General Lyles: “Time to Get Serious about Fusion”
General Lester Lyles USAF (Ret.), ASP board member and former Air Force Vice Chief of Staff and Chief Technology Officer, stated its: “Time to Get Serious about Fusion”
In an address to ASP’s “Magnetic Fusion Energy — Steps to Commercialization” he noted that it was time to get serious about the work to get clean, safe, sustainable energy from fusion. This is especially important because America should not squander our scientific leadership, he said.
You can see the video of his remarks below:
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Meeting the World’s Energy Challenge …
Providing security for ALL.
There is a solution to the ‘energy need’ for the world and the US without generating green house gases or nuclear fission radioactive problems.
It is Heavy Ion Fusion (HIF) as developed in the late 1970’s at Argonne National Lab under the Department of Defense (DOD).
You never heard of it, … right, few people have, … as HIF was set aside by the US DOD (& DOE) in favor of lasers, as lasers could, maybe, be a weapon and HIF could not be a weapon.
Fusion was first suggested as a potential power source in the late 1920’s. The first fusion reaction on earth was demonstrated in 1952. Then shown potentially doable in a small size, in 1976-9, at Argonne National Lab and Hughes Lab. Since then it has been endorsed for 35 years by the scientific community “as the conservative way to go” to develop fusion as an energy generation source … but never funded, as it was and is still BIG (expensive, prolific and “benign”). In 1980, the world did not need a BIG new carbon fee source of energy, as it does now. Fusion was put on the shelf or attached to research projects to see if it could be done in small (MW-GW) size. Fusion cannot be done small and be economical. Data suggests that fusion can produce 5 to 7 cents kWh electricity, $3.20 per/gal fuel, and $0.002 per gallon for potable water, all needed today and at a very reasonable unit price.
In 2009, Fusion Power Corporation (FPC) with Dr. Robert J. Burke and Dr. Charles E. Helsley, applied for a patent using heavy ions as the energy source to fuse the Hydrogen isotopes Deuterium and Tritium to produce Helium and heat, lots of high quality heat. It solves the problems that Germany, Russia, Japan and America were having in focusing enough energy on the pellet (target) to cause fusion to occur, and to control the neutrons.
In December 2010, the process was presented at the 18th HIF International Symposium in Darmstadt, Germany, along with an economic model. FPC took the meeting by surprise as the US has been void of serious HIF research for more than ten years.
In May of 2011, FPC presented the process to the ‘Accelerators for Heavy Ion Fusion Workshop’ (AHIF) at Berkeley CA, sponsored by the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the Virtual National Lab (DOD & DOE). Again, the result was “now is the time to move forward …” with a fusion program … as there is now a world need for a new, large, carbon neutral energy source. But no program has been established.
In August of 2012, FPC made presentations on the Single Pass RF Driver (SPRFD) at the 19th HIF International Meeting in Berkeley. They presented updates, showing the SPRFD process with support from current industrial suppliers. They presented the economic potential of SPRFD in providing synthetic carbon neutral liquid fuel, electric power and potable water. FPC showed that SPRFD is a transformational and disruptive technology, and ranks right along side a giant oil field as an energy producer. It’s unit prices are very competitive in today’s marketplace and provide a paradigm shift in energy production.
The science has been done and it now is an engineering process. FPC’s SPRFD applies known and existing technologies, in unique and innovative ways, to provide the energy necessary for fusion to occur. FPC’s fusion power is much more developed than was rocketry in 1961 when JFK committed the nation (US) to go to the moon and back.
ARPA-E has encouraged FPC to write a full project proposal on ignition simulation for fusion, a $10,000,000 proposal, which FPC has done; FOA 0670-4536. A decision from DOE’s ARPA-E was due in September 2012, but has been postponed until the middle of November.
FPC’s SPRFD facility can produce per day, 500,000 bls of a carbon neutral synthetic liquid fuel (diesel-kerosene-gasoline), 15+ GW electric, and 2000+ ac/ft of potable water from sea water, all with no GHGs, no highly radioactive waste and no potential for a “run-away” nuclear meltdown, and all located where it is needed. FPC can also be eligible for carbon credits as it discharges no CO2 into the atmosphere.
By 2050, fusion will be the source of most of the world’s energy. This is not wishful thinking, it is simply a way of stating that all other forms of energy that are based on the use of finite fossil fuel sources must decline in the next few decades. This decline will provide a major impetus for the rapid increase in the utilization of this new form of energy. Wind, solar, and bio fuels, are only “feel good solutions” of “We are doing something to solve the problem!”, when they have little possibility of generating the 14 TW needed in the next 40 years. I can show you the arithmetic.
HIF is the ONLY practical answer for non-proliferation of atomic weapons and, may be the real way to world peace … non-aggression for national energy supplies and national security.
Let us get moving to really solve the energy problem … not just ‘feel good efforts’, nor ‘35 more years of research’!
For more information and detail visit http://www.fusionpowercorporation.com and see the presentations on Goggle Tech Talk “Heavy Ion Fusion” and YouTube “StarPower for Tomorrow”
Fusion is Clean & Green … and Very, Very Safe!
FPC, a California C Corporation, is an engineering design, implementation and licensing company. FPC’s mission is to provide the energy necessary for maintaining current levels of energy use (standard of living) and to provide opportunities for growth in the energy supply using fusion. FPC’s vision is the development of a fusion power source based on the use of the techniques of radio frequency (RF) accelerator-driven Heavy Ion Fusion (HIF) that were researched in the 1970’s; a technique that has repeatedly received scientific endorsement.[1] FPC’s primary goal is to translate the science vetted design of a RF accelerator-driven fusion power system, to one that can be brought on-line within a decade – each installation having an energy output equivalent to that of a giant oil field, without the depletion problem.
Inquires may be sent to: contact@fusionpowercorporation.com .
[1] Physics Today, June 2010, Page 59; Physics Today, October 2010, Page 8; “35 Years of Endorsements” at http://www.fusionpowercorporation.com ; AHIF reference papers at LBNL.