Impaler: I like your idea of replacement to also include the fuel. I don’t know if the business model will be implemented, but it’s an option which is maybe worth thinking about. But if it slows down the adaption of FF, it probably won’t be implemented.

Milemaster: Erm, I don’t really know how you would build a laser electrode, especially one that is energy efficient. Lasers aren’t really efficient. For the electrode material Eric more thinking about Beryllium, which is transparent to x-rays. The higher you get with atomic numbers, the less transparent the material gets (at least somewhat generally).

Milemaster wrote: Henning:

Here are some references on two methods regarding how to generate a hollow laser beam that filled with plasma can be used as an electrode.

?

Are you intending to have these “cylinders” of fuel plasma conduct the power to drive the formation of the sheath?

Then the fuel for the pinch would be in addition to the “electrodes”?

Then are you just shiftingg the erosion to the physical electrodes supplying the current to the plasma within the beams?

And what will that pB plasma external to the confinement beams do to them?

Doesn’t seem to add up, so what am I missing?

Another issue would seem to be that, unfortunately, none of the techniques you mention are scaled to the magnitude of current, pressure and temperature required for pre-pinch plasma.

Milemaster wrote: Finally I do not see any use of beryllium coating cooper electrodes. The x rays would pass trough the beryllium to finally be absorbed inside the cooper core as I understand.

Er… no one mentioned beryllium plating. The electrodes, which are not very large, are to be made of beryllium.

A few threads discussing the resources needed for production of practical FF power units have indicated that the Be needs of an FF economy falls within current Be production capacity.

Zapicky:ming

You are stating a couple of very interesting engineering problems to tackle. Here are my thoughts of the steps we could take to solve them.

A) Are you intending to have these “cylinders” of fuel plasma conduct the power to drive the formation of the sheath?
Yes the idea is to replace the electrodes by the plasma cylinder. No erosion inside the chamber means less contamination of the fuel but most relevant problem we intend to solve is the shut down of the lasers simultanuosly with the capacitor discharge would achieve a pre firing of all the electrodes surrounding the cathode,

B) Then the fuel for the pinch would be in addition to the “electrodes”?
As a mather of fact, I was thinking that the fuel would be pumped in the chamber as electrodes not as an addition to another intake of fuel.

C) Then are you just shifting the erosion to the physical electrodes supplying the current to the plasma within the beams?
Its a matter of design. Even if there is a remaining corrosion in the interface between plasma and the electrode, it could be shifted outside of the chamber to a better serviceable zone. I could think of a relatively large copper solid pipe conducting the fuel to the chamber’s top plate but electrically isolated from it.
A minuscule hole in the center lodges the gas. This configuration allows a greater surface contact. The discharge would be made trough the external pipe.

D) And what will that pB plasma external to the confinement beams do to them?
Really I would try to minimize unconfined gas. Even with the plasma sheath formation, we could still steer the flow of gas with laser beams. Actually there is a diffuse gas and its reasonable to conclude that during the discharge there is formation of violent and chaotic turbulence that have not been taken in consideration. This produce transitory differences in pre in the plasma zone and outside and an overall loss of efficiency and the need of evacuation of all the Pb after the shot. If we are going to make a repeated firing machine, we need to reconsider the reduction of the loading and unloading of the gas.

E) Doesn’t seem to add up, so what am I missing?
Sure, at a first glance there are many questions to solve. As y begun this thread, we are at a stalemate, and the way to get out of it is thinking outside the box. And a lot of old fashioned brick and mortar, trial and error work is needed. But this is the way engineers do their job, and learn from the experience.

F) Another issue would seem to be that, unfortunately, none of the techniques you mention are scaled to the magnitude of current, pressure and temperature required for pre-pinch plasma.
Yes this is a very common limitation on breakthrough developments. Necessary but infant technologies are not available in the time span we have. Perhaps the engineering solutions proposed, requires techniques that are ahead of this time. But looking at the information of hollow lasers interactions with gases, there is nothing there that cannot be scaled. The setups I have seen for the lasers columns, are just table top devices in a lab. We can wait; we can pick up the job from there and create our costumed device or we continue with more available improvements (Like the beryllium electrodes mentioned as Eric’s choice) but remain vigilant of the progress of the hollow laser technology.

Impaler:

You don’t have to go to far to get the Hybrid Photovoltaic array; it is powering our next generation of cars and solar generators! Here are some articles that describes couple of this technologies available on the market:

Hybrid combination of Ultra capacitors and Battery’s: http://www.supercapacitors.org/
Hybrid combination of Photovoltaic and thermal collectors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_thermal_hybrid_solar_collector
photovoltaic supercapacitor battery hybrid energy: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/4629335/4635237/04635510.pdf?arnumber=4635510&authDecision=-203

I have also heard of direct Photovoltaic arrays with Oxygen / hydrogen electrolysis generation built in.

We only have to roam the internet to find this of the shelf technologies. Going deeper into manufacturers and Universities labs there are a lot more innovations that are breeding.
As I see it, Manufacturers have the potential technology to build these hardware and are eager to have a market to serve. Just challenge them to see what they got.

The idea of combining the Photovoltaic and capacitor comes from the need of ultra efficiency in the firing cycles for a commercial device. Lets say we run them at a rate ranging from 100 to 1000 Hz, we will have to reduce, simplify and streamline all the components.

Impaler;
No, not exactly. LPP is, in any case not intending to be in either the hardware or servicing side, AFAIK, just licensing and R&D. Let those who are already expert and experienced in the “hands on” areas do their thing, and that will bring them fully onside, plus get the best talent the market can offer immediately available and gaining product knowledge and involvement.

The capital cost of the FF is so low that it would be paid off in a year, maybe less. FF generators are insanely profitable. If you then add the opportunity gains by counting the savings compared to conventional sources, you could hold an existing maintenance/replacement budget constant and double or triple the number of (self-financed) FFs installed each year.

As for fuelling, you’d be hard put to spend $100/annum on each generator. Invisibly trivially negligibly small. Minute and tiny, even. Using currently commercially available product and pricing.

The #1 dominant ongoing cost is servicing and control staff. After the capital cost is retired, about a year or less, it’s almost the whole ball of wax. And, to repeat, these things are ENTIRELY the concerns of the licensees, not LPP.

Will LPP license a general patent on focus fusion, or specific reactor designs? If the latter, ideas like Impaler’s original post are definitely relevant.

It seems like a pretty good idea that would help drive adoption….lowering or eliminating initial capital costs, and reducing the need for highly-skilled maintenance staff.