Hi Jeff,
It seems that the technology was suppressed.
The Farnsworth Fusor is still going strong, and the Fusor forum is very active (no real "suppression" other than free-market lack of interest).
Many garage inventors have running Fusors, and George Miley patented a version useful for testing purposes, which Daimler Aerospace bought the rights to some years back.
The problem there is that the neutron count is pitiful - ... say it is in the 10,000 per second range or double that, which may sound decent at first, after all it is *real fusion* (hot fusion) - but on closer look it is way to low to be interesting for real world energy use, and cannot be scaled up easily. It is far away from breakeven.
You need neutrons in the range of 10^12 per second minimum to be of interest for power production. That would be millions of times more than any Fusor.
Boron, for instance, can convert a free neutron into several MeV of mass energy, and boron steel could be used for the shell of a Fusor, but to bring the flux up to the needed 20-40 kWhr for automotive, one needs a much higher level yet - a fractional amp-equivalent neutron flux.
It would take a 10^12 neutrons to equal only one foot-pound of torque, for instance, using the boron reaction (if memory serves)- and that is why the Fusor, though interesting in itself in being an "atomic reactor" will never get us close to being useful for power without a major breakthrough in neutron output.
BTW a gram of deuterium would contain about 10,000 equivalent amps of neutrons, so it doesn't take much fuel - just a better means of conversion of fuel (removal of neutrons, or production of heat from D fusion) than the Fusor is capable of.
Jones
