There is a report about mini Fusion Reactor from UCLA.
Is this another hoax / scam similar to Pons-Fleischman?
Is it possible to use this technology for generating energy in the future?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4489821.stmIn the Nature study, Brian Naranjo and colleagues, from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), initiated fusion of heavy hydrogen, or deuterium, using the strong electric field generated in a pyroelectric crystal. Materials like this crystal produce these electric fields when they are heated. The researchers concentrated the field at the tip of a tungsten needle connected to the crystal. In an atmosphere of deuterium gas, the field generated positively charged deuteron ions and accelerated them to high energy in a beam. When this beam struck a target of erbium deuteride, the team detected neutrons coming from the target with precisely the energy expected if they were generated by the nuclear fusion of two deuterium nuclei. The neutron emission was about 400 times stronger than the usual background level.
"Although the reported fusion is not useful in the power-producing sense, we anticipate that the system will find application in a simple palm-sized neutron generator," the researchers write in Nature.
Small devices that emit neutrons could be used as microthrusters in miniature spacecraft. Such fine control would be employed in certain experimental set-ups in space where precise positioning of a craft was essential.
