Basically, fusion reactors as they exist today, take the brute-force approach: get some cubic meters of gas consisting of fusable atoms, and simply increase the thermal energy to the point where they're stripped of electrons and have enough energy to make random hits feasible. And of course, they spend even more energy on containment of that plasma, and extract the energy created through a heat exchanger on the massive (and soon very radioactive) shielding.
But the whole point of that operation is simply to take two atoms, strip them of electrons, have them hit each other and capture the resulting energy. Which is better done on an atomic scale: just take two atoms, and do those things to them in a controlled fashion.
On a chip.
And if you use He3, you can do all of it electrically.
I don't think you could bring that down to the scale where a single AAA-size cell (consisting of thousands of those fusion reactors) could work in the nearby future, but I do think it's a much more feasible approach than the current ones.
Those work great on the Sun, but here on Earth, we require different mechanics.
But the whole point of that operation is simply to take two atoms, strip them of electrons, have them hit each other and capture the resulting energy. Which is better done on an atomic scale: just take two atoms, and do those things to them in a controlled fashion.
On a chip.
And if you use He3, you can do all of it electrically.
I don't think you could bring that down to the scale where a single AAA-size cell (consisting of thousands of those fusion reactors) could work in the nearby future, but I do think it's a much more feasible approach than the current ones.
Those work great on the Sun, but here on Earth, we require different mechanics.
