Fusion sooner

Dr Robert Bussard has been awarded the Outstanding Technology of the Year award for is new type of Fusor, a type of simple cheap fusion reactor originally invented by Philo T. Farnsworth in the 1960's. His modifications have removed a major power drain and could well lead to a commercially generator within a decade, much sooner than Tokomacs such as Iter will be able to do. Most of his research for the last 10 years has been paid for by the military and so not published, so as the silver lining to the cloud of that money stream drying up he has now released it. There is also a video of a talk that he gave for Google about the prospects of fusion power. One of the really good things about the Fusor concept is that it can be used with fuels that won't burn in a Tokomac as Tokomacs cannot get hot enough, such as Hydrogen Boron fuel. Using this fuel the energy of the reaction is released in electrically charged helium nuclii and so can be converted directly to electricity without the need for turbines so allowing for much greater efficiencies.

UPDATE

The Netsmith of the Adam Smith Institute (thanks for the link) has a worry that this could be like Cold Fusion. Don't be. The debates over Cold Fusion where as to whether it was producing fusion reactions at all, there is no such worry with a Fusor. They have been known to produce reactions since the 1960's and are used as the core of commercial neutron sources to fuse deuterium releasing neutrons. The problem is that, like every other fusion reactor in the world, the current designs consume more energy than they produce. This is a major problem, which Dr Buzzard's research may in time solve, and the various facets of it are outlined in Todd Harrison Ridder's paper Fundamental Limitations on Plasma Fusion Systems Not In Thermodynamic Equilibrium.