Focus Fusion gets Funding

JohnP · Post by **JohnP** » Mon May 26, 2008 10:06 pm

From Slashdot:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl ... 26/1924242

The skinny: Swedish firm has apparently entered into an agreement to provide $600,000 in research money. If research gives promising results, they will provide another $10M for development & manufacturing Focus Fusion reactors.

jlumartinez · Post by **jlumartinez** » Tue May 27, 2008 11:05 am

Great news!! Always is good to see that people get more and more concerned about fusion energy -any kind-. I hope the best in their path to a cheap and clean energy. The race for fusion is heating engines...

vernes · Post by **vernes** » Tue May 27, 2008 12:53 pm

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 9479871760
time-location: 1:02:06

Mh...
Didn't know it was that far off.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Tue May 27, 2008 2:33 pm

From what I have seen they have a really horrendous problem with electrode erosion.

And they claim that pulses on the order of 1,000 MJ (give or take depending on the fuel) are needed for break-even. That would be 1 MW for ~20 minutes to charge up the capacitor bank. Yet they think they can do one pulse a second in an operational reactor.

Any you thought Polywell has operational problems.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Tue May 27, 2008 2:55 pm

Ditto M Simon. I don't see how they get past their version of the first wall problem without some serious unobtainium.

Still, you never know, and its good to see money going toward a lot of different fusion ideas.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Tue May 27, 2008 5:36 pm

Hmmm, looking at CMEF they appear to be basically a front for Lerner. It seems devoted to focus fusion.

http://cmef.eu/main.asp

This would be sort of like Bussard (if he were alive) announcing EMC2 was funding Polywell.

Munchausen · Post by **Munchausen** » Tue May 27, 2008 6:19 pm

I have taken a closer look at that company in the swedish national company registry. Its a company with limited responsibility, registration code 556629-6264 and its assets are rather small <800 000 SEK (1 $=6 SEK) The managing director is a person by the name of Leif Alexander Arnold and the personell in the managing board seems to be members of his closest family. He lives in a rather cushy suburb just outside Stockholm.

The language in the swedish version of the homepage seems to be english translated by babelfish with no correction whatsoever. It may also be the case that it is written by a person with a very faint grasp of the swedish language. If you are serious you dont make a fool of your self in this way. You spend a little money to have a litterate person tidy up your text.

Center för Miljö- och Energiforskning Sverige AB (CMEF) främjar teknologier med en världförändrande påverkan till tröskeln av en kommersialisering.

A little googling reveals quite a lot of Mr. Arnolds performances in various discussion foras. He appears to have a strongly negative attitude towards fission nuclear power. Nothing wrong with that. But judging from the WAY this man airs his opinions, I woud not spend one single SEK in any of his enterprises.

May I suggest you all just forget about this one?

scareduck · Post by **scareduck** » Wed May 28, 2008 12:20 am

The part where he claims that "The work of LPP president Eric Lerner in this field is taken seriously by his peers" is equally hilarious. Lerner's model supporting Focus Fusion derives directly from his poorly regarded cosmological theories, which have yet to get traction, partial evidence of which comes from Lerner's own inability to even receive a doctorate from an accredited university. Further, anyone who can't understand the difference between delivering a talk at a scientific conference and getting a paper published in a refereed journal gets what they deserve. It's not even clear that this guy is acting as anything other than a press agent for Lerner's wishcast for funding, since he's selling shares.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Wed May 28, 2008 2:34 am

Yeah, even if the concept is viable, this is exactly the wrong approach.

I'm glad we haven't seen this kind of circus around Polywell.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu May 29, 2008 2:13 pm

It got Instalanched:

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/arc ... 019827.php

Here is the link given:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/05/focus- ... ef-of.html

===

Polywellers have been there first. I added my 2 cents and a link back to here . When it gets approved.