Fusion power? YOU BET!

that article has a link discussing a new development in polywell
i'll quote it up later this week since everyone is lazy :sunny:
 
End of report, we don't want to underfund iter.how droll.
It's only a tens of billions dollars project that will take thirty more years to complete the fucking prototype.
Polywell had used maybe ten million dollars on the high side, and made loads of progress in seven years
 
New design could finally help to bring fusion power closer to reality

It's an old joke that many fusion scientists have grown tired of hearing: Practical nuclear fusion power plants are just 30 years away—and always will be.

But now, finally, the joke may no longer be true: Advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak fusion reactor—and it's one that might be realized in as little as a decade, they say. The era of practical fusion power, which could offer a nearly inexhaustible energy resource, may be coming near.

Using these new commercially available superconductors, rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) superconducting tapes, to produce high-magnetic field coils "just ripples through the whole design," says Dennis Whyte, a professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. "It changes the whole thing."
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newdesigncou.jpg

A cutaway view of the proposed ARC reactor. Thanks to powerful new magnet technology, the much smaller, less-expensive ARC reactor would deliver the same power output as a much larger reactor. Credit: the MIT ARC team
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tokamaks are for suckers

Stellar work | The Economist

20151024_STC989_595.png


economist said:
Fusion power
Stellar work

Research into fusion has gone down a blind alley, but a means of escape may now be at hand
Oct 24th 2015 | From the print edition

IN THE winter of 1968 three British physicists went to Moscow to examine a machine called a tokamak. This fusion reactor was a newly devised competitor to America’s approach to fusion, known as the stellarator. The Russians said the tokamak left the stellarator in the dust. The Americans demurred. But the British found that the Russians were right. The tokamak was far better than the stellarators of the day at holding in place the hot soup of atomic nuclei and electrons, called plasma, that is fusion’s fuel. Stellarators thus dwindled, and the tokamak became the preferred way to try to turn fusion into a practical and useful technology.

Fusion’s promise was of copious, safe, clean power generated from deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen that makes up about 0.016% of the “H” in “H2O”, and tritium, an even heavier form of hydrogen that can be made easily from lithium. Fusing deuterium and tritium generates helium (and also a neutron), together with a lot of energy. But that promise has not been fulfilled. An old joke—that commercial fusion is 30 years away, and always will be—is more true than funny. The latest tokamak, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, being built in France, will (according to current plans) open for fusion a decade late, in 2027, at a cost of at least $15 billion. That is more than twice the original price tag. No one seriously expects a commercial successor before the middle of the century.

In recent years, though, something curious has happened. The sidelined stellarator has started to make a comeback, as computing power almost unimaginable in the 1960s has been brought to bear on the difficulties that dogged it. There is no guarantee that it will now succeed where the tokamak failed. But real hope, rather than the fingers-crossed-behind-the-back sort, is coursing through the fusion fraternity. For, in November, a German stellarator called the Wendelstein 7-X will start operating. And the Wendelstein 7-X is the first stellarator which can, according to that computing power, create perfectly the magnetic fields required for fusion.

The ideal and the good
Atomic nuclei are positively charged. Like charges repel. It is therefore hard to force two nuclei into sufficient proximity for the strong nuclear force, which holds nuclei together, to exceed the repulsive power of electromagnetism—thus permitting the nuclei in question to fuse into one. Temperatures of millions of degrees are needed to make nuclei move too fast for the repulsion to matter. High pressure, to concentrate them and increase the chances that they will encounter each other, also helps.

Controlling such hot, pressurised plasma—in particular, bottling it up so that it cannot touch the wall of its chamber and thus lose heat (and also damage the wall)—requires magnetic fields. If these fields are not perfect, the plasma will leak out.

Tokamaks, which have hollow, doughnut-shaped fusion chambers, do their bottling with two magnetic fields. One is generated by superconducting electromagnets that loop around the chamber and through its central hole (see diagram). The other comes from an electrical current induced in the plasma itself. This simple combination creates magnetic lines of force that corkscrew around the plasma, confining it as a smaller doughnut-within-the-doughnut. Cranking up the fields’ strengths creates an ever-denser doughnut, which increases the plasma’s temperature and pressure until it reaches the point where the nuclei within can fuse.

The price paid for a tokamak’s simplicity, though, is that the field weakens towards its outside edge, and its lines of force tend to drift. The plasma drifts with them and, as a result, sometimes touches the chamber wall. By contrast, the fusion chamber of a stellarator and the magnets that surround it look like something Gaudí might have imagined: a mess of twists, turns and asymmetries. In theory, this complexity means that drift in one part of the chamber is offset in another, differently oriented part. On a full circuit of the chamber, the plasma is squeezed evenly all the way around.

In the 1960s designing and building stellarators was an art-form as much as a science. Hence the preference for tokamaks. But supercomputers and precision engineering have changed that. The reasons for preferring tokamaks to stellarators may thus have vanished. The Wendelstein 7-X will be the test of this.

Fingers will still be crossed, of course. Computer models are not reality, as an American project called the National Ignition Facility has discovered to its cost. (NIF is designed to carry out what is called “inertial confinement”, by hitting pellets of frozen deuterium and tritium hard with lasers, to heat and compress them at the same time. It fits its design specifications perfectly, but still refuses to generate more energy than it consumes.) Earlier experiments with a smaller stellarator do however mean that the machine’s masters at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics are pretty confident.

Even if the Wendelstein 7-X does perform as predicted, though, the behemoth that is ITER will not go away. The fallacy of sunk costs and the national pride of the host and the other participants in the project will see to that. But ITER may find itself relegated from being the flagship of fusion to acting as a proving ground for technology, such as neutron-resistant materials, that ends up being used in stellarators.

None of this, meanwhile, answers the question of why fusion power is needed at all. Even if stellarators work well, the 30-year rule, or something pretty close to it, is likely to apply. And, by the middle of the century, the world’s energy landscape will probably look completely different from now. Perhaps there will, indeed, be a gaping hole in supply that only fusion can plug. More likely, cheap photovoltaic and energy-storage technology will mean that much of humanity’s energy comes from a different fusion reactor—one 150m kilometres away, called the sun.
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ofn
Brussard left the tokomak shit after supporting it for decades when he realized it was a piece of shit
thats when he went to the navy and started the polywell

unfortunately a lot of scientists had their careers pinned to the project and ego and blah blah so they have sunk most of the fusion R&D worldwide funding in to this stupid thing

fusion that works can be put into a 20 meter wide space ship so even if we dont need power plants on earth, we can literally do whatever the fuck we want in our solar system with more ease than we can fathom
 
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For more than 60 years, scientists have dreamed of a clean, inexhaustible energy source in the form of nuclear fusion. And they’re still dreaming.

But thanks to the efforts of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, experts hope that might soon change. Last year, after 1.1 million construction hours, the institute completed the world’s largest nuclear fusion machine of its kind, called a stellarator.

They call this 16-metre (52-foot) wide machine the W7-X. And following more than a year of tests, engineers are finally ready to fire up the US$1.1 billion machine for the first time, and it could happen before the end of this month, Science reported.

The black horse of nuclear reactors

Known in the plasma physics community as the 'black horse' of nuclear fusion reactors, stellarators are notoriously difficult to build. This video below demonstrates the construction of W7-X, which took 19 years to complete:



Between 2003 and 2007, as the project was being built, it suffered some major construction set backs — including one of its contracted manufacturers going out of business — that nearly cancelled the whole endeavour.

Only a handful of stellarators have ever been attempted, and even fewer have been completed.

By comparison, the more popular cousin to the stellarator, called a tokamak, is in wider use. There are over three dozen operational tokamaks across the globe, and more than 200 built throughout history. These machines are easier to construct and, in the past, have proven to do the job of a nuclear reactor better than the stellarator.

But tokamaks have a major flaw that W7-X is reportedly immune to, suggesting that Germany’s latest monster machine could be a game-changer.

How a nuclear reactor works

nuc-reac
Schematic of the average tokamak. Notice how it has fewer layers than the stellarator and the shape of the magnetic coils is different. Credit: Uploaded by Matthias W Hirsch on Wikipedia
The key to a successful nuclear reactor of any kind is to generate, confine, and control a blob of super-heated matter, called a plasma — a gas that has reached temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit).

At these blazing temperatures, the electrons are ripped from their atoms, forming what are called ions. Under these extreme conditions, the repulsive forces, which normally make ions bounce off each other like bumper cars, are overcome.

Consequently when the ions collide, they fuse together, generating energy in the process, and you have what is called nuclear fusion. This is the process that has been fuelling our sun for about 4.5 billion years and will continue to do so for another estimated 4 billion years.

Once engineers have heated the gas in the reactor to the right temperature, they use super-chilled magnetic coils to generate powerful magnetic fields that contain and control the plasma.

The W7-X, for example, houses 50 5.4-tonne magnetic coils, shown in purple in the GIF below. The plasma is contained within the red coil:

stellarator2

The difference between tokamaks and stellarators

For years, tokamaks have been considered the most promising machine for harnessing the power of the sun because the configuration of their magnetic coils contains a plasma that is better than that of currently operational stellarators.

But there’s a problem: Tokamaks can only control the plasma in short bursts that last for no more than 7 minutes. And the energy necessary to generate that plasma is more than the energy engineers get from these periodic bursts.

Tokamaks thus consume more energy than they produce, which is not what you want from nuclear fusion reactors, which have been touted as the “most important energy source over the next millennium.”

Because of the stellarators’ design, experts suspect it could sustain a plasma for at least 30 minutes at a time, which is significantly longer than any tokamak. The French tokamak “Tore Supra” holds the record: 6 minutes and 30 seconds.

If W7-X succeeds, it could completely turn the nuclear fusion community on its head and launch stellarators into the lime light.

“The world is waiting to see if we get the confinement time and then hold it for a long pulse,” David Gates, the head of stellarator physics at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, told Science.
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Germany

we'll see what happens by new year time i guess
 
IMPROVEMENT IN FAST IGNITION BY A FACTOR OF FOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUR

at 7%
they think the new method can achieve 15% efficiency
yay
http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-achieve-record-high-efficiency-in-key-nuclear-fusion-process

The good news? Significant hurdles haven't stopped the march of scientific advancement in the past, and the handful of research teams around the world that are leading some serious attempts at bringing nuclear fusion reactors to reality are making progress.

Last month, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany switched on their mammoth, US$1.1 billion nuclear fusion machine (called a stellarator) after around 1.1 million construction hours, and so far, things are looking pretty promising.

Meanwhile, in the States, a separate team has been working on a different way to achieve controlled nuclear fusion - fast ignition (FI), which initiates nuclear fusion reactions using a high-intensity laser.

The process works in two stages to get the nuclear fusion process going. First off, you need to fire off hundreds of very powerful lasers to compress the fusion fuel, which is usually a mix of deuterium and tritium, to a high density. Next, a single high-intensity laser is used deliver heat energy to the compressed fuel to very rapidly ignite it, which initiates the self-sustaining process of nuclear fusion.

While fast ignition is still very much in the experimental phase, researchers argue that it’s a promising avenue towards nuclear fusion because it requires a lot less energy than other potential methods. But one of the big problems with it has been in directing that second-stage laser to hit the densest region of the fuel.

"Before we developed this technique, it was as if we were looking in the dark," said one of the team, Christopher McGuffey from the University of California, San Diego. "Now, we can better understand where energy is being deposited so we can investigate new experimental designs to improve delivery of energy to the fuel."

"This has been a major research challenge since the idea of fast ignition was proposed," added his colleague, Farhat Beg.

All the team had to do was apply simple copper tracers to the spherical plastic fuel capsule. The when they fired the high-intensity laser, they could trace its movement around the capsule because the high-energy electrons it emits hit the tracers and produce visible X-rays.

Publishing in Nature, McGuffey and his colleagues describe how finally being able to visualise where their high-intensity laser is has allowed them to test different ways to improve energy delivery to the fuel target for the first time. According to K. G. Orphanides at Wired UK, the researchers credit this techinque with allowing them to achieve a record high of 7 percent efficiency - "a fourfold improvement on previous fast ignition experiments".

When the experimental design was scaled up, computer models predicted an energy delivery efficiency of up to 15 percent. “Our findings lay the groundwork for further improving efficiency, with 15 percent energy coupling predicted in FI experiments using an existing megajoule-scale laser driver," the team concludes.

When it comes to controlled nuclear fusion, we'll be dealing in baby steps for many years to come, but even tiny developments in the pursuit of something legitimately revolutionary are worth getting excited about. Watch this space.
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news from Polywell January 2015
filed a patent:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=20150380114.PGNR.&OS=DN/20150380114&RS=DN/20150380114

METHOD AND APPARATUS OF CONFINING HIGH ENERGY CHARGED PARTICLES IN MAGNETIC CUSP CONFIGURATION

Differences from 2 years ago:
This result is the first ever experimental measurement that validates the enhanced electron confinement in the cusp magnetic system by the presence of high β plasma.




more details



Quote

While it was postulated that high beta plasma would improve plasma confinement in the cusp system, the problem of how to sustain high beta plasma and how to heat ions of the high beta plasma to fusion relevant energies was not solved. In accordance with embodiments of the invention, it has been found that the high beta plasma, formed by plasma initiators, enhances the confinement time of electrons from an electron beam injected into the cusp system, and that this injected electron beam can provide a means to sustain the high beta plasma and to accelerate ions to fusion relevant energy once the high beta plasma in the cusp system is produced with the use of plasma initiators during start up. After the electron beam confinement is enhanced, the injected electron beam can provide efficient heating by transferring its energy to the high beta plasma to sustain the high beta plasma by compensating for the natural cooling of the plasma. In addition, the injected electrons can form a negative potential well to accelerate ions of the high beta plasma to fusion relevant energy. In accordance with embodiments of the invention, the electron beam power requirement to sustain the high beta plasma and to produce a sufficiently deep negative potential well (e.g. more than 10 kV) in the cusp system is much higher without the use of plasma initiators during the start up, compared to the electron beam power required to sustain the high beta plasma and to produce a sufficiently deep negative potential well with the use of the plasma initiators. The reduced electron beam power requirements are of significant practical importance in achieving the desired conditions for fusion reactions in regard to the following potential applications such as neutron generation, medical isotope production, transmutation of nuclear wastes and fusion power plants.



experimental apparatus:


Quote

FIGS. 10 A and B show the experimental results obtained by operation of the apparatus of FIG. 6. Prior to the plasma injection, the coils are energized 40 ms before t=0 and the coil current is kept at constant value during the time period shown in FIG. 10A. In addition, the electron beam was turned on 30 μs before t=0 and operated at 3 A of injection current at 7.2 kV and was maintained on until t=150 μs. Prior to plasma injection, the x-ray diode signals between t=−5 μs and t=0 provide an estimate for the background noise data since there are no plasma ions to produce beam induced bremsstrahlung x-ray emission during this time period. Practically zero signals in x-ray diodes demonstrate good spatial collimation of x-ray detectors and sufficient covering of any metallic surfaces in the line of sight for the x-ray detectors using plastic materials to suppress the spurious x-ray emission. At t=0, two co-axial plasma injectors start with stored energy between 2.6 kJ and 5.6 kJ in the high voltage capacitors, resulting in average total input powers between 370 MW and 800 MW for 7 μs. It is noted that the input power is much higher than the previously estimated 23 MW due to circuit inefficiency and inherent plasma loss in the co-axial plasma gun injector. No significant attempts were conducted to improve the injection efficiency since this experimental set-up was designed to provide scientific validation of enhanced electron beam confinement after high beta plasma injection in the cusp system.



experimental results:


Quote

Various experimental runs were identified as “shots”. In the case of shot 15610, as shown in FIG. 10A, the plasma density, marked ne plasma, increases to 1.6×1016 cm−3 as the plasma from the injectors are successfully transported to the magnetic cusp system. At the same time, the flux loop data, marked ΔB, shows clear sign of electron diamagnetic effect associated with the high β plasma injection. Even with plasma injection into cusp system, the x-ray signals are low between t=8-13 μs even after the plasma density reaches its peak value of 1.6×1016 cm−3 at t=9 μs. However, shortly after the peaking of flux loop data at t=12 μs, the x-ray diode registers strong increases in hard x-ray emission, while the bulk plasma density varies little. This represents the beginnings of the enhanced electron beam confinement after high β plasma injection into the cusp system. It is noted that the x-ray results in FIGS. 10A and 10B are from the x-ray diode viewing the central plasma through the cusp opening in the face of coil. The x-ray results from the x-ray diode viewing the central plasma through the cusp opening in the corner of coils is omitted for the simplicity as the results are similar to the x-ray diode for the face of coil. The increase in x-ray emission builds up for 4-5 μs and reaches a plateau between t=19-21 μs. At t=21 μs, the x-ray emission signal drops rapidly toward zero within 1-1.5 μs, while plasma density and flux loop data show only gradual decrease during that time period. This condition marks the end of the enhanced electron beam confinement phase. The enhanced electron beam confinement phase is represented by the cross sectioned area of FIG. 10A.



discussion of experimental results:


Quote

This temporal behavior of the x-ray emission signal can be explained as follows and clearly demonstrates the causality of high β plasma to the improved confinement in the cusp magnetic fields as postulated by Grad. Initially, the beam electrons are confined poorly in the magnetic cusp system, resulting in very low x-ray emission. After the plasma injection, the cusp system undergoes a transition to exhibit enhanced electron confinement due to the presence of high β plasma and corresponding electron diamagnetism. The increase in hard x-ray emission corresponds to the increase in beam electron concentration, showing that beam electrons are now better confined in the magnetic cusp in the presence of high β plasma. In the experimental test set up, however, the plasma pressure in the cusp decreases over time due to the cooling of plasma. It is noted that the test set up does not have a subsequent plasma heating system after the initial plasma injection to compensate the plasma cooling, and the beam electron injection power is too low to maintain high β plasma in the cusp. The decrease in plasma β is clearly shown by the gradual decay of flux loop data, AB, starting from t=14 μs. As a result, the enhanced electron beam confinement phase at high β state is only temporary and it reverts back to the poor electron beam confinement phase when plasma β becomes substantially low. When this transition occurs (end of enhanced electron beam confinement phase), all the previously confined high energy electrons will leave the magnetic cusp rapidly, which results in a rapid decrease in x-ray emission at t=21 μs. This temporal behavior of the x-ray emission signal (a rise and a rapid decay) is observed only when there is sufficient injected energy by the plasma injector, as shown in FIG. 10B. For example, the experimental system shown in FIG. 6 exhibits the enhanced electron beam confinement when the injectors utilizes 4 kJ (shot 15649) and 5.6 kJ (shot 15640) of stored energy in the capacitor to produce initial plasmas, corresponding to average input powers of 570 MW and 800 MW. When the injector utilizes only 2.6 kJ (shot 15645) of stored energy or 380 MW of input power, no increase is observed in x-ray emission with plasma injection.
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http://fire.pppl.gov/fpa15_TAE-Progress_Binderbauer.pdf
progress on reactor prototype for tri alpha

LPP Fusion article discussing THEIR ideas and materials of use
Next Big Future: LPP Fusion explains why Tungsten and Beryllium electrodes for their dense plasma fusion reactor work

Next Big Future: Jaeyoung Park confirms publication of patent filing for Polywell Fusion and promises more technical disclosure in interview with Nextbigfuture
more info regarding polywell patent

Germany has created some insane looking beast - a stellarator
German plasma success raises nuclear fusion hopes - BBC News
The stellarator's plasma was created on Thursday using a microwave laser, a complex combination of magnets and just 10mg of helium. The Max Planck Institute calls its machine Wendelstein 7-X.
 
newer news from July 2016
upgrading the stellerator
Wendelstein 7-X: Upgrading after successful first round of experiments

Since the start of operation in December 2015 plasmas have been continuously produced in Wendelstein 7-X - first from helium gas and, since February 2016, from hydrogen. A tiny quantity of gas has been transformed about 2,200 times by microwave heating into an extremely hot plasma of ultra-low-density, this involving separation of the electrons from the nuclei of the helium or hydrogen atoms. Confined in the magnetic cage of Wendelstein 7-X, the charged particles levitate between the walls of the plasma chamber with almost no contact.

"We are more than satisfied with the results of the first experimental campaign", states Project Head Professor Thomas Klinger. Starting off from the then attainable pulse length of half a second, pulse lengths of six seconds were ultimately achieved. The plasmas with the highest temperatures were produced by microwave heating powers of four megawatts lasting one second: At mean plasma densities the physicists were able to measure temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius for the plasma electrons, and 10 million degrees for the ions. "This greatly exceeded what our rather cautious predictions had led us to believe", says Thomas Klinger.

Moreover, the structure and confinement properties of the novel magnetic field proved in the first tests to be as good as expected. Further physical investigations, e.g. on the heat load distribution at the wall or on the influence of the external trimming coils, were accompanied by technical discharges for cleaning the plasma vessel or checking the machine systems, viz. magnets, cooling system, microwave heating and machine control.

The experiments were concluded as scheduled on 10 March. Meanwhile the plasma vessel has been re-opened in order to mount 6,000 carbon tiles to protect the vessel walls and insert the divertor: The tiles are installed on the wall of the plasma vessel in ten broad strips conforming to the winding contour of the plasma edge. This is because at the edge of the plasma vessel energy and particles encroach on limited sectors of the vessel wall. If these wall sectors are protected by special divertor plates, the impinging particles can be neutralised and pumped off along with undesirable impurities. This makes the divertor an important tool for controlling impurities and the density of the plasma.


Read more at: Wendelstein 7-X: Upgrading after successful first round of experiments
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polywell:
Fusion to Be Commercialised Thirty Years Faster than Expected - Civil Societys Role | Prachatai English
On May 2, 2016, Jaeyoung Park delivered a lecture at Khon Kaen University in Thailand, with a discussion of the idea that the world has so underestimated the timetable and impact that practical and economic fusion power will have, that its actual arrival will be highly disruptive. Specifically, Professor Park stated that he expected to present "final scientific proof of principle for the polywell technology around 2019-2020", and expects "a first generation commercial fusion reactor being developed by 2030 and then mass production and commercialisation of the technology in the 2030's. This is approximately 30 years faster than expected under the first world government-driven International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor (ITER) project. It would also be tens of billions of dollars cheaper."[99]
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LPP:
Next Big Future: LPP Fusion can consistently achieve the ion energy to ignite hydrogen boron in an average shot
LPP Fusion’s President and Chief Scientist Eric Lerner reported on June 21 new record ion energies of over 260 keV (equivalent to a temperature of over 2.8 billion degrees K) to 150 plasma scientists assembled in Prague, Czech Republic for the 27th International Symposium on Plasma Physics and Technology. The new results, obtained with the FF-1 plasma focus experimental device in Middlesex, NJ were a 50% advance over the previous record for a single shot, 170 keV, also achieved at FF-1 in 2011. Equally significantly, the mean ion energy for 10 shots at the same conditions also increased by 50% to 124 keV. Combined with other advances reported at the same conference these results mean that FF-1 now has achieved the ion energy needed to ignite hydrogen-boron fuel in an average shot, not just in the best shots.
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It works in Germany
Trying for a reactor that powers itself in 2019
Tests confirm that Germany's massive nuclear fusion machine really works - ScienceAlert

"We’ve confirmed that the magnetic cage that we’ve built works as designed," said one of the lead researchers, Sam Lazerson from the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Despite this success, W 7-X isn't actually intended to generate electricity from nuclear fusion - it's simply a proof of concept to show that it could work.

In 2019, the reactor will begin to use deuterium instead of hydrogen to produce actual fusion reactions inside the machine, but it won't be capable of generating more energy than it current requires to run.

That's something that the next-generation of stellerators will hopefully overcome. "The task has just started," explain the researchers in a press release.
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mr. fusion was released to the consumer market in november 2012

u rly need 2 watch some of the mcfly saga
 

august last year
For many years, US fusion funding has been heavily focused on just one machine: ITER. This single project is eating the larger budget of the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences. Because of ITERs’ thirst for cash, many other concepts have been strangled or shut down. Often, researchers need to “show relevance” to ITER, otherwise they will run the risk of getting closed down. After years of this kind of single minded support, many good ideas are languishing. For example, the University of Washington has invented a new fusion concept called the dynomak. The team is seeking 30 million over five years [13]. Their idea has a lot of promise. But the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences cannot and will not help them. The agency only cares about ITER. So the team, is turning to ARPA-E and private investment for support [14]. In another example, the company EMC2, has published promising results on the polywell [15]. To take the concept further they need 30 million in investment, but again – the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences is not helping [16]. So many projects are hurting. In October, MIT had to shut down the Alacator tokamak due to a lack of funding [17]. Also, the Levitating Dipole Experiment needs a few million over several years and the Plasma Liner Experiment at Los Alamos is surviving on limited ARPA-E funding [18, 19]. All this funding is being redistributed to ITER - and there is a strong argument that ITER will never lead to a commercial fusion power plant [20].
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The Polywell Blog

On May 2, 2016, Jaeyoung Park delivered a lecture at Khon Kaen University in Thailand, with a discussion of the idea that the world has so underestimated the timetable and impact that practical and economic fusion power will have, that its actual arrival will be highly disruptive. Specifically, Professor Park stated that he expected to present "final scientific proof of principle for the polywell technology around 2019-2020", and expects "a first generation commercial fusion reactor being developed by 2030 and then mass production and commercialisation of the technology in the 2030's. This is approximately 30 years faster than expected under the first world government-driven International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor (ITER) project. It would also be tens of billions of dollars cheaper."[100]
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Polywell - Wikipedia

The $30 million, three-year program that Park wants to pursue would be aimed at demonstrating a heating system that uses beams of electrons. “After 18 test devices, EMC2 is now down to one specific design of Polywell reactor,” he wrote in an email. “Either it works or it does not. We will find out in three years.”
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EMC2 revives quest for nuclear fusion power
needs funding i guess...fuck the world am i right teehee (we're on the hook for 1.4 billion on ITER, over due and over budget and also, this is still a prototype)
 
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