Tokamak, Polywell, and focused IEC

Completely unrelated to usual posts, but I have found some exciting material as of late.

I had believed that fusion power was at least a hundred years away. In BC we have great hydroelectric power production, and capacity for many more dams. While there are many problems with large scale hydro electric, it is still the best utility scale method for environmental performance. But what about Ontario? What about Israel? What about Australia? What about France?

These places do not have the natural surroundings for dams, and are relying on coal or nuclear fission for electricity. Fusion is the sort of holy grail of clean electricity production.

Up until last week, I had thought the only real alternative for fusion was the upcoming ITER, a massive multi billion dollar international collaboration to build a Deuterium Tritium Tokamak Fusion reactor. It turns out there are people working on a few different, much cheaper, and maybe just feasible designs. Its got me excited that I may see fusion power in my lifetime.

If you are a clean energy geek like me, you may find the following rather interesting.

Bussard's Polywell
Focus Fusion

PS - I love everything Google.