Well, sure, I guess, compared to the $14-billion they're going to blow on ITER, a mere $37-million sounds like chump change.
More specifically, General Fusion plans to make a metal sphere
reactor that spins a liquid mixture of lithium and lead to create a
vortex inside the sphere. Two spheromaks, or plasma rings kept together
by a self-contained magnetic field, are injected into the sphere to
create a target. At the same time, 220 pistons hit the outside surface
of the sphere to create a shock wave that hits the plasma, compresses
it, fuses the isotopes into helium, and releases energy-filled neutrons
captured by the liquid mixture. The energy is extracted from the liquid
with a heat exchanger to create steam to spin a power-generating
turbine and to continue to run the reactor.
It sounds good on paper, but General Fusion has yet to develop 3-D
simulations or build a test reactor. If the company can raise another
$37 million, it hopes to have a prototype reactor ready in five years.
With $500 million more in funding, the company will have a grid-ready
reactor four years after that. These are a lot of "ifs", and we
probably won't know the fate of General Fusion for at least half a
decade.
For a long time I thought this was a joke. Then I did some BOE calculations based on proposed specifications of the rams and other stuff and it looks mechanically feasible.
Will it be a net power producer? Time may tell.
BTW this device is like 200 ink jet print heads scaled up. No surprise - the designers used to design ink jet print heads.
Posted by: M. Simon | August 02, 2009 at 01:31 AM
That is all the credentials I needed to hear about. I have long sought to have print head designers step in and work on fusion reactor systems.
They are out of work, of course,and 37 million is not all that much for a real mechanical prototype, especially when millions have morphed to billions and billions to trillions in the 'real world' of "economic make-believe"
Richard Hull
Posted by: Richard Hull | August 03, 2009 at 11:57 AM