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Focus Fusion

Focus Fusion is projected to be a safe, clean, easy, reliable energy solution that could provide electricity at a few tenths of a cent per kilowatt-hour.

Purports to be a far more feasible and profoundly less expensive approach to hot fusion, in contrast to what the international project (ITER) in France is pursuing. Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LPP) is currently researching and developing the dense plasma focus (DPF) for hydrogen-boron nuclear fusion.

End product would be a 5 to 20 MW power plant the size of a gas station, which would cost between $200,000 and $300,000 to build. One person could operate two dozen such stations remotely.

On Dec. 18, 2008, LPP announced the initiation of a two-year-long experimental project to test the scientific feasibility of Focus Fusion, controlled nuclear fusion using the dense plasma focus (DPF) device and hydrogen-boron fuel. Hydrogen-boron fuel produces almost no neutrons and allows the direct conversion of energy into electricity. The goals of the experiment are first, to confirm the achievement the high temperatures first observed in previous experiments at Texas A&M University; second, to greatly increase the efficiency of energy transfer into the tiny plasmoid where the fusion reactions take place; third, to achieve the high magnetic fields needed for the quantum magnetic field effect which will reduce cooling of the plasma by X-ray emission; and finally, to use hydrogen-boron fuel to demonstrate greater fusion energy production than energy fed into the plasma (positive net energy production).

The experiment will be carried out in an experimental facility in New Jersey using a newly-built dense plasma focus device capable of reaching peak currents of more than 2 MA. This will be the most powerful DPF in North America and the second most powerful in the world. For the millionth of the second that the DPF will be operating during each pulse, its capacitor bank will be supplying about one third as much electricity as all electric generators in the United States.

A small team of three plasma physics will perform the experiments: Eric Lerner, President of LPP; Dr. XinPei Lu and Dr. Krupakar Murali Subramanian. Mr. Lerner has been involved in the development of Focus Fusion for over 20 years. Dr. Lu is currently Professor of Physics at HuaZhong Univ. of Sci. & Tech., Wuhan, China, where he received his PhD in 2001. He has been working in the field of pulsed plasmas for over 14 years and is the inventor of an atmospheric-pressure cold plasma jet. Dr. Subramanian is currently Senior Research Scientist, AtmoPla Dept., and BTU International Inc., in N. Billerica, Massachusetts. He worked for five years on the advanced-fuel Inertial Electrostatic Confinement device at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he received his PhD in 2004 and where he invented new plasma diagnostic instruments.

To help in the design of the capacitor bank, LPP has hired a leading expert in DPF design and experiment, Dr. John Thompson. Dr. Thompson has worked for over twenty years with Maxwell Laboratories and Alameda Applied Sciences Corporation to develop pulsed power devices, including DPFs and diamond switches.

The $1.2 million for the project has been provided by a $500,000 investment from The Abell Foundation, Inc, of Baltimore, Maryland, and by additional investments from a small number of individuals.

The basic technology of LPP’s approach is covered by a patent application, which was allowed in full by the US Patent Office in November. LPP expects the patent to be issued shortly.


Contents

About

Official Websites

FocusFusion.org

LawrencevillePlasmaPhysics.com

Video

Google Tech Talks


1:04 hours

  • Focus Fusion: The Fastest Route to Cheap, Clean Energy - Eric Lerner gives a presentation to Google Tech Talks. Technical description with animations. (Google Video; Oct. 3, 2007)


ABSTRACT (from video posting)

Speaker: Eric Lerner
Eric J. Lerner is President of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in West Orange, NJ and Executive Director of the Focus Fusion Society. He has been an independent researcher in plasma physics since 1979, and has become internationally known for his studies linking cosmic plasma phenomena and laboratory fusion devices, especially the dense plasma focus. He has developed original theories of quasars, large scale structure, the microwave background and the origin of light elements. He is the author of The Big Bang Never Happened, published in 1991 by Random House. In 2006 he was a Visiting Scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

To bring the whole of humanity up to the living standards of the developed world ... all requires a new source of energy that is clean, inexhaustible and much cheaper than any existing source -- fossil, nuclear, solar or wind. Fusion with hydrogen-boron fuel, which allows direct conversion of fusion energy to electricity, can be that source. It could cut energy costs more than ten-fold. It produces no radioactive waste and would be safe enough to situate in residential neighborhoods.

Of the three approaches to achieving hydrogen-boron fusion, focus fusion, using the dense plasma focus device, has experimentally achieved conditions that are closest to those needed for net power generation. It is the only approach that can utilize the high magnetic field effect, which reduces the cooling of plasma by x-rays, helping to achieve the multi-billion-degree temperatures needed for fusion. A currently-planned three-year, $2 million experiment, if funded, can demonstrate the scientific feasibility of focus fusion.

This presentation will review the history and status of focus fusion and briefly compare it to the two competing approaches, Field Reversed Configuration (recently funded by Paul Allen) and Inertial Electrostatic Confinement, championed by Dr. Robert Bussard, a recent Google Tech Talk speaker.

Attributes

  • Clean
    • No emissions
    • No residual radiation
    • Few tenths of a cent per kilowatt-hour
    • Small footprint
    • Input fuel is readily available and barely used
    • 5-20 MW plant would cost around $200,000 to $300,000
  • Applications
    • Ideal for larger applications
    • Suitable as a primary grid power source
    • Modular
    • Superior performance in use for thrust in space travel
    • With additional engineering, could be applied to smaller applications
  • Ease of use
    • Start-up/shut-down time is near instantaneous
    • No water-steam-turbine cycle required
    • Direct to electricity
    • Very low maintenance
    • Very low operation personnel involvement
  • Safe
    • Operators not exposed to radiation threat
    • No chance for explosion
    • No possibility of melt-down
    • Cannot be turned into a WMD
  • Credibility
    • Initial funding came from NASA/JPL
    • Research accomplished at universities
    • Published in peer-reviewed journals
    • Receives highest recommendation from seasoned energy professional, Tom Valone (Video)

How it Works

plasmafocus.jpg

Comparison of Focus Fusion to the Tokamak

Publications

Survey

In the News

  • Practical Fusion, or Just a Bubble? - An overview of various approaches to useful fusion, including sonofusion, Eric Lerner's Focus Fusion, the $10 billion international Tokamac project. (NY Times; Feb. 27, 2007)
  • Focus Fusion poses competition to $10 billion Tokamak - Purports to be a far more feasible and profoundly less expensive approach to hot fusion, in contrast to what the international project (ITER) in France is pursuing. Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is currently researching and developing the Plasma Focus Device for hydrogen-boron nuclear fusion. (PESN; Nov. 2, 2005)
  • Video Interview with Thomas Valone (wmv) - Sterling Allan's interview with Tom Valone at the ExtraOrdinary Technology conference in Salt Lake City, July 28-31, 2005. When asked "What energy technology looks most promising, that is not getting due attention", well-known and revered energy researcher and U.S. Patent reviewer, Tom Valone, Ph.D., answers: "Focus Fusion". (OSEN)

More Information

Contact

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics
and
Focus Fusion Society
11 Calvin Terrace
West Orange, NJ 07052

Eric J. Lerner <elerner@igc.org>

Comments

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Related Technologies

  • Electron Power Systems™ (EPS) - Toroid plasma technology that remains stable without magnetic confinement, by using background gas pressure for confinement instead, could provide clean, non-polluting energy technology at one-tenth the cost of present energy generation.

See also

NUCLEAR FOOTER

TYPES OF REACTORS

NUCLEAR WASTE

SPECIFIC PROJECTS

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