R-Squared's Top Energy Stories

Of course, my favorite on the list is number 10:

10. US Navy funds Bussard Fusion

I think you have to include the US Navy funding Bussard Fusion in there:

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3139619&C=navwar

Bussard died a couple months ago. I had really given up on fusion, but his work actually appears to have a reasonable change to work. Hopefully with more funding his team will be able to make it work.

Yes, Dr. Bussard's work will be carried on. First step is to construct WB-7 and replicate the results achieved with WB-6. Hopefully by the end of April 2008. If that works, then on to WB-8, and then an actual power generating plant.

Number 25 is also pretty interesting:

25. Cooper Pairs in insulators

http://www.aip.org/pnu/2007/split/849-1.html

One of the AIP's top stories of the year, this discovery may well help us reach a better understanding of superconductivity and insulators both. Superconductivity is of course a holy grail in energy research, and while this discovery doesn't directly lead to a room temp superconductor, it does add to the fundamental knowledge of material in the solid state.

Read the whole thing. It's good stuff.

Interesting Bussard Obit In The New Mexican

From the comments in a prior post, Power And Control points to an obituary of Robert Bussard in The New Mexican.

March to May. It's no overstatement to say, as M. Simon does, that "Civilization depends on it."

First Product Rolls Off Nanosolar Manufacturing Line

News.com has the news of Nanosolar producing their first product ever, which would be a big piece of news right there. (Also at the Nanosolar Blog.) They claim $0.99/watt, which would be an unheard of price for solar. I've had my doubts about the company for a long time considering the hoopla, but if they're actually starting to deliver, well, hooray.

Congress Garrotes ITER

Zero dollar budget. Sometimes, you just don't know what to say. (Via IEC Fusion Technology.)

BASF Patent For Barium Titanate Ultracapacitor

I wish I could recall where I saw this, but it sure is interesting. In addition to EEStor, BASF has filed for a patent on a barium titanate ultracapacitor design, number 7,023,687 filed on April 4, 2006. It will be interesting to see which, if any, of these competing designs ever make it to market. The more I read of EEStor (or, perhaps more accurately, the less I read, for they're notoriously quiet and quietly slipping behind schedule), the less inclined I am to believe they'll ever deliver a working product.

Update 12/17: A lot of interesting and heated discussion at Clean Break about this, including an anonymous commenter who claims that energy stored is proportional to ½cV for non-linear dielectrics (which barium titanate supposedly is) rather than ½cV² for linear dielectrics. One sign — and I agree — we should look for is an actual lab measurement of the properties they believe they can meet. Supposedly this is done in WIPO patent WO/2006/026136. Judging by the tone and arguments raised, it appears the same Anonymous (who may have been a former Maxwell Corp. employee) has been busy recently on Boing Boing as well.

Tad Patzek Joins The Doomers

Here (PDF):

I argue that with the current set of objective constraints a continuous stable solution to human life cannot exist in the near-future, unless we all rapidly implement much more limited ways of using the Earth’s resources, while reducing the global populations of cars, trucks, livestock and, eventually, also humans.

You first, Tad.

Another IEC Fusion Company: Fusion Power Generation

A couple of Columbia grads are having a go at IEC fusion under the name Fusion Power Generation, and they're looking for funding. (Aren't we all?) Alex Klein used to work at EMC2; the meat of his approach can be found on their Q & A page:

9. What is different about our approach?

- By adding a particular type of magnetic field to a traditional spherical IEC machine, using a shaped electromagnet which doubles as the accelerating cathode, we are able to dramatically lower the losses of energetic ions that limit the efficiency of traditional designs.

- The magnetic field confines electrons to the reaction region at the center of the machine; electrons enter via secondary emission from the electromagnet itself. The electrons bulk-neutralize the positive charge of the ions, and allow the ions to converge to very high densities at the center: the density can be increased by a factor of 10,000 or more over conventional IEC devices.

- The magnetic field also creates space charge lenses at the openings of the electromagnet so-called magnetic mirrors, which in turn serve to continually refocus beams of ions as they pass in and out of the core. The focusing action can be made to exactly counteract the effect of Coulomb collisions between particles, and ions can re-circulate on stable orbits thousands of times through the device without colliding with a material structure, preventing the loss of energy that limits the efficiency of conventional machines. In this way the density will be greatly increased while the input power to the device will be reduced over conventional IEC machines.

- Both effects will help solve the problems that have limited previous IEC experiments' performance.

- With higher densities, electrons and ions can arrange themselves in alternating layers of positive and negative charge, forming "virtual electrodes" that can result in yet higher densities of ions at the center of the machine, and a trapped ion population that never intersects any material structure. Evidence for this effect has previously been observed in operating IEC machine.

- The addition of a small radio frequency modulation of the cathode voltage will drive trapped ions to converge simultaneously at megahertz rates in the very center of the machine at high energies, provided a harmonic electric potential can be maintained inside the cathode, an effect called POPS (Periodically Oscillating Plasma Sphere) that has been documented in previous IEC experiments.

- Pulsed operation will potentially raise the fusion rate still further.

- We have plans to extract ions which have developed non-ideal orbits at low energy, thus substantially increasing the energy confinement time and further raising efficiency.

Good luck, guys. (Hat tip: jumartinez at talk-polywell.org.)