Private Semi-Private and Academic Small Scale Fusion Efforts For Power Generation and Propulsion

The UK boy's school project got me thinking about all the articles i have read on various fusion projects other than the NIF and ITER grand International and Government efforts.

i don't think the boy's project was a farnsworth Fusor derivative but the fusor is interesting and it lead to this derivative technology:

www.polywellnuclearfusion.com...

a 3 meter diameter fusion chamber directly descended from Farnsworth Fusor designs. the spherical wire grid is replaced by the torus cube design. this is a contender for the first commercial fusion power reactor.

another smallish effort is the Deep Focus plasma fusion reactor. it is basically a multi-electrode spark plug like you would find in a car. I rather like this one just for that reason. They are upgrading their electrodes to tungsten after having isolated contaminants from the previous electrode technology causing arcing in the reactor chamber. this group is also running a crowd funding effort to help finance any shortfalls from larger investors.

focusfusion.org...

there are likely more private efforts and if i find them i will post them. if you know of any please post them as well.

now on to propulsion.

John Slough; university of Washington. this fusion rocket design has been tested successfully at the sub component level. they are at the stage where they need to put the parts together and test the whole thing as an integrated system. it can be built with off the shelf parts according to another article in space news.

nextbigfuture.com...

www.space.com...

"This is probably the most simple and straightforward, lowest-cost fusion propulsion system you can think of," he said. "The fundamental physics have been proven in the laboratory with hardware, and fusion yields, neutrons, have been produced. So what I'm talking about is building a device with known physics and with a proven method."

Further, that device can be built using commercial off-the-shelf components, so no engineering leaps should be required, Pancotti added.

Slough and his team are building hardware and conducting experiments to help bring the technology closer to implementation. They hope to check off a big milestone sometime in 2014.

"We're in the lab, we're building the coils, we're showing the scaling and we'll be producing the neutrons within the next year to show that fusion is occurring, and it's occurring at the scales required to build a fusion-driven rocket," Pancotti said.

oops. ran out of steam i will look up some of the other fusion propulsion articles later.

bear in mind that this fusion rocket design will not be the one to get us sufficient speed to go to the stars. its fast but not much faster than advanced ion engines or the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket. it will open up the whole solar system to us for manned exploration though. but fusion technology will begin to develop in increments and in generations and later fully mature generations will definitely get us into serviceable interstellar speed territory. fusion can in theory get us up to about .36 C. that's for a steady fusion rate high powered rocket with an optimized magnetic nozzle.

the crossfire fusion reactor:

nuclearfusionreactor.wordpress.com...

this one pay homage to the farnsworth fusor too. part of the confinement is electrostatic but it also has a magnetic component.

lockheed wants into the act too. they are planning on having a running prototype by 2018.

nextbigfuture.com...

There is a group/company called general fusion.

www.generalfusion.com...

experimenting on a shock wave initiator like device. It has been around for a while, although it sounds typical "friend of a friend" but that is basically the reality. One of our PhD students did his undergraduate engineering degree with one of the founders.

Not sure if anything will come of it, it will be interesting if they put out any more information as they haven't appeared to update the website or put out any press stuff for a long time.

ErosA433
There is a group/company called general fusion.

www.generalfusion.com...

experimenting on a shock wave initiator like device. It has been around for a while, although it sounds typical "friend of a friend" but that is basically the reality. One of our PhD students did his undergraduate engineering degree with one of the founders.

Not sure if anything will come of it, it will be interesting if they put out any more information as they haven't appeared to update the website or put out any press stuff for a long time.

i saw links to that in my searches but the name threw me. i thought it was some sort of fusion wiki or something.

reply to post by stormbringer1701


Yeah It is quite an interesting approach, using molten lead and basically sending shock waves through it to cause an intense pressure spike at the centre. It all sounds like it could actually work, though I think they are still playing with using explosives for achieving it.

This sounds to me like they are basically attempting a small scale H bomb without the x-ray optics.

the website is difficult to navigate also. It has been called a hoax before, but in truth I know very little about it. On paper it looks better than some of the hoaxes iv seen if it is one.

ErosA433
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Yeah It is quite an interesting approach, using molten lead and basically sending shock waves through it to cause an intense pressure spike at the centre. It all sounds like it could actually work, though I think they are still playing with using explosives for achieving it.

This sounds to me like they are basically attempting a small scale H bomb without the x-ray optics.

the website is difficult to navigate also. It has been called a hoax before, but in truth I know very little about it. On paper it looks better than some of the hoaxes iv seen if it is one.

well shockwaves could produce both plasma and intense temperature and pressure. it sounds right theoretically . the question is does it all go together to produce fusion and a net gain in energy. sort of like collapsing bubble fusion.

Yep, which is exactly why on paper it looks possible. I just wonder about the technological hurdles though, but hey, they got funding, lets hope its not one big money grab.

another fusion propulsion scheme:

nextbigfuture.com...

The Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) is comprised of multiple innovations that together yield a safer, more compact, and lighter-weight engine that directly produces a high exhaust velocity and medium thrust, and in addition produces electrical power. The fi eld-reversed con guration (FRC) allows for magnetic con finement with a simpler, more natural geometry for propulsion than, for instance, a tokamak. The increased safety is due to the choice of an aneutronic fuel, D [3He. The plasma is heated by an odd-parity rotating magnetic fi eld (RMFo), which is predicted to promote better energy con nement, hence allow smaller, more stable engines. Other advantages include a small start-up system and a variable thrust propulsion system for more flexible mission designs