Wonderful News!!!! Governor Schwarzenegger of California is planning to fund Dr Bussards IEC Fusion project.
In a move sure to impress environmentalists and further cement his Earth friendly image, Governor Schwarzenegger is set to launch a multimillion dollar research effort into a revolutionary new source of clean non-polluting power.
The project is focused on the Inertial Electrostatic Fusion reactor invented by the award winning American physicist Dr. Robert W. Bussard. The Radiation Free Fusion Reactor has the potential to change the whole landscape of energy generation, which is usually a choice between bad and worse options that include Nuclear, Coal and Natural Gas systems.
The State of California peak energy usage is about 40,000 Megawatts and is only expected to grow steadily over the coming years . Fusion opens a whole new avenue of cheap clean energy that could not on
ly satisfy growing energy needs but also fuel massive water desalination plants that could help solve California’s acute water shortages.
Fusion is the energy that powers everything in the universe. The sun’s energy comes from fusion. Alternatively, fission is the process whereby heavy atoms, which are nearly unstable, are split into two radioactive atoms. Fusion, on the other hand, is when two light atoms merge.
The fusion process invented by Dr. Bussard takes boron-11 and fuses a proton to it, producing, in its excited state, a carbon-12 atom. This excited carbon-12 atom decays to beryllium-8 and helium-4. Beryllium-8 very quickly (in 10-13 s) decays into two more helium-4 atoms. This is the only nuclear-energy releasing process in the whole world that releases fusion energy and three helium atoms — and no neutrons. This reaction is completely radiation free.
It is not completely neutron free. However, the neutron production is minimal.
This is the break though in funding I have been looking for for the last nine months.
Better than sex.
Here are a couple of links explaining what the excitement is all about:
Bussard Fusion Reactor
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
Cross Posted at Power and Control and at The Astute Bloggers
Comments
8 responses to “California To Fund Bussard Fusion”
CONGRATULATIONS!
Will stock be available soon?
This really is huge news.
What is the source for this information? Thanks.
What is the source for this information? Thanks.
Finally! Guess all those sci-fi movies had an influence on the Governator.
Next Energy News
I wonder if the Governator reads Classical Values?
HEY ARNOLD WTG!
(just in case)
There is something about Dr. Bussard’s concept that I would like to see addressed. He aims to fuse boron and protium. This reaction produces a nucleus of Carbon 12 in an “excited” state which decays, eventually yeilding several helium nucleii and a lot of energy. Well, what if you started with Carbon 12 in the first place? What would it take to “excite” a carbon 12 nucleus so that it would decay? That might be easier to achieve than nuclear fusion. I wonder if anyone is working on that concept?
It turns out that you have to look at the mass difference between the starting particles and the ending particles to figure out the energy yield.
The proton – Boron 11 reaction has a bigger mass difference than a Carbon 12 – proton reaction.
The reason being that He4 result is unusually stable – which means it has high energy output.
AWith C12 + p you get C13 which means 2 Heliums and a Lithium 5. Which is not as good as 3 He4 in terms of energy productiuon.