Dr. Bussard's talk at Google,  Should Google Go Nuclear? - follow up.

Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606
Robert Bussard on Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion (IEC)

Did you spend the 1 hr 32 min 37 sec to view the on-line video of the talk
given at Google by Robert Bussard?

If you down loaded the file to play with the Google Video Player on your own
computer you probably noted that you have used .5 GB of your disk space.
Plays nice though.
- LRK -

You might like to look at the talk in a printed form by Mark Duncan at
askmar, www.askmar.com as the PDF file is only 1.6 MB and you can look at
the graphs and images at your leisure.
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.askmar.com/ConferenceNotes/Should%20Google%20Go%20Nuclear.pdf
This is not your father's fusion reactor!  Forget everything you know about
conventional thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature plasmas, steam
turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a thing of the past.
Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

Back in June of 2006, Dr. Brussard replied to some folks on the JREF Forum
with material that you may now be familiar with. 

Still let me snag a snip as it is easier than trying to copy from PDF files
that give you strange mappings.  You may also like to read some of the
comments above this post to see what they were saying.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.randi.org/forumlive/showthread.php?p=1722023
Dear SirPhilip!:

I have read the threads on the Randi forum, and they are all intent and I am
sure well-menaing. However, I have not been able to "log in" on this forum
so am writing to you instead. Perhaps you can post this note as a reply and
commentary to some of the issues raised by your forum correspondents.

Snip

As to our funding -- our USN contract still exists, and still has about $ 2M
authorized in it. However, year-by-year funding was NOT provide for FY 2006,
so that we knew we had to close down early in 2006.. What saved us was Adm
Cohen (CNR) who put another 900 K into the program to try to get us down the
road to where we DID go, and then we had to quit. It was not a cutoff of OUR
funding, but the entire Navy Energy Program was cut to zero in FY 2006, and
we were a part of this cut. The funds were clearly needed for the more
important War in Iraq.

So, as we cut down, we managed to save the lab equipment, by transfer to
SpaceDev, which hired our three best lab people as well, and we are still
trying to get the missing $ 2M restored and put into our existing but
unfunded contract. IF this happens - which is improbable, given the politics
of this election year, and the non-visionary people in Congress - we will
redo WB-6 with an improved and better version (WB-7) which should give 5x
more output, and run about 50 tests to quiet dissent. AND we will convene a
review panel of very high-level and internationally distinguished people to
spend about 6 weeks going over this to recommend for or against proceeding
with a full scale demo.

This may or may not happen. If it does, I have little doubt as to the panel
recommendation, as the data and insight from WB-5/6 is just too clear. We
really have solved the last engineering physics problem that has plagued our
work for 12 year s or so. Yes, there is much left to do, especially in
controls and diagnostics, but these are predictable things not dependent on
beating the Paschen curve.

And we still have to develop some reliable e-guns and i-sources, again
predictable engineering that costs both time and money, but not new physics.

Why a full-scale demo? Because the system scales oddly: Fusion output goes
as the 7th power of the size and Gain goes as the 5th power. Thus there is
very little to be gained by building a half-size model; it is too weak to
give anything definitive about power production or gain. And our tests were
always at about 1/8 to 1/10 scale of the full scale demo. We told the DoD
from the beginning that the real program would cost about 150-200 M, since
1987, and they all knew this. However, since the DoD has no charter to do
such work, and the political realities were that a big DoD program would
attract the ire and power of the DoE to kill it, it was never funded beyond
about 1/8 the level required.

So we did what we could and finally DID prove the physics and associated
engineering physics constraints, scaling laws, etc, albeit at 1/8-1/10
scale. So what? Doubling the size will not tell us anything we don't already
know. The next intelligent and logical step is to build a machine big enough
to make net power. And THAT is the same 200 M we have quoted to the DoD
since the beginning.

As for energy companies "stampeding" to support us - It is clear that a view
like this is ignorant of the reality of energy companies. There is only one
thing the oil companies want, and that is to sell oil, and more oil. So long
as the fields pump, the oil companies will squeeze. They have NO, absolutely
NO interest in anything new, ins spite of all their foolish ads in magazines
for wind mills and solar-PV roofs. It is all just show and tell. I know
these guys, and there is no way they would support anything that might get
in the way of oil. The only way to stop oil, from their view, is when it
does run out. And then they''ll go for deeper drilling, new fields, Gulf
geopressure gas, LNG, etc, etc, and keep raising the price, until finally
foolish solar and windmills become competitive.

Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

My thought on the above is that one needs to be aware of the politics of the
time and do the best they can to persevere.  It would be nice to have
alternate sources of energy that are not tied to a cartel.

What are you developing in your garage?  May it become a Historical
Landmark.

http://www.siliconvalley-usa.com/about/terman.html
FRED TERMAN, THE FATHER OF SILICON VALLEY

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606
Robert Bussard on Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion (IEC)
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------
Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really)

1 hr 32 min 37 sec - Nov 9, 2006

www.google.com

Google Tech Talks November 9, 2006

ABSTRACT This is not your father's fusion reactor! Forget everything you
know about conventional thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature
plasmas, steam turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a
thing of the past. Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial
electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC), an old idea that's been made new.
While the international community debates the fate of the
politically-turmoiled $12 billion ITER (an experimental thermonuclear
reactor), simple IEC reactors are being built as high-school science fair
projects.

Dr. Robert Bussard, former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission
and founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2), has spent 17
years perfecting IEC, a fusion process that converts hydrogen and boron
directly into electricity producing helium as the only waste product. Most
of this work was funded by the Department of Defense, the details of which
have been under seal. until now.

Dr. Bussard will discuss his recent results and details of this potentially
world-altering technology, whose conception dates back as far as 1924, and
even includes a reactor design by Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of the
scanning television).

Can a 100 MW fusion reactor be built for less than Google's annual
electricity bill? Come see what's possible when you think outside the
thermonuclear box and ignore the herd.

Speaker: Dr. Robert Bussard

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

==============================================================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Bussard
Robert W. Bussard
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Robert W. Bussard (born 1928) is an American physicist working primarily in
nuclear fusion energy research. Recipient of the Schreiber-Spence
Achievement Award for STAIF-2004.[1] Fellow of the International Academy of
Astronautics.

Snip
Recent activities

On March 29, 2006, Bussard claimed on the fusor.net forum that EMC2 had
developed an inertial electrostatic confinement fusion process that was
100,000 times more efficient than previous designs.[2] However, the
company's funding ran out, and Bussard is looking for additional funding to
develop a full-scale fusion power plant. On June 23, 2006, Bussard provided
more details of the breakthrough and the circumstances of the shutdown of
this work by the government.[3] In November of 2006, Bussard held a Tech
Talk at Google on his research and development of IEC fusion reactors.[4] An
informal overview[5] of the last decade of work was presented at the 57th
International Astronautical Congress in October 2006.

Snip
==============================================================
http://www.askmar.com/ConferenceNotes/2006-9%20IAC%20Paper.pdf
"The Advent of Clean Nuclear Fusion: Super-performance Space Power and
Propulsion", Robert W. Bussard, Ph.D., 57th International Astronautical
Congress, October 2-6, 2006

[30 pages, 4.7 MB - LRK -]

==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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