Reply To: permanent magnets, halbach arrays, bugle jets and dental plaster

[Lerner]

On Oct.31, a shot at NIF produced 700 J of fusion energy using DT fuel. So far, FF-1’s largest shots have produced 0.1 J of fusion energy per shot with pure deuterium fuel. Does this mean NIF is 7,000 times closer to net fusion energy than FF-1? Not exactly.
NIF operates with a capacitor bank of 422 MJ to feed current to flashlamps that energize lasers that then heat a pellet to produce fusion. 700 J is thus 1.6×10^-6 times smaller than the energy needed to charge its capacitors.
In FF-1’s best shots, we used 46 kJ to charge the capacitor bank. So our fusion yield is 2.2×10^-6 times as much as is needed to charge the capacitors. Also, we are using pure D, which is about 100 times less reactive than DT.
The record for “wall-plug efficiency”, as this ratio of energy-out to energy-in is called, is 10^-5 for pure deuterium, with the best DPF results (not LPP’s) matching the best JET tokamak results.
LPP will be soon issuing a document that will give fusion enthusiasts a better idea of how scientific research actually works, which is different than some of our more impatient fans apparently imagine.