Reply To: NEW ANIMATIONS

[jamesr]

opensource wrote: So if using x-rays forces us to work against the bremsstrahlung cooling effect in designing a DPF, then maybe we shouldn’t use x-rays? Have there been any clever proposals for dealing with bremsstrahlung cooling besides just scaling to work against it?

“Using x-rays” is the wrong way to look at it. In any hot plasma the ions & electrons are bouncing randomly around (influenced by the local E & B fields) – whenever an electron is scattered through an appreciable angle a photon is created with an energy corresponding to the change in momentum of the electron. This ‘breaking’ radiation is Bremsstrahlung, and if the electrons are at keV sized energies then the resultant photons are in the x-ray portion of the EM-spectrum.

X-rays cannot be avoided. If you want a hot, dense plasma it will radiate away a proportion of that energy – the hotter it gets the faster it radiates, making it hard to achieve the temperatures required for fusion. The recent x-ray measurements implying a rough 400keV electron temperature suggest FoFu-1 is achieving a sufficiently rapid pinch to heat the plasma faster than it can cool.

Since the proportion of fusion energy released and transferred to the ion & electron beams when the plasmoid collapses can never be enough to achieve nett energy gain, some of the energy lost from the plasma in x-ray radiation will need to be captured as well.