Reply To: Great News!

[Joeviocoe]

asymmetric_implosion wrote:
One might argue that solid state technology could be force fit into this problem with the advantage of >1E9 shot lifetime. I believe that a 2MA, 70 kV bank can be built but the actual lifetime and the cost will likely be a problem. Solid state costs something like $1-10/Joule stored at this level. Gas switch technology is more like $0.01-0.1/Joule stored without any effort. A company called SRL built an 80 Hz, 260 kA PF device. It took a true pulse power genius (Rod Petr) to design the bank to operate a 8 kV. The next immediate question is why not operate at low voltage if it is easier? In a plasma focus there is a 10-20 mOhm loss due to the moving plasma that cannot be avoided. To overcome this impedance means a minimum of 20 kV to drive 2 MA. Account for the other losses in the switches, capacitors and bus bars and you are at 40 kV to drive 2 MA. If I am correct, FoFu-1 is at ~1 MA and 40 kV. Increasing the cap bank size does not help as you still cannot get around the 10-20 mOhm impedance in the moving plasma; it simply reduces the impedance of the bank. It will a great deal of resources to have a pulse power system that operates for 2 months at the 2 MA level without maintenance.

Okay, lets talk about solid state for a moment. Are you talking about solid-state switches or capacitors?
[em] I calculated 1 MJ stored in the capacitor bank for each shot … (50KV x 2MA = 1E11 watts for a 10 microsecond shot / 10^5 = 1 million watt-seconds / 3600 = 278 watt-hours = about 1 MegaJoule (MJ)[/em]
So that would be anywhere from $1mil to $10mil if that cost scaled linearly. *I would hope that at such high demand, manufacturers would build a lot of production capacity and drive down costs.
So that would ruin the price estimate that LPP currently has for the Focus Fusion device.

But even a $5 million dollar 1st generation 5MW fusion power generator ($1/watt) would still be hailed as a great achievement and still MUCH cheaper than the $30 billion dollar 1GW ($30/watt)…. IF THE CAPACITORS AND SWITCHES COULD LAST FOR YEARS.

Do solid state capacitors (Is there such a thing) have that potential, to last a REALLY long time?
Are there any non-capacitor methods to store electrical power that can absorb and release 100 MegaWatts of power in 10 microseconds with low jitter???

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Okay, reading your second post. The economics certainly don’t favor any 5MW device that requires constant maintenance. Essentially, for Focus Fusion to be a viable economic venture… they will have to build a device that meets LPP’s claim of “lasting for 1 month” without any maintenance needs. And the replacement parts must be reasonable in price. Million dollar solid state switches and capacitors are not gonna cut it. There needs to be some serious development in the engineering.

If LPP can get away with only replacing electrodes every month, I think they could be much cheaper $/kilowatt-hour than even Coal.

Bottomline, this is a massive engineering problem that I look forward to seeing solutions for.. As an electrical engineering student, I might want to help tackle this myself 🙂
Hopefully, FoFu-1 will prove the feasibility of the physics and unleash some serious government funding. As LPP’s plan goes, a few hundred million dollars and maybe a thousand extra personnel, a few dozen extra engineers… let’s get it solved.

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P.S. I asked about your background at the bottom of page 1… and would just like some context for all this knowledge you bring to these forums. Thanks.