[Red Badger]

The UW's current fusion experiment, HIT-SI3. It is about one-tenth the size of the power-producing dynomak concept. Credit: U of Washington

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-uw-fusion-reactor-concept-cheaper.html#jCp

[goldstategop]

Being able to harness the power that drives the sun is the holy grail of physics and engineering.

So far nuclear fusion power has remained theoretical because of the costs of building a nuclear fusion reactor reliable and cheap enough to operate.

The day that could be practicable may soon be drawing near.

[maro]

The article does not make it clear, but I think that this is unproven technology at best.

[MSF BU]

Well, with the Chinese working on a Thorium solution, maybe finally something will get developed that is an improvement over the current design.

[Kozak]

Uh, so far no fusion design has even come close to break even in power, or been able to sustain a fusion reaction for a couple of seconds.
I wish we could have fusion soon but I don’t see it happening short of some huge engineering breakthrough.

[GraceG]

Soon to be located here:

[hdbc]

Don’t worry. If this becomes feasible, the enviro-nazis will quickly put an end to it.

[Moonman62]

Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true

...

If I only had a dollar for every article I’ve seen that starts with a similar statement.

[DannyTN]

" When compared with the fusion reactor concept in France, the UW's is much less expensive – roughly one-tenth the cost of Iter – while producing five times the amount of energy. "

Leap Frog!!!

[fireforeffect]

Let me summarize the article.

Controlled fusion ...”still years away”.

And we have been hearing that for years now.

[BipolarBob]

By combining dilithium crystals WITH the flux capacitor they can exponentially increase efficiencies not seen before.

[jimpick]

How are they getting the electric currents to the plasma? Seems like the conductor would burn up. If it doesnt burn up how are they dealing with degradation from neutrinos?

Not enough info to say whether it will work or not.

[PLMerite]

[Uri’el-2012]

UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

When P(out) > P(in)

[Vinnie]

And if something goes wrong, the results will be the demand for energy drops to zero. :^)

[chud]

Some countries are seeing results with Cold Fusion.

[Sgt_Schultze]

Or THIS

[dangerdoc]

Nobody has reached break even yet, a little soon to be building power plants.

[Bubba_Leroy]

I remember back in the 1970s when fission reactor nuclear power plants were going to be so cheap that they would not ever meter your electricity. Didn't quite work out that way.

Power plants are basically public works projects, whether they are owned directly by the government or by highly regulated "private" monopolies. In the history of mankind, no public works project has ever been built for what it was projected to cost.

I would love to see an alternative power source that costs less in real life than oil, gas or coal. So far, there are none and I do not expect to see any in my lifetime.

[RetiredTexasVet]

“They have designed a concept...”

A lot of those “concepts” out there, but the real test is translating a “concept” into real economic functioning item.

[ckilmer]

Yeah, I read this article. Its also helpful to post some of the comments in the comment section of the same article. As they give other competing fusion designs.

.................

Da Schneib Here's another "small fusion" concept that a private company is working on: http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/ The technique they're using is called "plasma focus fusion." They're currently rebuilding their experiment to eliminate arcing that was vaporizing their electrical connection and contaminating the plasma. They expect to have the new device up in a few months; they've already moved the connector outside the vacuum chamber, and have successfully used an indium ring and silver plating on the steel baseplate to reduce the resistance to 6 μΩ.

cantdrive85( Eric Lerner's focus fusion process involves creating electricity directly without the need for heating water to spin a turbine. The cost is but a fraction of coal power production, nearly inexhaustible fuel supplies, and totally clean.)

Da Schneib And another, unfortunately their website is being rebuilt, called "Polywell fusion" that's based on the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor, as extended by the late Dr. Robert Bussard. They have finished proving that their magnetic containment scheme will work for a net-power-output fusion device, and posted a paper on arXiv: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.0133v1.pdf

Also worthy of note are Electron Power Systems http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/ and General Fusion http://www.generalfusion.com/ both of which are less promising to my mind than either the Plasma Focus or the Polywell. LENR isn't dead, but it's going very slowly. Here's a blog post on the Polywell arXiv paper, which details what they've accomplished and announced, and what remains to be done: http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/bussard-emc2-fusion-project-publishes.html I hope fusion will be solved this decade; I think it's a virtual certainty that if it's not, it will be in the 2020s.