Betruger wrote:Seriously - what fusion breakthru project is going to just blast right thru all difficulties, setbacks, obstacles of theoretical/experimental/funding/political/and any and all other types, like blowtorch thru butter? And all in just a handful of years?
The
right solution, of course!?
Some believe that magnetic fields alone can lead us to fusion energy. Such people have been working to prove that for the last 60 years, and have failed.
Some believe that new physics is required, and once that breakthrough is made the rest will follow.
I believe that it is clear a combination of electric* and magnetic fields will provide an answer, as the likes of Rostoker, Bussard and myself have already had 'the hunch' over, and that once they have been correctly configured then it'll be an egg-of-Columbus thing - it'll be 'obvious' to everyone!!
*[The tok guys are beginning to wake up to the fact that the radial electric fields around the plasma are key to its stability even though, theoretically, there should be no such e-fields.]
However, until people actively recognise a solution as 'the' answer, then it'll be tough going, but that doesn't mean there isn't a solution already in existence, or nearly there with a few tweaks. The issue is in people trying to pick the working one from all the other fusion-detritus that blows around - hence my antipathy towards the likes of Rossi.
It was a no-brainer to run with Spitzer's stellartron in the early days - it looked like it might work and no-one else had come up with an alternative because Spitzer was the first to suggest magnetic fusion energy. Similar to tokamak, though it gained ground by being the first to a measured 1,000eV temp. After that, and the oil crisis, all hell broke loose and every bright spark had their own crazy idea on fusion. It's just like alchemy in this regard - once the very basics of chemistry were unlocked in medieval times it dawned on a few folks to use it to make gold, then everyone followed. This seems to me to be
exactly the same as the discovery of nuclear physics and then the quest for energy.
But that story should give you the correct lead - there
was an
'answer' to chemistry and if a medieval alchemist had been armed with a periodic table and a few choice chemistry course books, all the great chemical discoveries could have been compressed into a few years. The question would have been, though - would anyone have recognised the periodic table for what it is if one had magically dropped from the sky in medieval times?
So the answer is; most certainly could a fusion breakthrough happen and give us grid power within years. But who's seriously looking through all the ideas coming up to recognise one that might actually work?
