[AaronB]

jamesr wrote: Jet streams are different in nature to ocean currents and flow along plasma filaments. As far as plasma phenomena go, “zonal flows” in tokamaks are the closest analogy. In the atmosphere of earth (or other planets such as Jupiter or Saturn) they come about by the Hadley cell flow up from the equator then flowing north (or south in southern hemisphere) to the tropics where they cool and fall. This combines with a second cell & third cell from the tropics to the pole – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jetcrosssection.jpg. These north-south eddies interact with the Earth’s rotation to create flows perpendicular to the main eddy rotation. At low altitude they are the trade winds, at high altitude the jet streams.

In tokamaks the turbulent flow outwards from the core (& perpendicular to the magnetic field) creates motion in the third, poloidal, direction perpendicular to both the B-field and the pressure gradient know as zonal flows, which can help in forming barriers to the flow of heat out of the tokamak.

The main point it jet stream type flows are perpendicular to the forcing potential (temperature gradient from equator to pole in this case), not down the potential as normal flows are.

Yes, you are correct. I incorrectly lumped these flows together. There are primary movements in the direction of the gradient, as well as secondary and tertiary movements influenced by regional interactions. These additional flows must be considered in addition to the primary movements. These flows can help or hinder whatever you’re trying to do. Thanks for the more robust explanation.

[AaronB]

So, the idea is to have one beam of tritium ions, and to shoot another beam of faster-moving deuterium ions at it from the back, and then shoot both beams with an electron beam from the front. Is that right?

If that’s the case, I think it would be very difficult to make the second beam intersect with the first beam without hitting whatever produced the first beam. However, if that problem was resolved and the two beams were able to interact, because they are going in the same direction, there would be less energy difference between them to take advantage of to make them collide and fuse. Most people try to collide the beams from opposite directions. The electron beam is meant to make the two combined beams pinch. Is this a pulsed device, or are the beams constant? It would probably have to be pulsed, because after you send in the ions, assuming they fused along the way, they would reach the electron source and be attracted to it, which would erode it very quickly, and the eroded material would interfere with the ion beams. Depending on the energies involved, there would be quite an X-ray show! If the fusion reaction produced neutrons, you’d still have to use the steam cycle to capture the energy.

[AaronB]

Looks good. I would add high-voltage lines coming out of one side, and maybe a barbed-wire fence around it. Maybe put an EV charging station in front of the truck. The reactor, capacitors, cooling equipment and transformers could be in the basement level to help with the shielding, and the sauna for the occasional maintenance worker could be on the main level as you walk in.

[AaronB]

zapkitty wrote: I’ve been fishing instead for confirmation on the 2/3 – 1/3 ratio for ions vs. x-rays that Lerner-hakase mentioned in that last video pep-talk 🙂 If not an error THAT would shift the parameters quite a bit in favor of success.

I’m just going to say it’s an expectation at this point, and hope it comes true. The proof will be in the plasma pudding this fall. It depends on whether the magnetic field effect works as advertised and if the ion beam behaves properly, and we won’t know that until we try it.

[AaronB]

Well, the overall energy released will be the same, so it’s just a matter of extracting that energy efficiently. Whether that is easier to do with two fast and a slow or two slow and a fast will have to be seen. I suppose and hope this will be better.

[AaronB]

That was awesome! Why didn’t we think of that earlier?

[AaronB]

MJV and redsnapper both have some well-thought-out points. We already know that cooling will be our major limiting factor once things get going. Overcoming that challenge will be Phase 2 in this project. There will be a lot of “waste” heat that can be used for other applications. For example, a big hotel could have two generators (for redundancy during maintenance), and the waste heat can provide space and water heating, or be used for air conditioning (I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true.) The same could be said for a cruise ship or university campus. Anyway, when we hit Phase 2, we’ll have to hire a bunch of scientists and engineers to figure this out and make it work. The ideas you come up with now will certainly help them get off to a good start.

[AaronB]

Projections and predictions are easy to make, but they’re only as good as the facts they are based on. Facts become outdated very quickly. Any projection involving human behavior is even more difficult. Predicting the arrival of future technology, and what its impact will be at that time, is even more prone to extreme error, but it’s fun to try anyway. The pace of innovation is accelerating, so the world will be very different in 30 or 50 years. I can’t say how or how much it will be different, but it will be like the early 1900s compared to now. We are just scratching the surface of nano-tech, gene manipulation, fusion, brain mapping, social communication, robotics and AI. With even moderate advances in each of those areas, the future possibilities are awesome.

One day, in about 20 years, I may be able to think about a strawberry milkshake, and the nearest feeding station will whip it up, and a cute little robot will deliver it to me, and it will contain the customized ingredients and chemical instructions to tweak my body to optimal performance, lengthening my telomeres and dissolving the small accumulations of plaque on my teeth and in my arteries.

[AaronB]

@ Francisl: Thanks. We’ll look into both of those. The emachineshop looks really neat.

[AaronB]

In order to vote, you’ll need to have a Slashdot username and password. But please take the time to vote!

[AaronB]

It looks like they’ve used close to half of their funding of $7.8M. I’m experiencing funding envy and just drooled on my keyboard. 🙂

[AaronB]

That was a great article, except they forgot to mention our project. But I have to agree with the premise of the article, that a dark horse fusion lab might win the race.

[AaronB]

The switch electrodes are made with small tungsten rods and are sort of like sparkplugs, and once a pulse is triggered in the switches, the current flows from the capacitors, across the plate, and down to the copper electrodes in the reaction chamber. The electrodes in the switches and in the reaction chamber are both rodlike, but are made of different material and have different sizes.

[AaronB]

The report for December should be out by this weekend sometime. It was delayed for various reasons, but mostly because we wanted to include our latest test results.

[AaronB]

@zapkitty, yes, $5M should easily get us through Phase 1 (assuming it works as hoped), and will give us a good start into Phase 2, which entails development of all those things you listed above. As far as R&D projects go, $5M is cheap, and considering how much we’ve been able to accomplish with ~$2M so far, I think we’re doing very well.

[Author]

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