Reply To: Competition from the Thorium reactor

[JimmyT]

Exposure to electromagnetic radiation does not make things radioactive. Only exposure to particulate radiation (mostly neutrons) will do that. Otherwise when we “nuke” popcorn in the microwave oven we would have real problems.
Seriously though, this is true regardless of the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation, from radio-waves all the way up to gamma rays. (Yeah, I know about Hafnium. There is always an exception isn’t there?)

Concerning waste heat: Don’t forget the conversion efficiency of the input pulse to the plasmoid. I think Uber Lerner is using an efficiency for this step of 50%. This is a figure he has garnered from other research groups which have achieved this comparatively high efficiency; and not merely a number he pulled out of his, er.. I mean …. the air. Thus far though LPP has only achieved 0.01% efficiency in this step, (this in his Texas experiment). Lets hope for conversion efficiencys of 70% plus in this step as well; once our complete bag of tricks is applied.