The Focus Fusion Society › Forums › Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Experiment (LPPX) › Thoughts on Refueling / Maintence cycle and revenue › Reply To: Fusion Oil
Milemaster wrote: If needed, this device must be THE containment vessel not an exterior shell of a Stainless steel chamber as now.
I know the concept pictures show an ‘Onion’ with a spherical reaction chamber at the center but this should not be taken literally. Their is no need to do it that way as the X ray collection can be in any shape around the chamber so long as it collects the rays cost effectively, their is no ‘focusing’ the X-rays back into the reaction chamber, the rays will all leave on a one way trip. The threads on the Onion have mostly concluded that thousands of uniquely curved hemispheres of foil is a manufacturing nightmare and instead a cylindrical design formed by rolled a sheet of photovoltaic over a drum much like a roll of toilet paper is more practical. This is reasonable considering that the long efforts to reduce costs of photovoltaics is almost entirely focused on simplifying and speeding up the manufacturing process to reduce cost and thin-foil rolling processes are key to the low priced thin-film cells that have captured a lot of market share lately. Building the ‘Roll’ (or the Ho-Ho if you prefer a foody name for it) separately from the core will certainly simply the manufacturing process and make for a reactor that’s easier to easier to service. Also only the core will need to hold vacuum which allows for the Rolls many thin foils to not be burdened with the negative pressure that would be associated with being the inner wall of the reaction chamber.
Also the walls of the core module would not be steel but rather could simply be made of Beryllium to allow the X-rays out as efficiently as possible, everyone’s said its not a limiting factor and the chamber is not under nearly as much strain as the electrode.