From: Dickey, Michael F (michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com)
Date: Tue Mar 05 2002 - 10:48:27 MST
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Lorrey [mailto:mlorrey@datamann.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 10:25 AM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Re: Cold fusion redux
"How many years has this gone on for? At least since 1980, when it had a
three times larger budget. Assuming an average annual budget of $500 million
for 22 years gives us a 22 year budget of $11 billion dollars. Eleven
billion bucks spent by thousands of energy depertment
bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, administrators, support personnel, and
janitors to fail to achieve something which virtually anybody could do on a
desktop experiment. And you think there is NO vested interest? I rest my
case."
A vested interest as in intentionally not attaining a fusion reaction? No,
I dont think so. In fact, Bussard started his own fusion project privately
funded by the Owner of Omni magazine and Hustler, he was making a small
tokamok reactor, had the expertise and the budgett, and just could not get
it to break even. Was he just tricking everybody to keep himself employed?
I doubt it, as he, and most of these other scientists and engineers, are
pouring their hearts out to attempt to get this. Is it reasonable to
suspect that all of them are involved in some kind of conspiracy to just
keep the fusion budget flowing? I seriously doubt it, especially
considering that real and consistent progress is being made. Maybe the real
fact is that containing plasmas is a difficult and tricky endevour. Just
research the different plasma confinement designs, the spheromak, the
tokamak, and the bottle fusors. Since the carter adminstration *any*
nuclear power related research has been scoffed at, and the fusion reactor
programs have had difficult maintaining ANY funding in the green / liberal
anti nuclear anything atmosphere. And yes people can get fusion reactions
to occur in a desktop apparatus (farnsworths fusor) but attainting breakeven
is a whole different scenerio, as the conventional hot fusion researches can
attest to.
I think you are over simplyfying a complex issue.
However, the field of research has been only limited to plasma hot fusion,
various other methods are not government funded, but you can think the
carter administration as much as the physicists in the field for that,
limiting nuclear related research to only one field whichever one physicists
thought most promising at that time.
I would hotly disagree the accusation that physicists are intentionally
delaying acheiving a break even reaction merely to continue research, as
this would have to involve mutiply nations, governments, and not to mention
scores of private companies and individuals. This is tantamount to saying
that nanotech researchers are delaying making an assembler so they can keep
the research money coming in. If you want to know more about the politics
of fusion research pick up 'Man made sun, the quest for fusion power' and
enjoy.
To see the continuing progress, see this image
http://w3fusion.ph.utexas.edu/aps/plasmaState/ntvsT.gif
As you can see, over time, various methods are achieving longer confinement
times at higher and higher temperatures.
Regards,
Michael
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