Published, transparent, peer reviewed, crowd funded nuclear fusion research

Humans,

Cryptocurrency has begun the non-violent, positive social changes and revolutions that enable a vehicle for the people, by the people to propel civilization forward into peace like never before. However, there is something better than crypto for the world.

The next step to secure our global life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness together involves cheap, renewable power. The security of every major blockchain at the time of this writing depends on electricity. Looking outwards from glowing screens and into the faces of 836 million people in poverty (according to the UN) requires electricity. Exploring the solar system requires creative engineering and insane amounts of energy.

Today you must learn about another crowd funded effort that is not cryptographically secure and yet is necessary for the next epoch of peace human civilization can attain. Today I will show you published, transparent, crowd funded nuclear fusion research.

The name of this non-profit is Focus Fusion, the type of device is a dense plasma focus (pinch), the type of nuclear fusion they will do is proton + Boron11 (pB11).

The most common skeptical questions that come to mind are answered in the FAQ (an excerpt follows):

What’s the big difference between Focus Fusion generators and current nuclear reactors?

In current nuclear reactors, energy is produced through nuclear fission. Here, a neutron breaks apart a uranium nucleus releasing energy and more high-energy neutrons. The nuclear fragments produced are highly radioactive. They naturally decay and give off their own energetic radiation. In addition, the neutrons smash into the nuclei of atoms in the reactor structure, transmuting them to radioactive nuclei as well. All of these radioactive atoms constitute nuclear waste.

The form of nuclear fusion that the US government has funded, which uses deuterium and tritium as fuel, also produces some radioactive waste, although far less than fission. Tritium, a form of hydrogen with two additional neutrons, is itself radioactive. When deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse together they produce nucleus of harmless and non-radioactive helium and a neutron. But the high energy neutron that carries most of the energy of the reaction can again smash into the reactor’s structure making it radioactive.

In Focus Fusion, however, none of this occurs. The fuel that will be used consists of hydrogen and boron. Both are harmless, non-radioactive substances. When hydrogen nuclei (protons) and boron nuclei fuse together at extremely high temperatures, they produce only helium nuclei and no neutrons.

A secondary reaction occurs when some helium nuclei fuse with boron nuclei, which does produce some neutrons. But these reactions are rare, and only 1/500th of the energy is emitted in the form of neutrons. More important, none of these neutrons have enough energy to transform the materials they hit into long-lived radioactive materials. So no such radioactive materials are produced in the reactor, rather generator. Hydrogen-boron generators would be free of long-lived radioactivity, and the small number of neutrons emitted could easily be absorbed in several inches of shielding.

Focus Fusion generators are so safe that anyone could safely enter the generator room seconds after it had been turned off, even if it had previously been functioning for a year. Short-lived radioactivity within the shielded plasma focus chamber would be below background levels of radiation that is always present in the environment in several hours, allowing the chamber to be safely opened and maintained. More details on generator safety are here.

You may fund a test run of the machine here