Reply To: Military Effects

[asymmetric_implosion]

I don’t recall saying that fusion is impossible. I did say that the data seems to support that fusion has more downsides than up. I maintain my position of I don’t know if fusion will work as an energy source. NIF is unlikely to meet Q>1. The experiment at Sandia MAGLIF has some interesting potential. I’m rooting for those guys as I am rooting for the PF. Both Z-pinch like technologies will have substantial hurdles to overcome after Q>1. All fusion approaches will struggle with materials problems. Pulse power approaches are going to struggle with switches. Neither problem is trivial and fundamental physics might be a damper.

When I said outsider, I meant someone unfamiliar with the PF or the program. I don’t consider the LPP effort a failure, but I think it is in jeopardy in some respects. I am baffled by the mishaps that keep cropping up. Lerner has confirmed my concern that the right people aren’t in place to use the machine. It is a common problem in small groups; sometimes you need a master and you get are jacks of all trades. It is not an easy problem to contend with. A questionable team can do more damage than disagreeable physics to the reputation of a field.

I think the lack of the right people is the heart of the fusion problem across many platforms. The big projects lack imaginative and effective leaders that can use their technical expertise and people skills to find champions in the funding agency that will support them. They get bogged down in gov’t policy rather than using gov’t policy as a tool to further their programs. Effective gov’t contractors do this masterfully. The approach might have been incorrect but good science does not need a practical end in the near term. Small groups tend to be hampered by a lack of the right people and resources. Great small businesses get creative to bring in people on the cheap. I wish I had a suggestion.

–From the eyes of Charles Seife and folks like him—

If one wants to compare the LPP effort with the tokamek there are some sobering comparisons. Let’s take the tokamek achievements: Q>0.5, T and confinement realized but not density. Realizing two of three of the fusion gain triad of temperature, density and confinement time is failure as ITER and other tokameks are failures or more politely, have not met expectations. Eric states LPP has reached two of the three necessary parameters. The inability to achieve the third is failure. The PF has been touted as a low cost alternative to ITER and NIF but the frequent comment to things falling behind schedule is more money is needed. Sounds like tokameks and NIF to me… All we need is 1 kJ of laser energy and now we need 2 MJ. All we need is 3 MA and tomorrow we need 6 -10 MA which means a new machine and a bigger budget.

—Back to reality—-

There is the potential for dangerous parallels. As Eric said, none of the problems encountered so far are difficult to fix. As someone that has operated PF devices, I am baffled by the length of the delays; a year for arcing and months for a vacuum leak. Twenty months to design a switch???? My on-going concern with LPP is not the physics; it is the ability to demonstrate the physics due to machine problems that never seem to end.