The Focus Fusion Society

Posted by Rezwan on Oct 13, 2010 at 12:33 AM
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Our organization is focused around the following areas of need:

• Energy and Beyond: The control of nuclear fusion would solve the worlds energy problems, and then some!  But fusion is surprisingly under-explored.
• Policy:  Current fusion policy is limiting and needs to be changed to spur more effective exploration.
• Research Support:  Researchers need our support as they pursue fusion. 
• Reframing Fusion: Fusion in general gets a bad rap.  We need to change the way people relate to it.
• Pro Fusion Culture  We need to be the fusion generation!
• Networking:  It’s not just nuclei that need to fuse - we need to work better together for our goals.
• Netcentric Platform: We need a netcentric platform (website + organization) to better collaborate in the pursuit of fusion.
• Celebration:  We need to celebrate the bold exploration!  One day, we’ll celebrate the outcome.

Energy and Beyond

Our major environmental and economic problems come down to a shortage of clean energy and clean water.  Clean water is largely an energy problem as well, because desalinizing water consumes a lot of energy.

Today, many energy and conservation solutions are being urgently pursued.  The goal is sustainability.  The methods are renewables, cleaning up fossil fuels, and improved fission.  This is happening in a context of tension, denial and conflict. 

Fusion, at this time, is considered a futuristic thing, impractical, perhaps impossible.  In theory, the water you can hold in the hollow of your hand has all the energy you need for life.  In practice, the machines conceived of to extract that energy are rather complex, and unsuccessful.  In theory, fusion energy can achieve sustainability, and more.  It can take us beyond sustainability to futuristic visions. 

Mankind Faces a Technology Barrier

Fusion represents a technological barrier for our civilization, a threshhold.  We have been aware of this threshhold for decades, but we haven’t crossed it.  How we address it, tackle it, break through it, defines us as people. 

Many fusion scientists feel that, at the current pace, it will only happen many decades into the future.  However, with more consistency, more diversity of research, more creative approaches, lightning could strike.  We could get “lucky” and it could happen sooner. 

Your support is needed to bring about that “luck.”  Your support is needed to bring urgency, focus and will to breaking through the fusion technology barrier. 

Policy

The World Needs More Pro-Fusion Organizations:

The Focus Fusion Society pursues opportunities that no other organization pursues.  Many organizations exist to tackle the challenges faced by other energy industries (See, for example, http://www.seia.org - a pro-solar organization).  These organizations actively work to create policies favorable to their mission.  Fusion energy, however, has few supporting organizations.

The Fusion Community Needs Pro-Diversification & Pro-Aneutronic Organizations

What further distinguishes us from the handful of pro fusion organizations out there is that we explicitly promote funding of diverse approaches to fusion research, including aneutronic fusion.  For us, the current national fusion policy is overly linear, pursuing a few big deuterium/tritium (DT) projects, leaving other intriguing DT projects underfunded, and leaving aneutronic fusion to the very dim future. 

Note that, when pressed, DT researchers often acknowledge that aneutronic fusion is, indeed, the ultimate fusion goal.

National Fusion Policy Needs to Embrace More Diverse Approaches to Fusion

We find the current linear fusion policy unnecessarily limiting.  We think the field of fusion is better served by a “parallel pursuit policy”.  (In other words, rather than a few missiles, a multi-target approach to fusion).

With your support, we will work to make the diversification of fusion approaches and funding of aneutronic fusion explicitly stated objectives of local, national and even international fusion policy.  We will develop the relationships, strategy and capacity to tackle policy change.  We will educate ourselves and the public about the way fusion policy has been made, and how it can be changed. †We will coordinate with other green organizations and get them on alert.

Together with other forward fusion thinkers we will set in motion the things that need to be done to improve fusion policy, to create a broader, more inclusive, diversified fusion research climate. 

Research Support

Fusion scientists and researchers need our support.  They need more funding, more funding consistency, better policy, more appreciation, a better job market, data support and other resources.  We will work to build awareness of researcher needs, and to uncover and develop more effective ways to support them in the pursuit of fusion. 

Unfortunately, we don’t have the capacity to fund research directly at this time.  For those of you who are expecting your donations to fund research, note that we need to work out some legal and organizational issues to be able to take that on, and we’ll need a larger fund. 

With your support, we will continue to be active spectators of the world of fusion research, with a front row seat on one particular, accessible fusion experiment, the “LPPX Project”.  Our support for them takes on the form of reports, updates, explanations, photos and videos to inform people who visit our website about their work and the need for it.  We also host a forum which adds an open-source element to their work, as they get a lot of feedback from scientists and technicians that they wouldn’t have access to.

We will further develop our web platform to track and build awareness of the many other diverse approaches to fusion out there (the “contenders”).

The LPPX Project

We enthusiastically support the concept being tested by the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics experiment (“LPPX”). 

This concept best embodies all the ideal elements of aneutronic fusion we’d like to see in the world.  If the Dense Plasma Focus, burning proton boron fuel (pB11), can produce net energy, it will mean that small, inexpensive, easily decentralized, non-radioactive nuclear fusion reactors are within reach.

We are enamored of this project because of the human scale.  We also like the way it seeks to work with the instabilities of plasmas, rather than trying to control them.  Most of all, we like the projected short turnaround time.  This is the only fusion project that may be able to show feasibility within a few years and for a few million$.  If this project works, it will certainly save us all a lot of time on that whole protracted “quest for fusion” thing.

If it works, generations from now they will wonder why it took so long to get the funds raised and the proof of concept done.  (Note: we can’t fund the LPPX but accredited investors can.  You’ll have to contact them directly.)

Of course, that’s not what many people in fusion worry about today.  With fusion’s bad reputation, and the fact that LPP is on this side of proof of concept, they worry that it won’t work and science will somehow be sullied by an attempt to pursue the questions.  See “managing expectations” below : )

LPPX is a microcosm of the paradox of fusion research, and a great place to practice our policy of being supportive of scientists in the act of exploring ideas that may lead to fusion breakthroughs.  We will continue to cheer them on and keep the focus on completing the work, whatever the outcome. 

Reframing Fusion

Fusion research operates in a fascinating space of promise and uncertainty.  This is difficult for many, who want certainty and quick results. 

Fusion is “oversold” but underfunded.  Fusion is associated with failure, not success.  Fusion policy-makers seek pre-emptive proof at the expense of “speculative” exploration.  Fusion is a joke to many, too far in the future to be taken seriously.  Fusion scientists seem beaten down, apologetic for daring to pursue their goals, afraid to be seen as frauds.  Fusion seems impossible.  We seem destined to remain on this side of the fusion technology barrier.

Our challenge is to put things in perspective.  We need to shift the emphasis.  From credibility to responsibility.  From proof, to exploration.  From failure to quest.  From defensive scientists, to “get it done” scientists.  From performance anxiety to the thrill of the chase.

Discovery and proof follows exploration.  We will promote bold exploration.

Your support is essential to reframing fusion.  This focus area requires a lot of marketing campaigns, experiments and projects.  We’ll engage thinkers, writers, artists, scientists, journalists and the general public to explore the current frameworks, reframe them and create viral messages about them.  We’ll host the web platform for this, and host actual events to discuss it.  Eventually, amazing messages will be produced and some will go viral and we will all in our way share the thrill of being part of the shift.

Note on Managing Expectations

The pursuit of fusion has a long tradition of mismanaged expectations and undelivered promises.  As we move forward as an organization, we are finding the balance between enthusiasm and restraint; we want to allow for gusts of optimism, while building on a foundation of objectivity and professionalism.  We will make sure to include healthy “expectation management” activities in the process of pursuing fusion. 

Pro-Fusion Culture

Many fusion organizations seeks to educate people.  We seek to do more.  We don’t just want people to learn something about fusion, we want the pursuit of fusion to become fully integrated into the fabric of culture and identity.  We want people to recognize that it’s up to us to usher in the future, to break through the technology barrier.

We want to be the fusion generation. 

We’re coming up with many fun, obvious, simple, profound projects to address this.  We’re actively exploring and developing ways to make fusion part of the culture. Things like engaging the Science Fiction Community to take on fusion as a quest, having fusion in film awards and screenplay contests and youtube video contests.  Recruiting drill teams to demonstrate fusion reactions on football fields.  Recruiting chefs to collaborate on plasma physics themed cookbooks.  Leveraging toymakers to make fusion reactor assembly kits.  “Fusionville” on facebook, and other apps.  Your suggestions here!  More on this soon to appear on the website! 

This cultural dimension has an added bonus of creating employment and activity for people with a fusion theme.  There’s intrinsic value to the activities of culture, and market value when these cultural activities spill over into consumer products. 

Your support is indispensable for fostering pro-fusion culture. We’ll be promoting, appearing, networking, trend-researching, and coordinating cultural events and pitching consumer product makers. We’ll be writing proposals and leveraging the internet and, most importantly, setting up the platform for you and other culture-makers in our world to get busy!  There’s no way to tell which of our campaigns will resonate and become culture. †Your collaboration, feedback, spirit of adventure, fun, play and reckless initiative are all essential to this unfolding process.

Networking

We will collaborate with other pro-fusion organizations to foster a pro-fusion research climate and culture.  We will network to develop policies, uncover funding ideas, create educational materials and museum/science center exhibitions.  We will attend and host events to get fusion on the agenda of this nation.  We will network to integrate our efforts with other energy sources, solutions, businesses and organizations.  We will develop ways to support our members who want to embark on the pro-fusion mission (providing materials, tips, structure, a web platform for coordination).

Your support is crucial to networking efforts of the Focus Fusion Society. First, you are a crucial link of the network. The initiative lives and moves with you. Second, networking and coalition building require a lot of travel, meeting with others and attending events.  Your help will defray expenses.

Netcentric Platform

We share ambitious goals.  We can only achieve them with the the proper tools.  This means our organization and website must keep evolving into a robust netcentric platform - a space many other people can use to collaborate with each other to bring the fusion end game about. 

With a netcentric platform, a small dedicated FFS staff can create the space to help us leverage each other to post great content, initiate and participate in cool projects, achieve widespread support of fusion, and make it happen. 

Your support is crucial to develop our current website and organization into a netcentric platform.

Celebration!

We celebrate fusion!  We celebrate the awesome challenge of the technological barrier we’re trying to cross.  We celebrate the scientists who have dedicated themselves to solving these problems.  They are all heroes in our book!

Until we can celebrate the achievement of net energy from fusion, we’ll celebrate the quest!  And our wonderful friends and donors who make it possible.

Your support is important!  We’re expecting you to have a lot of parties celebrating the quest for fusion, and we’re hoping you’ll invite us : )  We’ll host some parties and events and invite you as well!

Conclusion

The challenges we face are not small.  We are proposing the proactive and diversified pursuit of fusion, especially aneutronic fusion, with the ultimate goal of the transformation of energy production.

Together, we can do it!