WB-8 Contract Progress

The US Navy has just published a Justification and Award for EMC2's Polywell Fusion Reactor experiment.

The highlights:

* The award is for $10 million
* WB-8.0 report to be delivered 30 March 2010
* WB-8.1 report to be delivered 30 March 2012

The WB-8.1 effort is contingent on success with WB-8.0 experiments.

What does all this mean? It is possible that there has been much more progress than was expected. You can read about the expected progress at: We Will Know In Two Years. That was published in May of 2009. The minimum time expected for results when that was published was 18 months which would have been November of 2010. Actual time from the prediction to the end of the WB-8.0 contract is 10 months. Of course this is speculative. It may be that we won't know until March of 2012. Which would make the actual time line almost three years and not two.

You can read some of my previous posts on the WB-8 contract at:

Polywell Gets The Dough

The Boys At Talk-Polywell Have Struck Paydirt

WB-8 In The Works

And if you are not familiar with fusion in general or Polywell in particular may I suggest:

Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering

Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

The American Thinker has a good article up with the Polywell basics.