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This Machine Might* Save the World
Popular Science ^
| January 2009
| Josh Dean
Posted on 01/03/2009 7:24:49 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Two desktop-printer engineers quit their jobs to search for the ultimate source of endless energy: nuclear fusion. Could this highly improbable enterprise actually succeed? The source of endless energy for all humankind resides just off Government Street in Burnaby, British Columbia, up the little spit of blacktop on Bonneville Place and across the parking lot from Shade-O-Matic blind manufacturers and wholesalers. The future is there, in that mostly empty office with the vomit-green walls -- and inside the brain of Michel Laberge, 47, bearded and French-Canadian. According to a diagram, printed on a single sheet of white paper and affixed with tape to a dusty slab of office drywall, his vision looks like a medieval torture device: a metal ball surrounded on all sides by metal rods and bisected by two long cylinders. It's big but not immense -- maybe 10 times as tall as the little robot man in the lower right corner of the page who's there to indicate scale. What Laberge has set out to build in this office park, using $2 million in private funding and a skeletal workforce, is a nuclear-fusion power plant... he will also tell you that his twist on a method known as magnetized target fusion, or MTF -- to wildly oversimplify, a process in which plasma (ionized gas) trapped by a magnetic field is rapidly compressed to create fusion -- will, in fact, work because it is relatively cheap and scalable. Give his team six to 10 years and a few hundred million dollars, he says, and his company, General Fusion, will give you a nuclear-fusion power plant.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: canada; chrysalix; energy; fusion; generalfusion; magnetizedtarget; mtf
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1
posted on
01/03/2009 7:24:50 AM PST
by
SunkenCiv
To: neverdem; ShadowAce; Ernest_at_the_Beach; AdmSmith; Berosus; Convert from ECUSA; dervish; ...
The article is online now.
2
posted on
01/03/2009 7:26:23 AM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile finally updated Saturday, December 6, 2008 !!!)
To: SunkenCiv; GMMAC; Clive; exg; kanawa; backhoe; -YYZ-; Former Proud Canadian; Squawk 8888; ...
3
posted on
01/03/2009 7:27:48 AM PST
by
fanfan
(Update on Constitutional Crisis in Canada.....Click user name)
To: SunkenCiv
ah man..not a french canadian! You know if things don’t go his way in marketing this he’ll end up having a hissy fit and breaking it for no one to enjoy!
4
posted on
01/03/2009 7:28:01 AM PST
by
MAD-AS-HELL
(How does one win over terrorists? KILL them with UNKINDNESS)
To: fanfan
5
posted on
01/03/2009 7:28:38 AM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile finally updated Saturday, December 6, 2008 !!!)
To: SunkenCiv
The future is there, in that mostly empty office with the vomit-green walls - Should that read "vomit carnage-green walls"?
6
posted on
01/03/2009 7:41:03 AM PST
by
LiberConservative
("I, you know, can see, you know, upstate, you know, from my house, you know.")
To: SunkenCiv
That’s OK, Sunken Civ.
:-)
7
posted on
01/03/2009 7:42:32 AM PST
by
fanfan
(Update on Constitutional Crisis in Canada.....Click user name)
To: SunkenCiv
This won't happen in the US anytime soon even if it is practical. First it is “nuclear” so the environmentalist and anti-nuke crowd will oppose it on principle. Second US energy policy will be focused solely on boondoggle biofuels, worthless windmills and proven failure solar technologies.
8
posted on
01/03/2009 7:44:27 AM PST
by
The Great RJ
("Mir we bleiwen wat mir sin" or "We want to remain what we are." ..Luxembourg motto)
To: SunkenCiv
This won't happen in the US anytime soon even if it is practical. First it is “nuclear” so the environmentalist and anti-nuke crowd will oppose it on principle. Second US energy policy will be focused solely on boondoggle biofuels, worthless windmills and proven failure solar technologies.
9
posted on
01/03/2009 7:44:28 AM PST
by
The Great RJ
("Mir we bleiwen wat mir sin" or "We want to remain what we are." ..Luxembourg motto)
To: SunkenCiv
This won't happen in the US anytime soon even if it is practical. First it is “nuclear” so the environmentalist and anti-nuke crowd will oppose it on principle. Second US energy policy will be focused solely on boondoggle biofuels, worthless windmills and proven failure solar technologies.
10
posted on
01/03/2009 7:44:29 AM PST
by
The Great RJ
("Mir we bleiwen wat mir sin" or "We want to remain what we are." ..Luxembourg motto)
To: SunkenCiv
This won't happen in the US anytime soon even if it is practical. First it is “nuclear” so the environmentalist and anti-nuke crowd will oppose it on principle. Second US energy policy will be focused solely on boondoggle biofuels, worthless windmills and proven failure solar technologies.
11
posted on
01/03/2009 7:44:31 AM PST
by
The Great RJ
("Mir we bleiwen wat mir sin" or "We want to remain what we are." ..Luxembourg motto)
To: The Great RJ
Don’t hold back. Tell us how you really feel.
12
posted on
01/03/2009 7:47:45 AM PST
by
Hazwaste
(Feeling bitter and clingy since 1963.)
To: The Great RJ
13
posted on
01/03/2009 7:48:50 AM PST
by
big'ol_freeper
(Gen. George S. Patton to Michael Moore... American Carol: "I really like slapping you.")
To: SunkenCiv
aw crap...that problem is solved.....we just burn CORN....
good ole iowa corn....
i dont know if u noticed it before ...but its freakin RENEWABLE....yes indeedy it IS....
i say fie on those snot noses who say makin ethanol is an energy sink.........
look at it this way.......ETHANOLITY has got to be good since the concept was hatched and enacted by our good ole us congress itself...
lets us back up our elected leaders and ..give peace and korn a chance..
consider this also in the also.... THE THING IS FREE, paid for by the federal gumment...
aks yerself... why cant we dabble in fiascos IF there is no cost involved? why why why?
i reserve the balance of my time....
...
14
posted on
01/03/2009 7:51:08 AM PST
by
ffff
(:)
To: The Great RJ
Do you really think so?
Do you really think so?
Do you really think so?
Do you really think so?
15
posted on
01/03/2009 7:55:58 AM PST
by
Bon mots
(Do you really think so?)
To: SunkenCiv
To: SunkenCiv
17
posted on
01/03/2009 7:57:23 AM PST
by
Twinkie
(TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT!!!)
To: LiberConservative
18
posted on
01/03/2009 7:59:38 AM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile finally updated Saturday, December 6, 2008 !!!)
To: SunkenCiv
A lot of moving (”banging”) parts and lots of heat...
19
posted on
01/03/2009 8:01:19 AM PST
by
elfman2
(TheRightReasons.net - Reasoning CONSERVATIVES without the kooks.)
To: The Great RJ
Wasn’t there a machine called the “IT” that was going to save the world or at least change it?
20
posted on
01/03/2009 8:02:15 AM PST
by
Radl
(rtr)
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