Reply To: Nuplex.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:
But if FF isn’t doing p-B fusion, I’m not sure what it IS doing, and where all this heat is going to come from. It MUST be above break-even to be a heat engine of any value, so what, exactly, Sir Aeronaut, do you envisage is happening in a non-electricity-producing over-break-even p-B FF generator used as a heat engine? 😉 :cheese: I find it hard to imagine what could be going on. If you want to use D-T fuel as a fallback or alternative, then you have to deal with the neutron flux: not just stopping it in the water shielding, but periodically replacing the internal hardware because the previous set has been degraded and rendered very “hot” by transmutation of component elements into unfriendly isotopes.

Thanks for the promotion, Brian.

I envisage the current state of FF as a pB11 reactor that currently transfers maybe 50% of its magnetic energy to the plasmoid and has 42% thermodynamic efficiency. (These are both optimistic numbers until the 2.6MA machine begins producing solid numbers). IOW, we pay through the nose in electricity converted to heat before we can even begin to think about energy break-even, let alone an energy profit. Therefore, FF’s most readily available markets don’t require energy break-even, just more BTU gain than could be achieved by burning fossil fuels. As ion beam recovery ramps up to the 90% range, operating cost steadily decreases, ignoring little details like control, monitoring, and maintenance labor.

I pasted all but the first and last page of the entire https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/139/P15/ thread into my word processor last night. Now its time for me to see what Rematog and Eric had to say on the last page. While I’m at it, I’ll be sure to add Maihem’s rebuke from about the same timeframe.