Seeing that current nuclear fusion projects are expected to cost around 14 billion dollars (ITER project) and take 20 years to complete, General Fusion's reactor would indeed come at a bargain price. But how can they make this so cheap, and what makes them so confident they'll succeed?

Well currently, the aforementioned ITER project is attempting to use astronomically expensive, superconducting tokamak magnets to keep superheated plasma in its place for a fusion reaction, while the National Ignition Facility is trying to use lasers to compress plasma into a reaction.

General Fusions wants to create a reaction using a mechanical process where 220 pneumatic pistons push acoustic waves through a sphere filled with liquid lithium and lead into a plasma ring in the center. With 220 of these waves coming in at 100 meters per second, scientists hope that it will compress the plasma into a fusion reaction. And since the majority of the tech consists of long-established machinery, costs will be low.

If successful, General Fusion believes they can ultimately create a fusion reactor rated at 100 megawatts, that could potentially power a grid for 500 million dollars. The most recent contribution of 9 million dollars for General Fusion brings the total funding to 14 million, but they'll need 37 million more over five years to build a working prototype. Um, can we pass a collection plate around? [MIT Tech Review and Xconomy]

If they're successful, it'll be the most monumental discovery of the modern era, basically solving all of our energy problems. If it's successful. Which it damned well may not be.

Unfortunately, it's going to be a while before we find out if it works or not. It is open now, but it's got tests scheduled on it until 2040. Once they have it all set, they think that heating up that hydrogen to 100,000,000C will cause it to fuse to form helium, making it the first machine in history to create more energy than it uses. Exciting stuff, if it works. [National Ignition Facility via Inhabitat]

By studying the WTC's structural weakening and collapse, scientists can identify the needs of new steel technology in the next atomic age. Steel may truly melt at 1,150ºC, but as low as 500ºC, the iron molecules that are held strong by magnetism at cooler temperatures start to slip, Sergei "Duder" "His Dudeness" "El Dudarino" Dudarev, principal scientist at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), told BBC News. Imperfections in the metal enhance the oozing even more. The Twin Towers started to weaken when temperatures crossed the 500ºC threshold, and gave way without ever actually melting.

Today, Dudarev and others are at work on the world's first "large-scale" fusion reactor, called ITER. What the scientists need, though, is a steel that can ease past these temperatures without buckling. "We need to look at the magnetic properties of steel, [and] vary their chemical composition in a systematic way in order to get rid of this behaviour," the Dude told BBC. (No word if graphene is something that could be put to use.)

The weirdest factoid of the whole story is this: Steel's peak elasticity is reached at... 911ºC. Now that gives me the chills. [BBC News]

Yoshiaki Arata, a highly respected physicist in Japan, demonstrated a low-energy nuclear reaction at Osaka University on Thursday. In front of a live audience, including reporters from six major newspapers and two TV studios, Arata and a co-professor Yue-Chang Zhang, produced excess heat and helium atoms from deuterium gas.

Arata used pressure to force deuterium gas into an evacuated cell that contained a palladium and zirconium oxide mix (ZrO2-Pd). Arata said that the mix caused the deuterium's nuclei to fuse, raising the temperature in the cell and keeping the center of the cell warm for 50 hours.

Arata's experiment would mark the first time anyone has witnessed cold fusion since 1989, when Martin Fleishmann and Stanely Pons supposedly observed excess heat during electrolysis of heavy water with palladium electrodes. When they and other researchers were unable to make it work again, cold fusion became synonymous with bad science.

But the method Arata showed was "highly reproducible," according to eye witnesses of the event. If nobody calls this demonstration out as a sham, Arata might have finally found the holy grail of cheap and abundant energy—nuclear power, without its destructive heat. [Physicsworld via Slashdot]

Our current experience with the experimental He3 reactor here on Earth requires 1 kilowatt of power to generate 1 milliwatt of electricity. Which, if anyone is counting, is not at all worth it. So, aside from it taking a few decades before we figure out how exactly to use He3, and then taking a few more decades to actually build an He3 mining facility on the moon, and then having us, the Human Race, survive that long — well, chances are slim, is what we're saying. Still, science is cool, huh? [Treehugger via SciFi]

For all you non-science nerds (myself included), nuclear fusion occurs when two hydrogen nuclei crash together and form a helium nucleus. It requires very high temperatures (over 100 million Kelvin). It's the process that keeps the sun burning. And to think this kid did this as his weekend project. Just for kicks. To all the bullies out there—unless you wanna get nuked, quit picking on the science kids. – Louis Ramirez

Radioactive Boy Scout [Discover Mag]