Fast Ignition of Boron-Proton Fusion

Heinrich Hora is a fusion researcher at UNSW here in Oz who works with George Miley, Leif Holmlid and other alternative fusion researchers. He has several very interesting papers on using lasers to induce “fast ignition” of solid boron-hydride. Fast ignition is when a sufficiently sharp energy pulse is used to set off a self-powering fusion detonation wave in the target, and a recent advance in producing very narrow pulses of laser energy has raised the prospect of igniting p+11B fusion with an energy input just x10 that needed for D+T. That’s really good news and Hora is obviously very enthusiastic about the idea.

Here’s his web-page… Heinrich Hora
And a representative paper… Laser-optical path to nuclear energy without radioactivity: Fusion of hydrogen–boron by nonlinear force driven plasma blocks

…so fast laser ignition will be worth investigating for “Project Icarus” too.