More Energy News

One of the Brickmuppet's crack team of science babes beams enthusiastically over 2 recent energy news items...

The Energy Blog reports on an astonishing new biofuel device, the tactical biorefinery. Essentially it is a system that refines organic waste into fuel. It requires a bit of diesel oil to get the process started, but then begins using local trash and organic waste to produce electricity and fuel...it also produces enough fuel to keep itself running!

This remarkable device is about van sized and being looked at by the army not only as a power/fuel source to relieve logistics burdens, but as a good way of disposing of a units waste as well. If this works as advertized it will be a remarkable advance and have tremendous civilian applications, especially in remote locations! It almost sounds like the "Mr Fusion" from Back to the Future...of course this is chemical in nature and fusion is pretty much vapourware anyway right?


...Not according to the "Real Mr. Fusion", Dr. Robert Bussard, developer of the theoreticalBussard Ramjet. For the last several years he's been quietly working on a fusion project for the Navy. Recently the congress deauthorized naval alt-energy tech, in part because of budget issues, and in part because they weren't empowered by congress to do alt-energy research. The Navy felt they were close enough to a breakthrough that they gave Bussard permission to go public with the program, he's seeking investors claiming he needs 200 million or so to get a working device. This is the energy source of science fiction....
NO RADIATION...
COMPACT...
ABLE TO BE RETROFITTED INTO EXISTING FACILITIES...
IT WILL BURN UP EXISTING NUCLEAR WASTE!

The talk is 1 and a half hours long but it is really interesting, especially when he's describing how low their budget was...in part to avoid congressional wrath. They were doing some of their experiments with commercial microwave ovens!! It is also a very good overview of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy

Very small scale prototypes have worked, He's started a company to develop it and has tranfered some of the equipment to Jim Benson's Space Dev in partnership with SpaceDev. This could be the biggest news in decades!

And it's trancendentally good news if it pans out.