Reply To: Fusion Oil

[Aeronaut]

Henning wrote: Uh-Oh, didn’t think about electrically conductance. The more mass you’re charging, the worse it gets. So you’ll probably even get sparks outside the vacuum chamber at the cooling plates. So either use a non-conducting coolant (as in the patent), or insulate the cooling mechanism properly, and hope that the additionally mass that needs to be charged by the capacitors doesn’t affect the current rise time.

Some interesting data like “Coefficient of thermal expansion” on Beryllium and Lithium, including prices for research quantities, (we’ll pretty much need those Beryllium flakes at EUR 1518 per 100g, but in dust form).

Some more info about Beryllium dust: it’s toxic (like asbestos), and explosive with nitrogen or oxygen.

Yes, the inductance would be my next major concern following an electrically insulating coolant. The part of the tubes that heat the coolant would be at anode potential, but as long as there’s no cavitation, we (hopefully) won’t have a sparking problem.

I did some contracting at a beryllium processing plant a few years ago, so I never did like the idea of making it a key ingredient. Seems the ultra-fine dust cuts up your lungs, so the entire town downwind has a class-action lawsuit against that company. The bright side is that we can buy it in ingots for a lot less than research prices.

Maybe the inductance fo each tube’s protrusion is “additive” like it is in the cathodes- 1/L1 + 1/L2 + 1/Ln…. 😉