So many shots in october! But why no experimental advances??

[MTd2]

I’ve been following LPPX’s twitter and despite the frequent problems, the capacitor bank was updated and fires were shot. But, there are no experimental advances! No new records for yields! Why?

[Aeronaut]

Advances are not linear, and especially not from shot to shot. A LOT of thinking goes into how some of the shots seemed to do better than the current average, and the diagnostic suite of instruments is designed to produce several ways to double check one or more results. Then comes an AHA! moment, some more experiments based on altering one or more variables, some more test shots, and perhaps a trip to PPPL, and perhaps a meatier update. Some months or quarters. Hopefully. Patience and determination are required. Keep up the great work, gang!

[MTd2]

There were some clear patterns on the October news’ post. Firing at 30Torr and at 1.7 (instead of 2.2)micro seconds pinch would get the yield close to 10Joules @1MA and @35KV which is just slightly better then the end of october. With 10banks, as it was done last week, 1.3MA should be achieved, and thus, about 30J. What went wrong?

[Aeronaut]

What went wrong, in my opinion, is that you expect to schedule scientific proof from shot to shot and day to day. If I were investing on an annual scale, I’d be looking at these reports to be sure, but tracking what my investment produced over the year- by quarters. And I’d be expecting that unity may take more investment of time and capital.

I’d also be grateful that the word ‘surprise’ doesn’t cost gazillion$ like it does in government-funded projects.

Patience, Grasshopper!

[MTd2]

But what I mean is not a proof but what was the result from the shots at those, supposedly, parameters. Was it a different curve? Did the curve inflected, did it bend? And if they were not shot, what the cause of the equipment not responding at the given conditions?

[Breakable]

They are probably just “fooling around” to see what happens under different parameters.
I would suggest reading a book: “The Art Of Scientific Investigation”, it has some interesting reflections on the research process.
One quote I would like to cite:”Research can be planned, but discovery cannot”.

[MTd2]

I am not trying to be a nasty guy and begging for things going as planned. I am just asking for the experimental details.

[AaronB]

The detailed monthly report went out to LPP investors a couple of days ago, and the condensed version will be posted soon at the LPP News page, and Rezwan will send the info to donating members of FFS first, naturally, and then it will be posted here for everyone to see. When we are ready to announce a record yield, we will do that through a journal or other peer-reviewed process, not by Twitter or a posting here. It’s a matter of scientific professionalism and protocol, and nothing personal.

[MTd2]

Hmm. But previous records were posted on the front page, like this one:

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/new_calibration_confirms_ff-1s_high_fusion_yields/

[AaronB]

That’s right, and if you look at the first graph from that report in June, it shows that we were approaching the all-time record, and not just our own record. If we announced that we had broken that record, it would bring lots of interest from the scientific community. In the case of an announcement like that, it must be done through the right peer-reviewed channels if we are to be taken seriously. That’s just the way it is, so that’s why we wouldn’t be announcing it through popular sites like this first.

[MTd2]

Well, IFS got 10^14 neutrons last week, which means on the order of 10-100J. They didn’t put on a pear review paper.

[AaronB]

I think you’re probably referring to the National Ignition Facility (NIF) housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which recently set a record for neutron yield for laser-based fusion (inertial confinement fusion). On Oct. 31, they produced 3 X 10^14 neutrons with 121 kilojoules of laser light and D-T fuel. Then they did another test shot on Nov. 2 with 1.3 MJ of laser light, but didn’t fuse anything on that shot. I’m happy they’re making progress. If they choose to announce new developments and records by press releases, that’s up to them. They are already considered the experts in their field, so their claims are pretty much automatically accepted. LPP isn’t in that position, unfortunately, so we have to do it the long way.

[MTd2]

1.So, it is possible that right now you guys achieved 100J but no one besides you or the investors know, right?
2.If this is the case, will you publish on Nature?

[vansig]

MTd2 wrote: 1.So, it is possible that right now you guys achieved 100J but no one besides you or the investors know, right?
2.If this is the case, will you publish on Nature?

I think the above commentary covers it. at this time, it might be better for those of us awaiting patiently,
to kick back with a big bowl of popcorn, and continue to wait, patiently.

P-)

[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.

[Author]

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