Dale, the one MAJOR drawback is that it would need heavy water. BUT this could be a double plus for any enterpreneur who comes up with a cheap heavy-water filter! You could sell it to the crowd that believes that longer life comes from heavy water (a recent claim that was in the news), and you can later sell it to people who want their own fusion plant!
I wonder how soon before we run out of heavy water? Our demands will go up as we become consumers, but it's one way to get the oceans to drop!

We aren't going to run short of Deuterium any time soon and in any case it uses Hydrogen and Boron-11.

If anyone has been reading science mags lately, there is an idea being taken seriously that drinking heavy water can have a large impact on lifespan, perhaps a 20% increase. You'll have to go read the articles to find out how, but it has to do with extra resiliency of stronger covalent bonds of heavier isotopes against anti-oxidant attacks..

Dale,

Head of the Polywell Project Dr. Rick Nebel (he likes to be called Rick) has said the contracts that you refer to (there are actually 3 of them) are keep alive funds until the final review of the WB-7 experiments is completed.

However, he has never said publicly when that might be. I am in personal contact with him from time to time and he has never let that cat out of the bag. So all that remains is to be patient.

BTW if you want to concentrate heavy water without a lot of eqpt (and rather inefficiently at that) boil a pot of water until 90% of your starting amount is gone. Save the remainder. Do that with 9 more pots of water. Then get your remainders together and boil off 90% of that.

What is left will contain an enhanced amount of heavy water vs the stuff that comes out of the tap.

humm.. lets see.. the end of the universe?

Yeah, this is just the team together funding while a decision is being made. However, the fact that someone thinks it worthwhile to keep the team together leaves me feeling optimistic. The data must have something going for them. And the good Dr Nebel has gone on record as saying the next step is a 100 MW prototype.

How about aircraft with 100 times the carrying capacity of today? Mobile oceanic cities?

My personal ambition is to homestead Jupiter orbit and make use of all that lovely mass just floating there, free for the taking (less inertia costs).

The potential uses for this technology (if it pans out) are almost limitless.

1) Household/apartment block level energy independence.

2) Portable generators for a wide variety of uses.

3) Space travel and habitation.

4) Something like the Mr Fusion device from BTTFII for powering cars and other vehicles (minus the need to feed it banana skins and other assorted trash)

This could be just as important (or more so) than the steam engine. Lets just hope that it works and that it becomes easy enough for the layman to use.

Shortly speaking, too beautiful to be true...

If only this would work as well. A combination of this with cheap fusion power would have awesome consequences for space travel.

This, if it works, won't provide energy independence for your local apartment block. Too expensive.

Power output scales by the seventh power, so there are real economies of scale - if it works, bigger really will be better.

Counting:

There are some significant issues with cooling if made too large, due to the energy density.

10MW to 100MW seems to be the sweet spot. If you need more, just gang them together in the same facility.

But I agree that 10MW is too big for a residential block - more like 500 homes.

IIRC drinking heavy water is not recommended as the osmotic pressure is different from light water and causes cell damage.

Sorry I can't remember where I read this.

Dale, you'll also have competition from Hyperion, which is planning to make mass-produced, small, nuclear reactors!
All this sounds like spacecraft are just around the corner! I wonder how much they'll cost? Could I recoup the mortgage by selling myself as a cruise-boat operator? And what fancy nick-name could I use, like 'Flash', or 'Buck'?...

Hyperion are ready to go right now. All is in place to go as soon as final paperwork is done. However, Hyperion, now, is unlikely to be competitive against Bussard in seven years time, if Bussard works at all.

Clean Bussard we may have in the future, dirty Hyperion we got now. Two different markets.

Heavy water affects the speed of reactions. I seem to remember that experiments in the 70's showed that at 52% D20 mice became sterile. The most expensive method of contraception ever invented.

Water de-salination and purification. Make the whole f'ing desert bloom.

Conversion of waste and tougher biomass into cheap syn-gas.

Making energy--electricity--cheap enough to put heating coils under the driveway and sidewalk so you never have to shovel them again.

I think high voltage is making a comeback.
Voltage can be temperature.