Help identifying a Fusion approach Several years ago, I saw a Google video (back before the YouTube acquisition) where the leader of a group studying an unusual approach to fusion gave a presentation. His approach centered on a relatively small apparatus where instead of attempting to maintain long term confinement of the plasma, fusion occurred in bursts. I've lost track of everything to do with the project but it was such an intriguing approach that I haven't been able to forget about it. 
I'm hoping that from my description of the approach that someone can point me in the right direction so I can go catch up on the project (or not if it's discontinued.) I haven't been able to find anything about this project. 
Description of the apparatus
In the center was a tube of copper surrounded a ring of circular copper bars. All there were embedded in a block of a material I don't recall, probably an insulator of some sort. I can't remember if the inner tube was a cathode or anode. A large current was sent into the outer ring of bars forming an electric field with the inner tube. The field travelled up the rods and tube in a fusionable atmosphere of hydrogen. When the field reaches the end of the rods, the energy in the field has to go somewhere so it curls up on itself, capturing some hydrogen and compressing it to fusion temperatures. The energy from fusion leaves the compression region in the form of two streams (can't remember what was in the streams). 
The presenter claimed that small reactors like this could generate energy in the low megawatt range and leave behind only minimal radiation that would dissipate in a few hours. 
 A: His name was Robert Bussard.
This is what you probably saw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6z1vP4Eo8
He passed away a few years ago.
EMC2 was carrying on the work
but it looks like they stalled in 2014.
Lookup www.emc2fusion.org
Fun Fact:  Those red tips on the end of warp nacelles
in Star Trek are called "Bussard Collectors" from a paper
Robert Bussard wrote in 1960.
google Bussard Collector
Or maybe you're thinking about Eric Lerner's focused fusion.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-empowertheworld--3?show_todos=true#/story
A: Sorry for the necropost, but:
The concept you are referring to is dense plasma focus. This was an off-growth of the earliest linear z-pinch machines in the 1950s, when the dynamic behaviour was first noticed and exploited by Filippov in Russia. The same idea, although in a different layout, was developed by Mather in the US in the 1960s. In spite of considerable study, neither approach was terribly successful, and the introduction of the tokamak in 1968 took away most interest.
The video you're referring to is almost certainly one of Eric Lerner's. Lerner has been experimenting with what he calls "focus fusion" for some time now, although it remains unclear to me why they believe the system will work better than it did when previously researched. The device appears unchanged from Mather's work.
