Polywell and the Navy

[Brian H]

There’s an article pumping Polywell on American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/fusion_energy.html

and a more detailed update with lots of links (including the above) at http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/06/the_boys_at_tal.html .

So the thinking is that they’re hoping to achieve unity within a couple of years, and will test D-D first, then pB11.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote: There’s an article pumping Polywell on American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/fusion_energy.html

and a more detailed update with lots of links (including the above) at http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/06/the_boys_at_tal.html .

So the thinking is that they’re hoping to achieve unity within a couple of years, and will test D-D first, then pB11.

Thanx for the links, Brian. There’s a lot of valuable information about the competition in them. As a member of the talk-polywell.org forum, however, I take a wait and see position on anything involving external magnets. First there’s the inherent parasitic load of powering them, then there’s the problem of focusing them to required confinement levels. Focusing problems are still (and I expect will be for a long time) their toughest challenge.

On the bright side, perhaps the Navy would want to expand their portfolio to avoid having all of their eggs in one basket. A pB11 powered sub would have a lot of engineering, tactical, and strategic advantages over a fission powered sub.

[Rezwan]

Hi Folks,

I contacted the Committee on Science and Technology (CS&T;) – the organization that was tasked with managing the ARPA-E grants. I was following up on why we didn’t get the opportunity to apply for a grant. Aside from the great number of applicants, I wanted to see if they had any particular issues with aneutronic fusion. It does appear that they hold Aneutronic fusion in low regard. In even lower regard is the PolyWell. Adam Rosenberg, on the professional staff of the CS&T;and former DOE Office of Science Program Manager had this to say about it:

2) A spherically symmetric magnetic field is impossible under the laws of physics as we know them, and so Bussard’s PolyWell is essentially based on hokum.

As I am not familiar with spherical symmetric magnetic field requirements – I’ll put this here for to you to discuss.

[Brian H]

Rezwan wrote: Hi Folks,

I contacted the Committee on Science and Technology (CS&T;) – the organization that was tasked with managing the ARPA-E grants. I was following up on why we didn’t get the opportunity to apply for a grant. Aside from the great number of applicants, I wanted to see if they had any particular issues with aneutronic fusion. It does appear that they hold Aneutronic fusion in low regard. In even lower regard is the PolyWell. Adam Rosenberg, on the professional staff of the CS&T;and former DOE Office of Science Program Manager had this to say about it:

2) A spherically symmetric magnetic field is impossible under the laws of physics as we know them, and so Bussard’s PolyWell is essentially based on hokum.

As I am not familiar with spherical symmetric magnetic field requirements – I’ll put this here for to you to discuss.

I posted his response over at the PolyWell discussion site, and here’s one responder:

It’s amazing how stupid people can be. Someone hears a phrase which thier[their] experiance[experience] denies. Without checking on the validity of the term, they discredit a concept. Obvously[obviously], spherical magnetic fields are impossible- but where did he get the idea that Bussard claimed this. [?] Bussard’s work has been to Aproximate[approximate] this condition as much as possible, with real arrangements of magnetic fields to come close enough to this ideal condition that the thing will work. Thus the efforts to minimize real cusp and surface geometry effects to within some acceptable limit, or finding some workarounds (like recirculation). Argueing[arguing] for or against the effectiveness of the methods is reasonable, justifying denial on a selfserving misrepresentation is not.
For someone that suposedly[supposedly] has some expertize and athority[authority] in a field to grasp onto a (mis)applied word, and then use that to justify a position is dissapointing[disappointing].

Dan Tibbets

Aside from the spelling, a reasonable comment!

[Aeronaut]

So we’re back to the question of do we need government funding or do we need political support in Congress and the DOE? We need political support to avoid being regulated precisely like fission plants. Government funding can wait…and wait…

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