Scientists at LPP Fusion, led by Chief Scientist Eric Lerner, are just one step away from technically proving out dense plasma focus fusion and you a few thousand other people can help for the final push. They are already 25% of the way to the $200,000 they needed for a few key experiments.
Success would be better than doubling NASA’s budget and 100,000 times cheaper than one year of double NASA budget
Success would have more impact than efforts to double NASA’s space budget to 1% of all US tax dollars [increase from $18 billion per year to $36 billion].
Dense plasma focus fusion would enable vastly superior space propulsion. This would even be the case if the focus fusion system was not yet at commercially ready capability. If the system only ran for minutes or hours and at one hundredth of the commercial power design, this would still be 100 times better than advanced ion drive.
Focus fusion need two hundred million times less budget than the IPCC climate mitigation proposal and success would be lower energy costs instead of higher so positive GDP growth effects instead of negative
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that efforts to stabilize levels of greenhouse-gas emissions would require investments of about $13 trillion through 2030. It also noted that reducing emissions would reduce the rate of economic growth (as a result of such factors as higher energy prices). But it would do so by, on average, less than a tenth of a percentage point per year between now and 2100. Switching from fossil fuels to low-carbon sources of energy will cost $44 trillion between now and 2050.
Carbon Capture and Storage
As at September 2012, the Global CCS Institute identified 75 large-scale integrated projects in its 2012 Global Status of CCS report which is a net increase of one project since its 2011 Global Status of CCS report. 16 of these projects are in operation or in construction capturing around 36 million tonnes of CO2 per annum.
This is a key technology for IPCC plans and would cost tens of billions of more dollars to research how to improve and scale up the process to the right economic and scaling levels. The systems have to be hundreds of times bigger.
Did you Understand what The $44 trillion “IPCC success plan” would look like in 2050 ?
The end result is to allow natural gas to be considered carbon neutral. The IPCC plan has fracking levels at about a hundred times what they are today, with systems to capture the CO2 and then having pipelines all over the world to store the carbon. This would be the “successful” IPCC plan where energy prices are not doubled again to pay for more “expensive” energy options. It would take decades to 2050 to get to half the CO2 levels of about 15 billion tons per year instead of 40 billion tons per year.
They still needed more money [probably over $100 trillion] after that to get to CO2 neutral or storing more CO2 than is generated.
Even the proposed IPCC success plan stinks.
Solar Power still is not cost competitive without tens of billions in subsidies and still needs tens of billions in more research to create more cost effective solutions
Any version of renewable energy success is asking for tens of billions in subsidies and more research for decades. They only think they can get it because that is what the past 40 years have looked like.
“Solar Success” in Germany is creative “feed in taxes” to fund tens of billions in solar subsidies and decades of research to try to get closer to cost competitive.
The story is the same in every country. Plus the intermittent (no sun at night) problem is to build natural gas systems ready to back up the solar or wind power.
LPP Fusion success would actually look like success with energy costs 20 times lower than today
The great benefits of trying for LPP Fusion is that the cost to try is low ($200,000 to a few million)
Success would mean transformation of space capability with lower costs and much faster spaceships.
Success would mean a stronger zero carbon economy. We would be richer and have a cleaner environment.
After the technical success for LPP Fusion there would be no need for subsidies because the energy would be cheaper.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
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