Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works Shooting for 100 MW Fusion Prototype by 2017

Should probably get rid of whatever crap site this is... but here is the direct youtube video. He basically talks about a new kind of fusion reactor they've been working on in skunkworks and how it's different from the reactor people have been trying to build forever.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY</a>

Do we really want to give traffic to such a fringe site? (It's mainly about the E-Cat scam <a href="http://psiram.com/en/index.php/Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer" rel="nofollow">http://psiram.com/en/index.php/Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyze...</a> )

Just a decade away from commercial applications? Hmmm, isn't "the next big breakthrough" <i>always</i> a decade away?<p>A good rule of thumb: unless the technology has been proven to work and they are <i>just</i> working on commercializing it, "a decade" always means, "we have no idea when we will have anything, if ever."

Just out of curiosity: what if fusion was perfected? what are the consequences? massive economic growth &#38; population? Does the earth become an heat sink?

Plasma physicist Pekka Janhunen points out in the comments that the losses in a traditional magnetic trap are high, this is what the Tokamak was invented for in the first place.<p>(That's also what the Polywell tries to solve).<p>Haven't watched the video.

Nuclear fusion is always only 10 years away from working.

I note that submarine reactors are typically on the order of 50Mw, and surface ships (CVNs -- aircraft carriers -- typically; also some Russian Arctic ice-breakers) are up to 100Mw per reactor.<p>Anyone smell a [Naval] market?

Did they actually show a picture of it? I guess there are limits on what they could reveal