If true, it will simply replace the existing technology. It will be priced in such a manner than you will never see a change in your bill up or down.
And Lockheed will be a new Saudi Arabia.
I wonder if they have perfected a way to use controllable static magnetic fields generated in superconductive coils to contain the reaction and keep it away from the containment wall?
Seems very cranky since it takes so much liquified gas to maintain the extremely low temps required for the coils. And just how could you manage to carefully manipulate the static fields created? Of course room temp superconductors would greatly simplify this (Unobtainium - see “Avatar”)
The only thing I can think of off hand is to somehow electronically switch the fields by shifting the current flowing in the superconducting coils from one coil to another.... makes me think of a perpetual motion machine for some reason.
Will help Lockheed stock. But I will not cut my wires from the electric utility.
bttt
Don’t these guys watch Star Trek Movies?
When the Warp Core is breached, it’s game over.
The worst mistake the West has made in a long time is paying the Muslims for their oil. We should have gone in and taken it.
How long until government seizes it and/or taxes it out of existence?
Well the history of fusion has always been ‘ten or so years away’.
I was interviewed and selected by Admiral Rickover in 1980 and served in his nuclear program as an engineer before going back to graduate school and earning a PhD. I also worked for Martin Marietta before they merged with Lockheed but I was on a DOD Engineering Tiger Team that reviewed all the major DOD contractors including Lockheed.
I will have a look at the this writeup and get back to you with an assessment. I do know that a lot of advanced technologies are bottled up in political considerations and are timed for release based on political considerations. In other words this development of Lockheed’s Skunkworks has likely been available for quite sometime and has only waited for release approval.
I am more optimistic about a release late last year from the Office of Naval Research that described an efficient economic process of recovering hydrocarbon fuels direct from seawater allowing vessels to sail without ever needing refueling. I suspected that release was timed to inform the Russians and other belligerents that the game was up if the USA decided it was up.
How wonderful would it be to see the Arabian Peninsula reverted back to the big pile of sand flies that it was in past centuries.