The role of a nonprofit in promoting aneutronic fusion

Posted by Rezwan on Apr 22, 2010 at 11:31 AM
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Role of a Non Profit

In this landscape - a nonprofit organization has a great role to play - getting people more involved in the quest for fusion - helping to get fusion scientists together in conventional and unconventional ways.  We have more freedom than a lot of institutions.  We are also an emerging social media outlet - we’re not even sure how we will evolve to engage humanity in this incredible challenge. 

As you see, our goals are pretty grand and, some would say, impossible.  I’m starting to think of this as the equivalent of finding a cure for cancer, or the “march of dimes.”  We want to be the organization that gets humanity to realize it needs to be more proactive about finding the cure for energy - the ultimate energy solution.  I don’t think they’ve found the cure for cancer yet, they keep spending money on it.  And people keep supporting it.  And along the way, we’ve discovered we need to eat more fruit and so forth.  Likewise, in searching for the energy solution, we encourage energy conservation and renewables.  There are many ways to collaborate until the “cure” is found.

Another benefit of this quest for fusion is that it encourages people to learn more about science.  Nuclear energy and its relationship to chemical processes is very cool!  The amount of blue collar work required to set up these reactors is also substantial.  People from many different walks of life can be involved, can relate, can have a sense of ownership.  The arts, economics, everything.  I’ve been learning a lot about science and find that it’s not so inaccessible.  We hope that as people find out about the quest for fusion, more students get hooked on science.

Like the cure for cancer - most people who get involved in promoting it have a strong personal connection.  They’ve lost someone to cancer, or they’ve had it themselves.  Likewise, I got involved in this project some years ago when my cousin died in Iraq in a war for oil.  He didn’t die in combat.  He might as easily have died here.  By dying, he managed to escape the PTSD that has plagued many of his returning troop members.  In any case, most people just see the price at the pump.  I see Omead’s life, his broken friends, and the turmoil in the Mid East.  We’ve got a world filled with well-armed energy addicts, and a dwindling supply.  So when people tell me fusion is too expensive to pursue, I am jealous of them - they haven’t experienced the cost of oil yet.  Happy in their bubble.

But I don’t like taking the gloomy approach to fusion.  “Find the cure” “Save the world” - that’s probably where we’ll get most of our support, but what I really want to engage is the human spirit of innovation.  We can lick this problem.  If we come together and collaborate and have fun, we can do it.  Some project ideas:  Get the folks who make science fiction movies that feature fusion engines to support fusion.  We shouldn’t just fantasize about it, we should be trying to make the dream come true.  Actually, I just want to meet Joss Whedon and the crew of the Firefly… this whole fusion thing is just the pretext.

Another approach is legos.  I’m drafting a proposal right now to get legos to make a few fusion kits.  What better way to show the dramatic difference between proposed fusion reactors.  ITER is HUGE!  Build a tokamak to scale with one of those little lego guys and you can probably live in it. 

My wish list (here’s where I get material):

We’d like to raise money for Eric Lerner’s research - 2-5 million dollars.  As time goes by, and if his project doesn’t yield the “cure”, we’d like to raise money for other aneutronic approaches (there are several out there, including one at PPPL - which is why they are warming up to us.  Eric presented a poster there on the 16th of Feb, and was invited to give a more detailed seminar in March).

We’d like to raise money for the nonprofit organization, to cover such mundane things as my salary and the salaries for hiring a few other people - a director of development, a membership coordinator, a website developer, an educational coordinator, editors for the site, documentarists.  Right now it’s just me and the volunteers doing all of the above - and not keeping up very well!  Such a backlog on the website, so many articles that need to be written, people to call, segments to be filmed. 

I’m working on setting up the website so that much of this can be done by our members who have many talents and a lot to contribute.  We have only 45 paying members right now, over a thousand website members, and a couple thousand more who have tried to register - but I haven’t activated them. 

We also need money for supplies (a computer with media production capabilities - my ancient laptop has blown its microphone, all but one of its USB ports (and that one is intermittent), no cd player.  It’s otherwise just fine - but the lack of microphone means it’s useless for making movies on.  Likewise no good for podcasting - although I just got an ipod, so I will be able to do some interesting damage there. 

As time goes by, we’d like to collaborate with organizations (such as the x-prize) to have fusion prizes.  We’d also like to host (or co-host) energy conferences.  Provide money for science internships or inviting people out to speak, hosting panel discussions…There are costs associated with everything we want to do. 

Our organization has, until September when we got some seed money - been just a casual group of people who chat on a website.  This entry into serious nonprofit organization work is new.  We’d also just like some advice about how to make the jump!

Action steps:

Most important action step:  Finding the people who care about this cause, developing the network.  We need to find our true supporters, those who resonate with this cause.  After all, the effort will only be as strong as its members.  This is the best part of my job - meeting people, talking to them.  We haven’t begun to meet them all.  First, there is the problem of awareness.  Very few people have heard of aneutronic fusion.  It takes a lot of explaining before they finally get what you’re about.  Then they go and think about it - very skeptically.  Then, after a few more encounters, and possibly because they hear about it from another source - like the article in the economist, or the google video, or the slashdot articles - they start to see the possibility. 

In short - a lot of conversations still need to take place.  We’re a long way off from the tipping point.

I need to get back to work on the website - those articles, all my calls to make.  The website needs to be much better developed to support the network of people who care about this cause - and give them greater room for shaping things.  We’re going full-tilt social media on this - to see what emerges.  Supporting the conversation.

Wow!  This “summary” still seems a bit complicated!  One day, I’ll be able to simply say, “I’m working for aneutronic fusion”, and everyone will know exactly what that means! 

Thanks for listening.

Happy Earth Day!