A couple of comments from Dr. Richard Nebel under Alan Boyle’s piece:
Dr. Miller:
First of all, our work has been peer reviewed.  An independent panel of experts has looked at these results.  I don’t believe that there was anyone on the panel who has less than 40 years experience working with magnetic confinement.  It included senior professors and people who have managed the fusion program.  We asked them for their honest opinions and that’s exactly what we got.  We are proceeding with our program in line with their recommendations.
Secondly, the talk-polywell blog has a large variety of people who post there.  There are Phd plasma physicists as well people from the general public.  I think that’s a good thing.  Science needs to be accessible to people.
That would be me, I think. Plus: there are neutrons!
 Mr. Bowery:
Yes, there are neutrons and the numbers are consistent with the plasmas we are measuring. Â However, neutrons can be deceptive. Â A lot of fusion researchers have gotten in trouble in the past by relying on these types of measurements. Â You need to know where they come from and that’s difficult to measure.
A healthily conservative skepticism, but it’s good to hear there are neutron counts in the expected range. Â
The verdict seems to be that Polywell is still a bit of a long shot, but  we haven’t found a reason it won’t work yet. And it’s hard to know how much to read into that “proceeding,” but one can hope.
