I received an interesting comment/email to my previous thread about Dr. Robert Bussard and fusion power from a gentleman named Erich J. Knight. Mr. Knight’s brief letter described a method of fusion power that was doable now with present technology and without magnetic containment. He was kind enough to provide me with some links to some major corporations that are doing this right now.

Electron Power Systems :

We have discovered how to make plasma toroids, called EST’s (Electron Spiral Toroid’s) that remain stable in air with no magnetic fields for containment. This EST can be added to well-known fusion technology to build small fusion reactors with no magnetic containment. We accelerate EST’s magnetically. We plan to collide two EST’s together to cause fusion reactions. The colliding EST fusion reactor has several potential advantages over other fusion reactors. First, it needs no external magnetic fields for containment, a great advantage in cost and size. Second, EST’s are small, so the process can occur in small increments, avoiding the need for a large container of heated plasma. Third, the EST is charge neutral and so has ion densities many orders of magnitude greater than ion beams.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics/Chilean Nuclear Commission :

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics and the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission (CCHEN) have agreed to collaborate on a three-year experimental test of the “focus fusion” approach to fusion energy. The project will use the Speed-2 plasma focus device at CCHEN’s Thermonuclear Plasma Laboratory in Santiago, Chile, one of the two largest plasma focus devices in the world. The experimental team at CCHEN of four scientists, headed by Dr. Leopoldo Soto, will collaborate with Eric Lerner, President of LPP and Executive Director of the Focus Fusion Society, and with other researchers.

The project will consist of three phases. In the first, beginning in July, 2006, the team will duplicate and improve on the experimental results earlier obtained at Texas A&M University indicating that the plasma focus can achieve the high ion energies, above 100keV (the equivalent of one billion degrees C), that is needed to burn hydrogen-boron fuel. Hydrogen-boron fuel can produce energy in the form of charged particles, eliminating radioactivity and potentially allowing inexpensive direct conversion into electricity. The experiments will considerably extend the earlier work because the new tests will be conducted at higher peak current, will have better diagnostic instruments, and will have more optimized electrodes.

These last two links are for a biocharcoal process that is carbon negative called pyrolysis. The product is a bio-oil and fertilizer. The process was invented by Ancient Amazon River tribes :

Dynamotive Energy Systems, an energy solutions provider based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is one of several companies pioneering the use of pyrolysis, a process in which biomass is burned at a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. The process yields both a charcoal by-product that can be used as a fertilizer, and bio-oil, which is a mix of oxygenated hydrocarbons that can be used to generate heat or electricity.

Because the charcoal by-product, or “agrichar,” does not readily break down, it could sequester for thousands of years nearly all the carbon it contains, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Along the way, it would boost agricultural productivity through its ability to retain nutrients and moisture.

(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=5670236C-E7F2-99DF-3E2163B9FB144E40)

And Terra Preta, a company Mr. Knight whose site he co-administers :
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node

I can’t even pretend to give a comment about fusion technology other than the basics. Super-hot lasers exploding pellets of helium3 seems the way to go, but what do I know, I’m a tech, not an engineer. I’m just the guy that calibrates and fixes the stuff these guys dream up. And not fusion reactors either!

The biocharcoal looks like an economical way to get the bang from the carbon cycle without putting the carbon into the air. It looks almost too cheap and easy. But you know what, if I ever get the chance to retire from this NWO rat-race chasing debt (and my tail!) bullsh*t, I’d give this method of power generation some serious thought. That and the fact that I actually understand the process enough to build something myself if I had to! 😎