycle is repeated about one time per second.___NextBigFuture

Very creative, in my humble opinion. Brian then goes on to discuss other approaches to MTF--Magnetized Target Fusion . He also provides links for further reading and research.

Here is Ecogeek's interview with SF Author Karl Schroeder and News.com's look at Venture Capitalist Wal van Lierop.
(via NewEnergyand Fuel)

Here is a blog run by M. Simon dedicated to the IEC Bussard Fusion approach.

Here are links to much more material on Bussard and Polywell IEC fusion.

More IEC Fusion links.

Recent Hobbyspace look at low budget fusion ventures

ITER may not even be running before the year 2020. What if one of the long-shot venture capital approaches pays off--and makes ITER look like yet another obsolete mega-government dinosaur, before it is even completed?