Should Google Go Nuclear

Posted by Admin on Nov 18, 2006 at 03:37 PM
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How does this approach differ from the Focus Fusion approach?

Bob Steinke writes:  The theory makes sense. They are building an electrostatic machine, but using magnetic fields to make the charged particles miss the electrically charged grid.  I think they are at about the same point focus fusion is.  They have done an experiment that agrees with their calculations at a lower energy than would be required to generate power.  Their scaling laws require that their machine be larger than a DPF so they will need 150-200 million dollars to do the proof of concept experiment at full energy.

I think the best thing would be for Eric and Bussard to peer review each other’s work.  They both are interested in getting fusion working for the world.  They both know that Tokamak is not the way to get there.  They are both using Magnetohydrodynamic theory so hopefully they will be able to understand each other’s equations.

Review of Bussard Google Video

Steinke:  This is an interesting video.  It is quite technical and the slides he displays don�t come out very well on the video so it can be hard to understand at times.  But what he�s talking about is a big development.

The Farnsworth�Hirsch Fusor is one of the earliest designs for a fusion reactor.  It works well to demonstrate fusion reactions, but has not seemed very likely to produce net energy.  Bussard, et. al. seem to have overcome a fundamental difficulty which could allow this design to become a power producing reactor.

The way the fusor works is electrostatic confinement, that is, using the electric field directly to attract ions and not using magnetic fields.  The fusor creates a region of negative charge in the center of a sphere, and ions are attracted to the center like marbles rolling around in a bowl.  At the bottom of the bowl ions are at high energy and they fuse.

The trick is, how do you create the negative charge?  If you just stick a piece of metal in the center hooked up to the negative pole of a battery it will attract ions, but they will crash into the metal and stop.  They won�t fuse.  There are two different ways it is done, but both rely on a hollow grid.  The grid is electrically charged and either electrons or ions fly past the grid into the hollow center.  This creates a region of electric potential called a virtual pole at the center of the sphere without any matter there to stop the high energy particles.

However, there�s still a problem.  The electrons or ions have to fly past the grid, and they can still crash into the grid at that point.  Electrical energy is wasted when this happens, and it becomes a competition of whether your fusion output is greater than these losses, and up to now the odds have not looked good.

Here�s Where the new invention comes in.  If you could somehow make the particles go around the grid instead of hitting it you would reduce the losses.  And they do this with magnetic fields.  This is what he calls magnetic insulation in the video.

This seems like a feasible idea.  You don�t have to confine your whole fusion plasma with magnets, just keep the plasma away from the grid.  And you don�t have to be perfect, just reduce the losses to the point where you can produce more energy than you lose.