What Became of "OMNI" Magazine's Fusion Power Project?

[ralph124c]

Anybody remember this? Bob Guccione fronted a ot of money, to a guy who tried to build a fusion power reactor. This was in the late 1970’s, I believe. Anyway, the scheme never worked…how much money was spent on it?

[Revtim]

With fellow researcher Bruno Coppi, Bussard later founded Inesco, a private firm funded in part by Penthouse Magazine publisher Bob Guccione. Inesco set out to build small power-producing Tokamak fusion reactors called Riggatrons using methods developed from the MIT Alcator research Tokamaks, and based on proven engineering heat/power capabilities from the aerospace industry.

The device was a very small, normal copper, water-cooled system, with a lifetime of about 30–60 days, before death by neutron destruction of the first wall (of the magnets). It was thought that the system could be made economically attractive even though it was short-lived, because the fusion core was so small and cheap that it could be replaced, like a giant light bulb - with relative (to conventional large-scale Tokamaks) ease and low cost.

A test site had been selected and approved by the authorities, but never implemented. Development had proved difficult and costly, so that funds could not be found to build the $200 million test facility and test system, ending the program. It was shortly co-opted by the Department of Energy which renamed the system and held two national and one international conferences on it. This line of development was then transferred to Princeton, as TNX or The Next Step. Under Princeton the program was expanded and given greater funding, but an efficient working system like that originally envisioned has proven elusive. It still survives today, now called CIT (Compact Ignition Torus) within the PPPL/DoE framework.

Robert W. Bussard

[ralph124c]

Thanks for the link-I like the idea of an expendable fusion reactor-maybe that is the way to go about it.
Clearly Bob Guccione lacked the capital to develop this.