I know some people have issues with the two systems for producing power with conventional nuclear fusion, but feast your eyes on this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24429621 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24429621)
Quote:
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The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.
This is a step short of the lab's stated goal of "ignition", where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. This is because known "inefficiencies" in different parts of the system mean not all the energy supplied through the laser is delivered to the fuel.
But the latest achievement has been described as the single most meaningful step for fusion in recent years, and demonstrates NIF is well on its way towards the coveted target of ignition and self-sustaining fusion.
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Let's hope it turns out to be real!
MileHigh
Its always good to hear that mankind can achieve novel ways of producing energy and should be so or would be so.
IMO, the best is to be able to produce plenty cheap energy decentralized and without too much high tech so as to avoid energy cartels, control etc etc.
You have to be carefull as to how they explain breakeven heres another story on this
http://www.livescience.com/40035-fusion-energy-gets-closer-to-reality.html
From this article
That got the NIF closer to the "scientific break-even point," where the amount of energy that comes out of the fusion reaction is equal to that which was put in by the kinetic energy from the implosion. (The energy from the laser isn't counted in the calculation). Right now, the amount of energy coming out of the NIF setup is about 80 percent of what is put in.
Lasers used for this purpose are highly inefficient,while I was a college student
I saw the laser fusion setup used at the lab,at that time they used glass doped with neodymium
this setup had many laser amplifiers, rods huge, at least 3 feet in length,the flash tubes used looked like 4 foot florescent tubes,the assembly was 3 stories high,row after row of flash capacitors,they had a handle that moved a conductor to short out the capacitors that looked like car batteries,very amazing stuff.These types of lasers are very inefficient maybe 1% converts into laser energy,the rest is wasted energy,which appears as heat.Its no where close to breakeven if the amount of energy the laser uses is counted.In my opinion it will never work,even if it did, it will not help the common man they will simply build it and charge you whatever they want for the power.
And here we have the Not so Hot LENR Work.
http://www.livescience.com/40246-new-boron-method-nuclear-fusion.html (http://www.livescience.com/40246-new-boron-method-nuclear-fusion.html)
"""Here we propose and implement a means to drive fusion reactions between protons and boron-11 nuclei, by colliding a laser-accelerated proton beam with a laser-generated boron plasma. We report proton-boron reaction rates that are orders of magnitude higher than those reported previously. Beyond fusion, our approach demonstrates a new means for exploring low-energy nuclear reactions..."
Thanks to Professor Steven Jones for this Contribution.
From Here
http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=2168.msg33922;topicseen#msg33922 (http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=2168.msg33922;topicseen#msg33922)
Chet