60 Minutes segment last weekend "Cold Fusion"

[Ole]

Interesting titles they use in that company - "Chief Visionary Officer", anyone?

But the CVO is no anyone - he's Dr. Irving Dardik, MD!

[Joe VanCleave]

The Z-Pinch inertial confinement method being researched at Sandia promises a long-term road map to a functioning fusion power plant.

Here's a link to a lengthy PDF of the program overview.

Here's Wikipedia's overview of the Z-Pinch Sandia machine.

~Joe

[Struan Gray]

I think that's the sticking point for me. It needs to be more than localized for power applications.

True, but there are some interesting applications for a tunable benchtop neutron source, and that's before you get into the wilder power-source-on-a-chip dreams of the nano-technologists.

Lund is in the final stages of bidding and raising funding for both a new synchrotron lab and the European Spallation Source. If funded they will be built all over one of my favourite lunchtime photo-hunting areas. If I can persuade the powers that be that all we really need is a Bunsen burner and a roll of sellotape I'll be happy :-)

[Tim Gray]

True, but there are some interesting applications for a tunable benchtop neutron source, and that's before you get into the wilder power-source-on-a-chip dreams of the nano-technologists.

No doubt. And that's ample reason to study these kinds of configurations.

[alanrockwood]

... there are some interesting applications for a tunable benchtop neutron source... :-)

There is actually a benchtop neutron source, though I don't know how tunable it is. I believe it has been commercialized by a German company.

The device is called a "fusor". It was invented by Philo T. Farnsworth, the person largely credited with inventing television. Interestingly (for me at least) Philo was my grandmother's cousin, and I met his widow at a family party some years ago.

[alanrockwood]

Some twenty years ago I worked at a company where a Cornell PhD graduate also worked. He told me that in the fusion program they scheduled their "breakthroughs". It was all part of the funding process.

This all reminds me of the saying: "fusion is the energy source of the future. Always has been. Always will be."

[alanrockwood]

If you could shorten the D-D bond length by a bit (I don't remember how much, but I did research this back when cold fusion was in the news, and as I recall it was a few tens of percent) fusion rates would become significant. In that kind of a system you don't need to have a high tunneling rate, unlike in a collisional process, because the nuclei would be close together for a long long long time, unlike in a collision where they are in proximity for picoseconds or less (probably much much much less.)

[spark]

PhD's at universities publish grad student research to get more grants to hire more grad students to do more research. Its a terrific energy source that bypasses the laws of thermodynamics and economics by using those of P. T. Barnum.

[Tim Gray]

Some twenty years ago I worked at a company where a Cornell PhD graduate also worked. He told me that in the fusion program they scheduled their "breakthroughs". It was all part of the funding process.

This all reminds me of the saying: "fusion is the energy source of the future. Always has been. Always will be."

I have to call bull on this. A lot of people work really hard on it. Nobody schedules breakthroughs. The larger projects (10's of millions of dollars/year) do have milestones each year, and like in any large bureaucratic system, they are set conservatively so there is little chance of failure. However, at least since the late 70's/early 80's, the whole 'fusion will be here in 20-30 years' was dependent on an Apollo style funding scheme. Budgets that grew every year, as needed. Needless to say, that didn't happen, and instead large cuts happened. Even now, 25 years later, the US fusion budget is only a fraction of what it was in the early 80's (in real dollars).

Personally, I think it's ridiculous that we only budget about $300 million a year for this kind of research. Oil won't last forever. And if you think $300 million/year sounds like a lot of money, look into to how much fission reactors cost to build now and how long they take to be built. The last plant built in the US took 23 years to build. I've also read that new plant cost estimates are in the $15 billion range.

The rest of the world seems to have a clue. Japan has two billion dollar class projects, and they fought tooth and nail with France to host ITER, just to be able to foot 50-60% of the $10 billion in costs (ITER is the international collaboration to build a tokamak that reaches a Q of 10; 10 times the energy out that was put in). France fought back and is the host. The EU has several large devices in operation. The US on the other hand rejoined ITER late as a minor partner, after we helped start it all in the late 80's. We wanted nothing to do with hosting it. The US's most advance fusion project was initially built in the mid-80's. Though it has been upgraded... way to go USA.

[nworth]

An interesting, truly tabletop device is available commercially for neutron production. It is the Zetatron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zetatron), and it was derived fron the neutron generators used in nuclear weapons. But this device is a long term laboratory tool rather than a one shot device. Some models are tunable, at least to some extent.