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Radiation-free Fusion?
One of the bigger hurdles to practical fusion power is that current configurations generate a lot of nasty radiation that (as I understand it) literally eats away at the containment chambers of the reactors. As we all know, super-hot plasma getting loose is, well, bad, so research continues. Now, it would appear, someone claims to have figured out a new way that eliminates the radiation problem entirely.
Fusion is the archetypical "should be here in 25 years" technology. It'd be neat if 25 years collapsed to just 5. I wonder if this is the same Bussard who came up with the Bussard ramjet concept?
Heh, obviously you didn't RTWFA. From the end of the article linked....
"Besides developing this year's winning technology, Dr. Bussard is also known for conceiving the Bussard ramjet, an interstellar spacecraft powered by hydrogen fusion using hydrogen collected from the interstellar gas utilizing a magnetic field."
Posted by: John on January 5, 2007 05:17 PMHe probably stopped reading when the article equated neutrons with radiation. I can't really blame him for that. I didn't have a lot of hope for the article to begin with (my first thought was, "I thought the whole point of researching fusion was to produce radiation and convert it into electricity"), but at that point I decided there was nothing more to be learned.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian on January 8, 2007 02:47 PM