Cheap Fusion

Discuss funding sources for polywell research, including the non-profit EMC2 Fusion Development Corporation, as well as any other relevant research efforts.

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MSimon
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Cheap Fusion

Post by MSimon »

*

http://www.nabble.com/-ADMIN-%3A--Quest ... #a17695061

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> Personally I think governments around the world should be
> spending big
> on fusion power, its the only answer that gives you the
> same
> dependability and infrastructure as traditional power
> systems.

Hallelujah!

> So what you blow 100 million in grants, a billion even.

A 100 billion on fusion that worked within 10 years would be
an utter bargain.
Even a trillion dollars on real genuine fusuoon would be
cheap.
I think we can do it for a lot less than 100 billion. Some where in the 1 to 10 billion range.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

jmc
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Post by jmc »

Do these people have any money themselves or are they simply sayinmg a trillion pounds of other peoples money would be a bargain for fusion?

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

jmc wrote:Do these people have any money themselves or are they simply sayinmg a trillion pounds of other peoples money would be a bargain for fusion?
It is always easier to spend other people's money lavishly.

I did a bit on that aspect of the ITER boondoggle here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... uture.html
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

CDorman
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Re: Cheap Fusion

Post by CDorman »

MSimon wrote:*

I think we can do it for a lot less than 100 billion. Some where in the 1 to 10 billion range.
MSimon,

I was curious what your range is derived from, since this is an order of magnitude off of the currently promised Naval funding. If the upper limit is to account for unforeseen engineering problems in the demonstration reactor, shouldn't the lower end of your range be 0.15B? Or will there be significantly more funding for EMC2 required beyond demonstration of a working reactor? I thought EMC2 was planning to generate its revenues with licensing fees -- not by manufacturing reactors itself -- so that the $150-200M mentioned at EMC2fusion.org was "all" that was needed from investors/gov't funders.

Thanks.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

I was thinking of a crash program to produce power delivering reactors.

The $200 mil only gets you a net power machine in the abstract, i.e. no conversion to electricity.

The extra $$ account for the added costs of power conversion (a larger machine for instance plus power conversion eqpt) and the usual wastage from being in a hurry.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

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