Hi, everyone
I am new here. My name is Sunny. I am working on KSTAR. Glad to find this website and looking forward to know more people interested and related in fusion.
We don’t have many girls in fusion area, so you should give me warmhearted welcome.  LOL
Now, I am preparing my trip to France for EPS. Anyone here will also go?

KSTAR?  Are you in Korea, then? 

What are your duties there?

Looks like you are also working on Tokamak. I used to work on ECE when I were in China. But now I am focusing on transport study by using other people’s dignostics. So I am just a parasite here in Korea.
So where are you? And what are you responsible for?

Hi Sunny,

You are indded welcome here! The lack of female plasma physicists is a big problem for the field and it seems a bit worse than for all of phjysics, which is bad anyway. In fact, when we have meetings about FF, the audience is overwhelingly male. What do you think can be done to make the idea and the field more welcoming to women?
BTW I am goign to ICOPS, not EPS so will not see you there.

Thanks. I am feeling very good as a plasma physicist. Actually, all we need to do is spreading the fact that how well female scientists are treated in fusion area and how many charming boys in our area, then gilrs will swarm into fusion.
I attended ICOPS two years in San diego.
I have many trips in the next few months: next week, EPS in France and then I will go to Holland (FOM) in Sep and stay there till the ITPA transport workshop in Oct 5th in France, then I will also attend H-mode conference in Oxford, I will also probably visit C-MOD this fall.
will u go to any of those places? Hehe

Lerner - 20 June 2011 04:08 AM

Hi Sunny,

You are indded welcome here! The lack of female plasma physicists is a big problem for the field and it seems a bit worse than for all of phjysics, which is bad anyway. In fact, when we have meetings about FF, the audience is overwhelingly male. What do you think can be done to make the idea and the field more welcoming to women?
BTW I am goign to ICOPS, not EPS so will not see you there.

wow youare busy—how do get time for resarch with all the jet-hopping? I thought four confs was a lot for me this year. I went to Dense Z Pinch and other than ICOPS going to PLASMA 2011 is Warsaw than back to Chciago in Nov. for the APS.  So you are doing mostly data analysis or modeling or what? What do you think of our DPF work?

WELCOME!!! ^_^

Maybe a bit too welcome.

For my part I’d say anyone is welcome here—especially female plasma physicists! And I say that as one who is neither a female nor, alas, a plasma physicist. We could always use more scientists here as well as more females. (We do have at least one confirmed female already, Rezwan, who pretty much runs the place.) Heck, we could just use more people. (Yes, everyone, I know I’ve been a bit absent lately. )

Funny that you’re in Korea right now. I’m seriously considering going there for work soon. (No, not to KSTAR. I’m not a scientist.)

Lerner - 20 June 2011 08:35 AM

wow youare busy—how do get time for resarch with all the jet-hopping? I thought four confs was a lot for me this year. I went to Dense Z Pinch and other than ICOPS going to PLASMA 2011 is Warsaw than back to Chciago in Nov. for the APS.  So you are doing mostly data analysis or modeling or what? What do you think of our DPF work?

I analyze the data. What is “DPF”? I am not as smart as other female scientists.

Ivy Matt - 20 June 2011 06:05 PM

WELCOME!!! ^_^

Maybe a bit too welcome.

For my part I’d say anyone is welcome here—especially female plasma physicists! And I say that as one who is neither a female nor, alas, a plasma physicist. We could always use more scientists here as well as more females. (We do have at least one confirmed female already, Rezwan, who pretty much runs the place.) Heck, we could just use more people. (Yes, everyone, I know I’ve been a bit absent lately. )

Funny that you’re in Korea right now. I’m seriously considering going there for work soon. (No, not to KSTAR. I’m not a scientist.)

Welcome to Korea. You will like here. There are so many cute girls. This is why I am seriously considering leaving. LOL

OK< OK you know how acronym-plagued the fields is. DPF is dense plama focus and it’s also OK if you never hear of that—lot of mainline people have not even though it has been around for 50 years. I invite you to look at somee of the description of our work on the main Focus Fusion Society Website. First impressions would be very interssting!

Lerner - 21 June 2011 04:55 AM

OK< OK you know how acronym-plagued the fields is. DPF is dense plama focus and it’s also OK if you never hear of that—lot of mainline people have not even though it has been around for 50 years. I invite you to look at somee of the description of our work on the main Focus Fusion Society Website. First impressions would be very interssting!

Yes. I heard about it and don’t know much.  I will try to learn more about it.

“Are female scientists welcome here?”

Yes, and happy to have you here.

Pat

sunny - 21 June 2011 04:05 AM

Welcome to Korea. You will like here. There are so many cute girls. This is why I am seriously considering leaving. LOL

Well, that’s not among my official reasons for going to Korea, but if it happens…. 

I’m not sure how much you’ve read so far, but I’ll give you a list of acronyms and other terms that will be handy to know on this site:

DPF - Dense plasma focus. A sort of pinch device in which the anode is nested inside the cathode. An electric current causes a plasma sheath to form between the anode and the cathode. The plasma sheath runs between them till they end, at which point its momentum carries it into the hollow mouth of the anode, forming a vortex, like water running down a drain. A plasmoid forms in the vortex, and it is in this plasmoid that the densities and temperatures necessary for nuclear fusion occur. Then, like a pulsar, the plasmoid fires two beams in opposite directions: an electron beam into the mouth of the anode and an ion beam out of the mouth of the anode. See here for an illustration of how the DPF works.

LPP - Lawrenceville Plasma Physics. A corporation founded by Eric Lerner in 1974, based in New Jersey. Its current purpose is to test a DPF device to determine its feasibility as a net energy fusion reactor, as well as for other applications.

FFS - Focus Fusion Society. A non-profit organization founded to support nuclear fusion, in particular aneutronic fusion, and in particular LPP’s current experiment. Rezwan Razani is currently the FFS Executive Director.

FF-1 - Focus Fusion-1, also “FoFu-1”. LPP’s current dense plasma focus experiment, which is hoped to demonstrate the feasibility of obtaining net energy from fusion.

aneutronic fusion - A fusion reaction that produces no neutrons. LPP hopes to demonstrate net energy from fusion using the proton + boron-11 reaction, the product of which is three alpha particles with a combined total of 8.7 MeV of energy. Because these products have a positive charge, they can be used to generate electricity more directly than neutrons, which generate electricity by heating a lithium blanket, which boils water into steam, which turns the turbine of an electric generator. In a fusion reactor based on the DPF, the ion beam would induce an electric current in a series of coils.

the onion - A device, consisting of numerous layers of metal foil, which produces electricity from X-rays in the same manner as a photovoltaic cell. It takes its name from a spherical concept depicted by Torulf Greek (who did the animation for the YouTube video I linked to), although the actual design would probably be more cylindrical. This is a secondary method of electrical generation in a DPF device.

Note: I wrote the above almost as much for my own benefit as for anyone else’s, to make sure I understand the concepts. There are probably mistakes or bad analogies. If so, any corrections would be appreciated.

Ivy Matt - 22 June 2011 04:58 AM

aneutronic fusion - A fusion reaction that produces no neutrons.

That simplification could lead to misunderstandings when you later say that the meter of shielding around the unit is to stop neutrons and other forms of radiation.

I’d think it best to go with a quick paraphrase of the more correct “a fusion reaction which generates less than 1% of its energy in neutrons” or something vaguely similar.

Actually, I believe my definition is misleading because I actually defined “aneutronic fusion reaction” rather than “aneutronic fusion”. Perhaps this is a better definition:

aneutronic fusion - Fusion in which no neutrons are produced in the primary reaction.

That is, there are aneutronic fusion reactions in which no neutrons are produced, but there are also side reactions (which comprise less than 1% of the total fusion reactions) in which neutrons are produced.

Ivy Matt - 22 June 2011 11:01 AM

Actually, I believe my definition is misleading because I actually defined “aneutronic fusion reaction” rather than “aneutronic fusion”. Perhaps this is a better definition:

aneutronic fusion - Fusion in which no neutrons are produced in the primary reaction.

That is, there are aneutronic fusion reactions in which no neutrons are produced, but there are also side reactions (which comprise less than 1% of the total fusion reactions) in which neutrons are produced.

But weak, feeble neutrons, hardly able to transmute anything.