February 23, 2006

Every high school should have one

QuantumFog's academically robed alter ego approaches the lectern with the air of civility borne of bookreadin', and the nascent propensity to smack the ne'er-do-well with a three foot pointer. For a brief moment, we glimpse into one of the universal mysteries.

For the uninitiated, fission reactors are the type commonly used to generate electricity; they create radioactive waste and require an elaborate cooldown procedure to turn them off during an emergency.

Fusion reactors have yet to create excess energy, but leave no radioactive waste. What's really nice: fusion reactors simply stop if power is turned off.

Rensselaer Polytechnic has developed a tabletop device that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature. It improves on a device created at UCLA in 2005, in that it doubles the acceleration potential and does not require cryogenic cooling.

It does not produce excess energy that can be used for a power supply, but Rensselaer's tabletop reactor is small and inexpensive enough for imitation by universities and other research groups. By way of contrast, the fusion reactor at Sandia Labs is 120 feet in diameter.

The picture shown is an image of a plasma vortex burning at 2 billion degrees in a self-contained magnetic field, courtesy of the Focus Fusion Society.

	Web www.quantumfog.com

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