Reply To: Site availability is poor

[asymmetric_implosion]

Henning wrote:

There are plenty of PIC codes that can handle the modest densities of a DPF plasmoid (ie around solid density) Inertial confinement simulations have to cope with 1000 times higher.

I meant here, simulations specifically for DPFs. Sure, the big guys have supercomputers where they can handle this, but the science of DPF is much too small for this currently.

That is also not true. Sandia and Livermore are working on PIC modeling of the PF implosion phase. PF-1000 has been subjected to these models with limited success. A PF at Livermore is undergoing modeling using the LSP simulation. The results from Livermore are likely to appear at the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics meeting in a couple weeks.

The PF community in the US is larger than you believe. In fact, there are experiments from New Jersey to California at different scales and with very different goals. However, a superior understanding of the basic physics benefits all applications. Folks around the world see potential in PF technology for producing medical radioisotopes, material modification, radiation sources and weapons effect testing. Few people believe that the PF will ever produce net fusion energy for a number of reasons. Honestly, the main reason is a number of engineering problems like material lifetime. The PF has the same problem as ITER and NIF; you generate a hot plasma. That plasma expands and although it cools, it hits the solid materials. The PF electrodes are damaged a little on every shot. Thus, the electrodes have a finite lifetime. The use of copper like that is used on FF-1 is less than ideal. Published literature (Rout et al IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science vol 23. No 6 1995) showed that Tungsten based materials offer higher fusion yields than copper with far longer lifetimes. This is not to say that experiments shouldn’t be conducted. Materials are the limitation of all fusion devices. Materials are also the least funded fusion area in the US. As more and more experiments show promise of breakeven or gain, the more serious engineering challenges will be addressed.