Reply To: Some about a fusion dispute in Sweden.

[jamesr]

I wouldn’t expect this sort of thing to be added to early prototypes. We need to prove it works & we can get the energy out first. But once we are upto the stage of wanting to pulse it at more than a few Hz then the cooling & wear rates become the next challenge.

at the 300Hz or so proposed, this equates to 18000rpm. Formula one car engines rev this high and produce stresses I would think of a similar order of magnitude. That is, the car engine produces around 1700kW of heat which is transformed into 500-700kW of useful power (source: wikipedia). A 5MW focus fusion device would be generating a similar amount of waste heat that is not in the ion beam or x-rays.

If we could take off a few hundred kW of waste heat mechanically, it will help in the whole break-even budget, and reduce the amount of heat that needs to be dumped in a heat exchanger.

At present an F1 car engine doesn’t last long, but it is experience from this kind of industry we will need to make a FF device last any sensible amount of time.

If the FF device was only pulsed at say 100Hz then the heat & rev rate will be similar to a normal road car, and these engines are built to last a long time. Basically the technology is already out there if we want it.