A Letter To My Congressman
Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:06 pm
At this point, I'd just like it to be on their radar so that when the WB-7 results are announced they're primed for action.
Please offer your thoughts, pro and con. Mistakes, things I left out, things I shouldn't have put in, etc.
The initial version will probably be a hardcopy sent to my Congressman (Mark Kirk) via U.S. mail (I think this is taken more seriously than emails), but I'd like this to be generic enough to be sent to any Congresscritter, and perhaps become an online petition as well.
Please offer your thoughts, pro and con. Mistakes, things I left out, things I shouldn't have put in, etc.
The initial version will probably be a hardcopy sent to my Congressman (Mark Kirk) via U.S. mail (I think this is taken more seriously than emails), but I'd like this to be generic enough to be sent to any Congresscritter, and perhaps become an online petition as well.
Dear Mr. Kirk,
As you are no doubt aware, energy prices have been rising, especially oil, and there are increasing concerns that sources of power using fossil fuels may have negative environmental impacts, while nuclear fission is still controversial, and clean renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar are generally inefficient and do not produce enough power to meet the energy needs of Americans. What you may not be aware of is that a possible solution to America’s energy crisis is on the horizon in the form of a developing technology called IEC (inertial electromagnetic confinement) fusion, which may offer a cheap, virtually inexhaustible and nonpolluting source of energy.
A U.S. Navy-funded IEC fusion project started by the late Dr. Robert Bussard (a one-time executive at the Atomic Energy Commission and highly regarded member of the scientific community) produced some very promising results in 2005 before its budget ran out. Dr. Bussard believed that if those initial results could be validated, the work could be extended into a full-scale, 100 megawatt net power device at a cost of about $200 million. Should this proposed full-scale device function as predicted, America will have a technology that can produce electricity cleanly for about a tenth of current commercial rates.
Sadly, Dr. Bussard passed away in late 2007, but before his death the Navy agreed to fund the effort to replicate his earlier results, and since his passing a new team has been working towards that end. This team has built a new machine and expects to report their findings for public review by the scientific community some time in early to mid-2008. Should their findings conclude that the initial results were valid and the design is capable of being extended into a full-scale machine that will produce power, we strongly urge you and your colleagues in the United States Congress to fully fund this research, as it could prove to be one of the most important projects this great nation has ever undertaken.
An overview of Bussard’s Polywell (short for polyhedral magnetic well) fusion design is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell.
A roundup of Polywell fusion web pages can be found here:
http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/index.html
Sincerely,