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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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To: MAD-AS-HELL

Just glad he’s not from Brooklyn — “here’s your [blank]ing canoe!!!”


21 posted on 01/03/2009 8:04:07 AM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile finally updated Saturday, December 6, 2008 !!!)
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To: elfman2
I was a bit curious about the impact of the EMP on the control circuitry, but these guys have a definite, step-by-step path mapped out, and the steps are fairly modest. I liked this:
And that's why we can make it for $50 million and they" -- government and university coalitions -- "make it for $20 billion. That's the difference."

22 posted on 01/03/2009 8:05:58 AM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile finally updated Saturday, December 6, 2008 !!!)
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To: SunkenCiv

Doesn’t anyone remember Pons and Fleischmann? They invented cold fusion back in 1989!


23 posted on 01/03/2009 8:07:12 AM PST by Astronaut
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To: Radl
Wasn’t there a machine called the “IT” that was going to save the world or at least change it?

That was the Segway. It did change the world, if you're a postman or a shopping mall rent-a-cop.

24 posted on 01/03/2009 8:11:20 AM PST by ccmay (Too much Law; not enough Order.)
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To: Twinkie

Build a giant turbine around the caldera.


25 posted on 01/03/2009 8:24:40 AM PST by DManA
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To: SunkenCiv
Mobile Fusion Machines Available for Rent

Maskell-Robbins, Inc. owns the world's largest McElroy fusion rental fleet, with 130+ machines ranging from 2" through 65"

McElroy 1648 Fusion Machine

26 posted on 01/03/2009 8:25:35 AM PST by JoeProBono (Apparitions are in the eye of the beholder)
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To: SunkenCiv

You mean the navy doesn’t believe there’s a future in korn powered ships?


27 posted on 01/03/2009 8:32:45 AM PST by AmericanVictory
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To: The Great RJ
Many of my posts are so brilliant they merit double-posting. I've even had a couple of posts so profound, I felt compelled to triple-post them, but never have I even contemplated thoughts so earth-shattering as to require quadruple-posting.
28 posted on 01/03/2009 8:35:19 AM PST by Onelifetogive (Let's get to altering or abolishing!)
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To: SunkenCiv
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.

Ge me six to 10 years and a few hundred million dollars, and I'll promise you anything your brain can dream up.

29 posted on 01/03/2009 8:37:51 AM PST by Onelifetogive (Let's get to altering or abolishing!)
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To: Astronaut

Those two were so vilified that nobody will touch “cold fusion” except one really old and well established physicist in Japan who is untouchable funding wise, and he’s done some interesting real work in the area.

That said, there are at least 3 designs that now show some real promise for hot fusion. The big ring racetrack design that the govt funds to the tune of billions isn’t one of them. Govt funded fusion research has become about the funding, not creating viable hot fusion. Several for-profit private groups are working on the alternatives. EMC2’s work looks the most promising - before the DOE cut his funding because his work was a threat to their boondoggle, Bussard got some real results. Then he sadly died. His work is now being carried forward by others.

Ps Bussard was the creator of the race track design, which he latter proved will never be viable. This guy was a real physicist, not a crackpot. His later work on his new design showed real progress.


30 posted on 01/03/2009 8:38:45 AM PST by piytar
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To: SunkenCiv
Two desktop-printer engineers quit their jobs to search for the ultimate source of endless energy

You guys don't get it, the machine is almost free but the cartridges will eat you out of house and home.
31 posted on 01/03/2009 9:01:34 AM PST by Foolsgold ("We live in the greatest country in the world and I am going to change it" Barry O'boomarang 2008)
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To: Radl

32 posted on 01/03/2009 9:06:11 AM PST by Daffynition ("Beauty is in the sty of the beholder." ~ Joe 6-pack)
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To: SunkenCiv
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.

I can do it in 5 years for a mere 50 million. And in 2 years you can check back with me to see how I'm doing on the project........if you can find me.

33 posted on 01/03/2009 9:08:24 AM PST by Hot Tabasco (Today is just a little more special than yesterday.)
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To: SunkenCiv

I’ll trade my engine that runs on imagination for their fusion machine.
It takes a lot of imagination to make it run. Like fusion.


34 posted on 01/03/2009 9:11:04 AM PST by count-your-change (You don't have be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: SunkenCiv
The polywell fusion device looks much cooler.


35 posted on 01/03/2009 9:20:56 AM PST by AZLiberty (I hope Obama changes.)
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To: The Great RJ

Could you repeat yourself?


36 posted on 01/03/2009 9:22:14 AM PST by HereInTheHeartland (I can't wait for January 20, 2013")
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To: JoeProBono

What happened to the 31 flavors?


37 posted on 01/03/2009 9:32:41 AM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile finally updated Saturday, December 6, 2008 !!!)
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To: Astronaut
Ponds Fleischmanns

38 posted on 01/03/2009 9:36:29 AM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile finally updated Saturday, December 6, 2008 !!!)
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To: Foolsgold

LOL!


39 posted on 01/03/2009 9:37:47 AM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile finally updated Saturday, December 6, 2008 !!!)
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To: The Great RJ

I think it could happen, maybe four times.


40 posted on 01/03/2009 9:38:37 AM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile finally updated Saturday, December 6, 2008 !!!)
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