Reply To: would nuclear energy really be accessible to all?

[vansig]

Allan Brewer wrote:
Using Ohm’s law (apologies if I am being naive) for 1MA through a 20nm skin of the copper electrode does indeed give an answer, in the expected range, of around 2MW of heat from the anode and about the same from the cathodes. Beryllium has twice the resistivity so would double the heat “problem” (and increase the power required to initiate each shot?).

can you give the area and the length also, for us to check?

Allan Brewer wrote:
Finally just to note that thermal radiation from the plasma & plasmoid cannot be calculated using the Stefan-Boltzmann law (gives a silly answer) – I leave the physics of the emissivity of high temperature plasma to experts.

yes, ion temperature of 6.5×10^9 kelvin would seem to yield about 10^32 watts/m²; but, we should note that excitation isn’t exactly uniform in all directions (longitudinal >> transverse vibration, so maybe take the cube root? or the square root?), and quantization effects due to the strong magnetic field could also play into this.