Reply To: Fantastic news.

[Brian H]

blues wrote: A lot of my experience comes from dealing with microwave EMF. We have lots of pretty sophisticated ways of keeping the “antenna patterns” directional. But the constant challenge was always that we would be dealing with “side lobes” of radiation that would always “jump out” in complex ways. I don’t know much about nuclear physics, but it sounds like you are talking about an actual fusion reaction that spits out charged particles in a more-or-less straight line. This is rather hard to understand for someone used to dealing with just EMF.

As for the future of using “brute force” to obtain scarce elements, well maybe. But I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it.

Two issues conflated here. The neutrons are undirected, simply stopped by water and boron. The FF plasmoid collapses into 2 beams oriented along the anode, with the alpha beam exiting from the top and being directed through a solenoid to trap its current, and the electron beam going back into thermal energy in the plasma. There are also X-rays, which are also undirected, but are stopped within a “thousand-foil” shell, kicking loose electrons by photoelectric effect to be drained and which constitute the power “profit” of the system, more or less.

The system for element extraction I was speaking of was meant to anticipate combining desalination with element extraction/refinement. The desal is the big load-consumer in the deal, and will have plenty of customers. Probably the more abundant light ‘metals’ will be the main target. The heavies are still too dilute to pay off or generate substantial volume.