Navy Funds EMC2 Efforts

Via Power And Control, the Navy is funding EMC2 Corp. to find out whether Bussard's claims about the WB-6 unit were correct, to the tune of $2M. The Defense News article's physics are a bit off, though:

Bussard received nearly $2 million under a U.S. Navy contract in August to continue work on an inertial electrostatic confinement reactor he had developed. The reactor uses magnetic fields to confine electrons, whose negative charge causes protons and Boron 11 atoms to fuse. The fusion sets off a chain of reactions that produces electricity.

The electrons actually get in the way of the process (see brehmsstrahlung radiation).