More Funding For Bussard Fusion Project

Some good news on the energy front for a change.

The Bussard Fusion project, also called Polywell or Inertial Electrostatic fusion has received an additional $2 million in funding from the Department of Defense.

Originally proposed by the late Dr. Robert Bussard, polywell fusion uses a far simpler mechanism than either tokamak or laser fusion to achieve a fusion reaction.

Ironically polywell fusion has shown greater promise than the more traditional (and long running) programs all while costing a fraction of the other programs. To date, Bussards theories and calculations have held up under testing, having gone through 7 iterations of reactor, with each one performing as Bussard had predicted they would as they increased in scale. The latest reactor, the WB7 (which stands for Wiffle Ball 7, as the reactor resembles a large wiffle ball), has performed well and had few, if any surprises.

After Dr. Bussard's passing, a number of scientists from the Los Alamos National Lab took leaves of absence to carry on Bussard's work.

Should Bussard's theories hold up this could mean almost unlimited energy for the human race without the problems of waste disposal or greenhouse gases. Of course I expect some of the less stable environmentalists to decry such a breakthrough, claiming that we'll be using up valuable and limited resources better used elsewhere. Of course those resources might run out in a few hundred million years if we aren't careful, but I doubt it will be a problem.