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www.us-tech.com Fusion Again..... Continued from page 1
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covered that the whole thing was a monumental screw-up in reading lab results; some cried “hoax” and either way, we had been taken in. The Fleishmann-Pons room-temperature “cold” fusion process was presented very logically by two scientists who had excellent credentials. It seemed to fulfill the basic definition: it re- portedly produced more energy than it consumed. And that is the ultimate objective of any kind of fusion, which ordinarily gobbles up enormous amounts of energy: it must produce more energy than it consumes. We’re talking about such energy
hogs as the need for a temperature of as much as 100 million degrees Cel- sius (that’s right, 100 million) and pressures so great that they can only be estimated. Make no mistake, this is not wishful thinking but real sci- ence, and it’s being worked on serious- ly in dozens of sites worldwide, by governments, universities, science centers, and especially well-funded startups. This time around, the secret weapon is money, lots of money, being paid out by venture capitalists for startups that they believe will create a new kind of Silicon Valley. One such company, Tri Alpha Energy (TAE) in Foothill Ranch, Lake Forest, Califor- nia, reportedly has more than 140 em- ployees and nearly $200 million in funding so far. And the money keeps rolling in from investors. The venture capitalists believe they’re on to some- thing big, and there will be a huge payoff for the company that gets there firstest with the mostest.
Very Hot Plasma The process starts with a plasma
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that is heated and compressed to lev- els that mimic the interior of the Sun. Creating such pressure physically is not possible; any solid object trying to exert such pressure would be vapor- ized instantly by the sun-hot temper- atures. So scientists have been exert- ing pressure in other ways — bom- barding the plasma with a multitude of high-intensity laser beams, and/or running the plasma through the “doughnut hole” center of a tokamak a high-energy toroid-like electromagnet of enormous size and power. In fact, tokamaks large and small have prolif- erated around the world over several decades as one of the prime ingredi- ents of the fusion solution. The biggest tokamak ever is being built in Southern France to be a part of ITER, the International Thermonuclear Ex- perimental Reactor, currently under way with total funding of more than $20 billion. A crucial threshold is the break-
even point — the point at which ener- gy output equals energy input. When the reactor passes this point, produc- ing more energy than it consumes, it is said to be a successful power source. The race for that break-even point is being run in earnest by major players, with private venture capital the most important ingredient. Another major player in the race
is General Fusion, located in Vancou- ver, BC, Canada. So far this company has achieved some impressive results. What is especially impressive is a re- cent TED Talk by company founder Dr. Michel Laberge in which he ex- plains the fusion process and how much progress has been made. The video of this TED Talk, which was presented in March of 2014, is avail-
able on the company’s web site (
www.generalfusion.com) and pro- vides some valuable insights into the fusion process. The basis for most of today’s
R&D is the use of very hot plasmas. As Dr. Laberge points out in his pres- entation, nuclear fission is easy, nu- clear fusion is very difficult. The fu- sion process requires a temperature of 100 to 150 million degrees C, and into that high-temperature plasma of hy- drogen atoms — actually just the nu- clei since the electrons are stripped off by the plasma — are forced to fuse to- gether forming a helium atom. The process generates a lot of excess ener- gy in the form of heat, and we’re also hoping for some free electrons. So far, scientists have been able to make the reaction last as long as 100 millisec- onds — an eternity in the world of fu- sion. Going forward, a realistic goal will be a reaction that continues ad in- finitum, as it does in the Sun, and an energy output that exceeds its enor- mous energy input. Remember, each one of these experimental reactors represents an attempt to create a miniature Sun on the planet Earth. The question at this point is,
“Will this really happen?” Apparently there are a lot of deep-pocket in- vestors with venture capital that’s looking for a home. Many of them feel that the way to solve the fusion prob- lem is to throw a lot of money at it. The most ambitious of these projects is ITER in the south of France. For comparison’s sake, the CERN collider cost $4.75 billion, and now ITER is saying that $20 billion won’t be enough. The ITER consortium in- cludes a number of countries: the United States, the European Union, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and India. Its goal: to be online gener- ating power continuously by 2027. It’s going to take lots of money, time and patience, while air pollution levels in China continue to force industrial shutdowns to give the air a chance to recover and to encourage people to come out of their houses to shop, go to school, and to work. Coal is cheap and there’s lots of it in China, so it is very tempting to continue to pollute no matter how many health problems and deaths may result. Who will get there first with the
total solution? That’s hard to say. ITER certainly looks the most ambi- tious and has lots of money pouring in. And ever-mindful of what happened in 1989’s Cold Fusion stampede and boondoggle, today’s researchers know that there’s no free lunch. Success will cost very big bucks. The raw material of hydrogen will pose no problem; it’s the most plentiful element in the uni- verse and is readily available extract- ed from our seawater. It will definitely happen, but probably not for another 30 years. Will it happen in time to save our planet? r
PCB Sales... Continued from page 1
search. “Strong order growth in late 2014 and in many months of 2015 have kept sales growing, although at a very slow pace,” she added. IPC’s monthly PCB industry
statistics are based on data provided by a representative sample of both rigid PCB and flexible circuit manu- facturers selling in the USA and Canada. Info:
www.ipg.org r
February, 2016
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