Skunk Works, the stealth experimental technology division of Lockheed Martin, has announced the development of a compact fusion reactor. It is only the size of a jet engine so it could power things like airplanes, space craft and cities. Although it is still being refined, it could be ready for commercial availability in 10 years (around 2024). Dr. Thomas McGuire, the leader of Skunk Work's Revolutionary Technology division, says that they are not using the same design that other researchers are using, the Soviet-derived tokamak - a torus in which magnetic fields confine the fusion reaction with a huge energy cost and thus little energy production capabilities Instead, the Skunk Works' Compact Fusion Reactor is taking a radically different approach to anything people have tried before. The Skunk Works reactor is using a tube-like design which allows their engine to hold more plasma than the tokamak design. Dr. McGuire says, "We would like to get to a prototype in five generations. If we can meet our plan of doing a design-build-test generation every year, that will put us at about five years, and we've already shown we can do that in the lab. So it wouldn't be at full power, like a working concept reactor, but basically just showing that all the physics works." Five years after that, they expect to have a fully operative 100MW model, measuring 23 x42 feet, ready to go into full-scale production. That would be enough to power a large cargo ship or a 80,000-home city. The model "could be put on a semi-trailer, similar to a small gas turbine, put it on a pad, hook it up and can be running in a few weeks."
