Cedarford:
In most cases, I gave possible prize sizes for gigawatts, not gigawatt-hours or even GW-days. Why does this matter? It matters because if the prize is given at a given power level then the facility earning that prize has to be capable of producing it! In other words, for example, the $10 billion dollar prize for 1GW of power from space is for the building of a space power station – which can then continue producing that power indefinitely. And the same applies to all the others.
It probably doesn’t need saying, but the projects producing liquid fuels (I mentioned algae growth and oil shale) wopuld have the prize given for the supply of that million barrels in a specified time span. Therefore, the facility producing it has to be able to produce at least a large fraction of that quantity per month indefinitely.
Finally, on the subject of fusion: My proposed budget has been decried. And I agree – provided, that is, that the current method, Tokamak or magnetic-confinement fusion, continues to be the method pursued. This method appears to need reactors the size of ten-storey buildings and double-digit billion dollar budgets. Lovely for a government and beloved by bureaucrats. However, I was very careful to say “electrostatic-confinement fusion”. This method is currently called by another name also; Polywell. Dr. Bussard, the champion of this route, himself said that $200 million might be adequate for this – simply because the necessary scale of the equipment is MUCH smaller. As somewhat of a side issue, it becomes much easier, by this method, to use a fusion reaction that produces next to no radioactivity and can be tapped directly for power rather than using the reactor as a giant kettle. I believe the reaction concerned is proton/boron-11 producing helium nuclei (only).
It is conceivable that Polywell fusors might be small enough to be fitted into large buildings, ships, locomotives and perhaps large trucks. It is even possible that one could be made small enough for a car – Mr. Fusion anyone?
To sum up, the prizes would not be for a specified amount of energy. They would be for the capacity to produce more. Once the capacity is there – then more will come, and we can finally tell the Arabs (and the Russians) to stick their ****ing oil where the sun don’t shine.
