Fusion's ups and downs (Includes some news from EMC2)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/03/23/2237165.aspx

Fusion's ups and downs

Posted: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 6:05 PM by Alan Boyle

There's more than one way to do fusion energy research: Some approaches rely on applying well-accepted physics, at a cost of billions of dollars, on a timeline that could stretch out for decades. Other approaches follow unconventional paths that could get to the goal much more quickly, for much less money ... but could also lead to dead ends.

Over the past couple of weeks, the folks following unconventional paths to fusion have signaled that they're a little surer about their progress - while some of the folks following the mainstream path are running into a little more trouble.

Does that mean low-budget fusion will prevail? Not necessarily. But it does mean that fusion research could heat up in the years to come.

Fusion power is so attractive because if it's done right, it could be so abundant. The aim is to bring the same principle that fuels the sun down to Earth: Crush atomic nuclei together to produce bigger nuclei (turning hydrogen to helium, for example), and in the process convert a tiny bit of mass into pure energy (in accordance with Einstein's E=mc<sup>2/sup] equation).

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