Stop the Suppression of an Alternative Energy Source!
By Eric Lerner
Recently, at the IEEE-APS International Conference on Plasma Science
in Banff, Alberta, Canada I announced experimental results that
promise cheap, clean, non-radioactive energy. The results
demonstrated the viability of a compact fusion device called the
plasma focus, opening the door to a new energy source possibly 100
times cheaper than oil and gas. The experimental work was performed
last year at Texas A&M University in a project funded by the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory of NASA. Other scientists congratulated us on
the success.
Yet, instead of hailing this new work, a Los Alamos National
Laboratory manager threatened two members of our research team with
firing if they didn't repudiate the results. Funding for the
research has been cut off, and the mainstream press has ignored both
the new discovery and the effort to suppress it. What's going on
here?
The new results are important because they show that the high
temperatures -- over a billion degrees -- needed to burn
hydrogen-boron fuel can be reached. A plasma focus reactor using
hydrogen-boron fuel would serve as an almost ideal source of energy.
It generates no long-lived (more than a few minutes half-life)
radioactive byproducts. The fusion energy is released mainly as a
beam of charged alpha particles, which can convert directly to
electricity without the use of expensive steam turbines. A plasma
focus device, with a core about the size of a large coffee can,
costs less than $500,000 to build. Once fully developed, focus-based
fusion reactors would also be small, making possible decentralized
sources of power. With the reactors so economical, the successful
development of plasma focus hydrogen-boron reactors could eventually
render oil and gas nearly worthless.
We achieved these high temperatures, together with high densities,
last August and posted a scientific paper describing the results to
an online physics archive (http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0205026) in
May, as well as submitting it to the journal Physica Scripta.
Then came the attempt to suppress this work. In May, Dr. Richard
Seimon, Fusion Energy Science Program Manager at Los Alamos,
demanded that Dr. Hank Oona, a Los Alamos staff physicist involved
in the experiment, dissociate himself from comparisons that showed
the new results superior in key respects to those of the tokamak and
to remove his name from the paper describing the results. The
tokamak, a much larger and more expensive device, has been the
centerpiece of the U.S. fusion effort for 25 years. The demand was
particularly outrageous since Oona was neither funded by Los Alamos
nor at Los Alamos while participating in the experiment.
Seimon didn't dispute the data or the achievement of high
temperatures. He objected to the comparisons with the tokamak,
arguing that it was biased against the tokamak. In addition, Seimon
pressured Dr. Bruce Freeman of Texas A&M, another co-author of the
paper, to advocate the removal of all tokamak comparisons from the
paper.
Both of my colleagues, who did tremendous work on this experiment,
had carefully reviewed and approved the paper originally and had
endorsed its conclusions. For them to be forced to recant under
threat of firing is outrageous. It undermines the very basis of
scientific discourse if researchers aren't allowed by their
institutions to speak honestly to each other. Los Alamos has no more
right to tell scientists what to think than the Catholic Church had
to tell Galileo.
Why would Los Alamos try to suppress this work? For 25 years,
government officials and program managers have based the fusion
program exclusively on the tokamak, nearly eliminating all other
approaches such as the plasma focus. Tokamak devices can't lead to
drastically cheaper energy. Tokamaks use deuterium-tritium fuel,
which creates high-energy neutrons. These neutrons would then be
used for conventional steam turbine generators. Most of the capital
cost of electricity comes from the steam cycle, not the energy
source, so a significant reduction in energy costs is not possible
with the tokamak. Unlike the plasma focus, they pose no threat to
oil and gas.
The Department of Energy, which funds Los Alamos and many other
labs, defends the tokamak tooth-and-nail in part through sheer
bureaucratic inertia. But the Department's leadership has become
increasingly indistinguishable from that of the oil and gas
corporations, and it has no interest whatsoever in funding research
that might eventually threaten those corporations.
The plasma focus does pose a real threat to the existing
fossil-fuel energy multinationals, the Exxons and Enrons of the
world. Not only would focus fusion reactors be cheap, producing
energy at the equivalent of a oil at a dime a barrel, they would be
decentralized, with each reactor producing perhaps 20 megawatts,
enough for a town. This would both reduce transmission costs and
inhibit corporate control of energy supply.
At the moment, there is NO U.S. government funding for focus fusion
research. The NASA program that was funding this research, at a very
low level, has been cut. Research at some 15 plasma focus groups in
other countries is also crippled by lack of funds. Yet the amount of
money needed is tiny; the next step in the research will require
only about $500,000.
The amount of money needed is so small that it can be raised from
the general public. To do this, we have set up the Focus Fusion
Society (www.focusfusion.org) with the aim of developing focus
fusion on a non-profit basis. The more results we get, the more
difficult it will be to suppress this technology. We can all support
this work by joining this society and by spreading the word about
it; forwarding this message to email lists and organizations that
have an interest in cheap, clean, decentralized energy; holding
meetings; getting on local radio shows; and writing letters to local
papers. By taking matters into our own hands, we can change energy
policy.
As engineers and scientists, we frequently find that work we do
with benefits to society is frustrated by corporate interests and
governmental polices that serve them. Often, all we can do is
protest. This time, instead of just protesting, we have the
opportunity to actually do something about energy policy. We can
ensure this technology gets fully researched and developed and not
suppressed.
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