????沒有什么比眾籌更能說明創業的火爆了。很多人瘋狂地通過Kickstarter和Indiegogo等網站資助別人搞創業，接受資助的企業有中既有做腳踏車的，也有做電燈泡的，甚至還有拍電影的。

????現在，就連研究核聚變的都上了這條船。

????核能由于具有廉價、清潔、安全、低碳、用之不竭的特點而被喻為能源中的“圣杯”。自從半個多世紀前，科學家們提出利用核能的設想以來，有40多年的時間里，核能在我們眼中似乎都是未來才能享受到的福利。如今這種“高大上”的能源也終于進入了眾包時代。雖然有些核能項目動輒要花費幾十億美元，比如法國的國際熱核實驗反應堆（ITER）和美國加州的美國國家點火裝置（National Ignition Facility），但是這并不意味著在核能領域就完全沒有草根階層可以施展拳腳的空間。

????美國新澤西州米德爾塞克斯市的一家叫LPP Fusion的小公司今年五月在Indiegogo上發起了一項募集20萬美金的活動。雖然20萬美金在這個行業里微乎其微，但這家公司相信，這筆錢能幫助它在一年之內完成核聚變領域的一項具有里程碑意義的研究。這樣，到2020年，它的研究成果就可以轉化為核聚變反應堆。

????LPP公司（全名意為“勞倫斯維爾等離子物理公司”）代表了一群致力于解決全球能源問題的創業公司——即核能創業公司。現在有好幾十家規模較小的新型反應堆公司要么在繼續研究晦澀的聚變問題，要么在絞盡腦汁地設計優于市場現有方案的裂變反應堆。所有這些公司最終都想來一個“一鳴驚人”，徹底取代給人類造成了深重的環境影響和地緣政治沖突的化石能源。很多創業公司的新型反應堆不僅致力于提供電力，還致力于為各種高溫工業流程提供清潔的熱能，以及用于海水淡化等造福人類的事業。

????盡管LPP可能是核能創業公司中唯一一個靠眾籌來拉資金的公司，但它也像它的小兄弟們一樣，立志要把死氣沉沉的核能行業攪得風生水起。自從上世紀50年代，科學家們第一次把裂變反應堆接入到輸電網絡時起，直到現在，核反應堆的設計都沒有任何根本性的改良。這種保守主義做法就像在黑白電視時代的末期，盡管支持彩色顯像的技術已經四處開花，但廠商仍然抱著黑白電視拒絕進步一樣。今天的這些核能創業公司就是要讓核能板塊“亮”起來。

????對于LPP公司來說，這意味著它不僅僅要研究出可控核聚變方案（而不是產生有害廢物的核裂變反應），還要取消這個過程中歷來對于汽輪機和發電機的需求——核能（包括大多數核聚變方案）的基本原理與化石燃料發電廠的原理是一致的，都是先產生熱能，然后產生蒸汽，然后驅動汽輪機發電。而LPP公司研究的一種核聚變形式又叫做“無中子核聚變”，可以釋放帶電粒子來發電。

????LPP Fusion公司總裁埃里克?勒那說：“核能行業的發電方法還停留在愛迪生那個時代——通過發熱產生蒸汽來驅動汽輪機和發電機。而我們可以改變這一點，我們可以把能源直接轉變為電能，同時大量削減成本。”

????首先，勒那需要在Indiegogo上募集到20萬美元，用來購買比LPP正在使用的銅電極更能經受極端情況考驗的鈹電極。勒那希望在年底前將鈹電極安裝在LPP那臺試驗性的聚變反應堆上，這個反應堆設置在米德爾塞克斯市的一處庫房里，那個地方原本堆滿了箱子和家具。

????Nothing captures how fashionable the startup has become quite like crowdfunding. The craze for raising contributions via websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo is helping to launch companies from scooter manufacturers to lightbulb vendors to filmmakers.

????Now, even nuclear fusion is game.

????Yes, the Holy Grail of cheap, clean, safe, plentiful, low-carbon energy that has remained 40 years in the future since scientists proposed it over half a century ago has entered the crowdsourcing era. International government projects like ITER in France and the National Ignition Facility in California may have spent billions of dollars in pursuit of the technology, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be a little grassroots action, too.

????LPP Fusion, a tiny company based in Middlesex, N.J., launched in May an Indiegogo campaign to raise $200,000—loose change in this business—that it believes will help it reach a major fusion development milestone in a year and commercialize fusion reactors by 2020.

????LPP (it stands for “Lawrenceville Plasma Physics“) is representative of a new class of companies emerging to address the world’s energy crisis: Nuclear startups. Dozens of small new reactor companies are either chasing the elusive fusion dream or pursuing fission designs that trump those on the market today. All are promising to deliver a knock-out blow to the carbon-intensive fossil fuels that bedevil the world with environmental impact and volatile geopolitics and economics. Many of these innovative firms are positioning their reactors not just for electricity, but also to provide clean heat for high temperature industrial processes and for water desalination.

????While LPP might be the only crowdfunded member of the group, it is determined like its young peers to shake up the staid nuclear industry. Reactor designs have not fundamentally changed since utilities first connected fission machines to the grid in the 1950s, marking a conservatism that has mired nuclear in the era of black-and-white television while colorful possibilities abound. The startups aim to brighten the palette.

????For LPP, that would mean not only delivering fusion—melding atoms together rather than fission’s waste-creating process of splitting them apart—but it would also eliminate the time-honored need for costly turbines and generators. Nuclear power, including most fusion concepts, functions mechanically the same way fossil fuel plants do by creating heat to produce steam to drive a turbine. LPP is working on a type of fusion called “aneutronic” that emits charged particles for electricity.

????“The nuclear industry is stuck using the same method for making electricity that utilities have used since the days of Thomas Edison—generate heat to make steam to drive a turbine and generator,” says Eric Lerner, president of LPP Fusion. “We can change all that. We can convert energy directly into electricity and slash costs.”

????First, he’ll need the $200,000 he seeks on Indiegogo (he has until July 5 to raise it), which would buy him some fancy new beryllium electrodes that would withstand rigors far better than the copper variety that LPP has been using. He hopes to install them by the end of this year in his experimental fusion reactor, which Lerner operates at the Friendly Storage premises in Middlesex, a place otherwise full of surplus boxes and furniture.