[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote: Not tea bags! Maybe slip in something about the short time frame: “Instead of being ’50 years in the future, forever’, this could hit the market running in 5-7 years.”

2 key reasons in my mind for not mentioning a timeframe- scientific, and audience. This type of news/marketing story plays in the readers’ comfy dream theaters. These are the indirect buyers who will prove to energy companies that a paying market can be developed. A follow-on story for later in the year could talk about potential timelines relative to LPPX’x pB-11 shots.

[Aeronaut]

Tulse wrote:

No at high energies pB11 bunrs easier than DD.

Thanks, Dr. Lerner, but I’m still a bit confused — does this mean that the pB11 reaction gets relatively more efficient at higher energies, compared to DD? And more efficient enough to overcome the disadvantage of having to use more input energy for the pB11 reaction? I had thought that the main attraction of the pB11 reaction was that it was aneutronic, and not that it had a higher total energy of fusion products at any level of input energy (relative to DD or DT). In other words, I thought that under all conditions one would get more energy out of DD and DT than pB11.

The main attraction as I understand it is that pB-11 fusion produces almost (as a percentage) no neutrons, and their energy is too low to make anything else radioactive. Until somebody can convert a neutron into useful energy (could it carbonate beverages?), neutrons are wasted energy in my opinion. FoFu’s attraction using pB-11 fuel should be that all of the fusion products can be converted directly into electric energy. Plus it makes a lot of thermal energy available in the process.

The higher percentage of fusion products that can be used productively leads to the greater efficiency.

[Aeronaut]

Fusion: Science, Politics, and the Invention of a New Energy Source by Joan Lisa Bromberg, but it’s nearly thirty years old and not likely to be found on store bookshelves.

Now that title could spark general interest! And 30 years is about what it took the 70’s looks to be recycled…

[Aeronaut]

A lot of this is explained in this month’s update, which contributors get a few days before it gets posted here. Of particular importance is how the sensors are arranged and interpreted – and the underlying theory.

The beam is entirely high energy he ions, balanced by the virtual beam (great term, btw!) of high energy electrons. Hmm… rapidly leaving the parts I have some kind of handle on…

[Aeronaut]

nferguso wrote: Thanks, Ivy Matt. It’s still not making sense to me. It is the product of the fusion, the high energy helium nuclei (alpha particles), that carries the output energy of the system, is it not? Isn’t that what the focused beam will consist of? When talking about the plasmoids, aren’t we talking about different stuff – plasma created from the current from the capacitors that compresses ambient fuel to produce the fusion?

Wouldn’t it be the case that if the components of the fusion-triggering plasma do end up in the beams, they are there only incidentally? Isn’t the great majority of the energy in the beam specifically the alpha particles?

Cheers,
Neil Ferguson

Welcome to FFS, Neil. Yes, a large portion of the plasmoid’s energy is released in a beam of helium ions traveling at near relativistic speeds. They’re slowed in the recovery coils as their magnetic field and speed induce electric current in the energy recovery coils. Another large chunk of the plasmoid’s energy is radiated in the form of X-rays (Bremstrahlung radiation). Heat is the third major energy produced, and many of the system’s components will need active cooling. The general consensus seems to be high pressure helium for a number of reasons.

The machine has an axial phase, where the donut runs down the electrodes, followed by the kinking in the radial phase, where the collapsing magnetic fields from hopefully several million amps, for around a millionth of a second, will crush the plasmoid into a near-solid around 9nm across, where the fusion reactions are thought to occur. We’re hoping for 10 to 12 GG.

I’m not a physicist either. The easiest way I can relate to all of this is in terms of electro-magnetics. By following the current and resulting fields, you can understand just about everything outside of the plasmoid.

btw- the ion beam carries half of the plasmoid’s energy. The electron beam leaving the other end is absorbed by and heats the plasmoid further, which speeds up the rate of reactions. No single fusion produces much energy to speak of, but with a plasmoid producing somewhere between millions and billions of these reactions in the space of around 10nS, commercial quantities of energy can be produced (hopefully).

Hope this makes it all clearer.

[Aeronaut]

Breakable wrote: I recently got a private message from Polywell enthusiast over facebook.
Because I don’t actually know this person directly,
I think this this opens an interesting avenue for spreading the message more widely.
While individual efforts could provide some return,
I think well though of and organized effort could reach greater success.
What do you think?

I can probably double the number of FFS FB ‘likes’ for $10, but that’s not the same thing as spreading the word, imo. Seems to me that what we need is a more or less universal benefit like reasonably priced space heating and water heating- one day soonish*. Now, given a universal benefit like lower heating bills, and a programmer with the FB API, all sorts of groovy hings can be done with the FB platform.

[Aeronaut]

The image expands just fine over here. I figured the meaning of the image out on the third try.

[Aeronaut]

tcg wrote: As a certified Electrician practicing in California, I have access to several sources of basic information about the fundamentals of electricity, but unfortunately many of them are proprietary, and I cannot pass them on. The link offered by Francisi is a good one, but it might be useful to know what the information is needed for. I don’t think that the crew building FF1 needs a primer, so is the information for FFS members who want to grasp the basic concepts? If so, the hose/water flow analogy used by Aeronaut is a powerful one, explaining voltage, current and resistance. Inductance and capacitance would be a bit more difficult since they require the subject to visualize processes which have no obvious analogue to use for illustration. Again, what is the target audience and how much would they need to know?

Thanx, TCG. I think the target audience is around 5th or 6th grade level so that anybody can ‘get it’. Magnetic fields can be hinted at by using hot water (the hose would radiate warmth, simulating the presence of a magnetic field). The Left Hand Rule was hilarious to watch some foreigners try to figure out right-handed in Basic Electricity & Electronics (BEEP) School. We must define the target audience more precisely than ‘everybody.’

[Aeronaut]

I think of electricity in terms of a garden hose. Pressure=voltage, or the potential to do mechanical work. Resistance can be varied by twisting the nozzle to a new diameter. Current is how fast the water molecules or electrons are flowing. Less resistance leads to greater flow at lower pressure. This is for the conventional current view of electricity that I chose to relate to. Eric’s description recently is based on the flow of holes, which would be air bubbles moving against the flow.

I couldn’t phrase your request right for Gistweb dot com to locate anything to summarize, but perhaps one of y’all can, or give me some search/ keyword strings to try tonight.

[Aeronaut]

Lerner wrote: We are going to do some cross-section diagrams that will help. The capacitors are charged positive, so they actually connect to the anode, the central electrode, while the cathode rods are at ground. When the switchs fire, electrons flow from the ground through the cathode plate and then through the plasma near the insulator to get to the anode, and through that to the capacitors. Current, which is conventionally defined as always flowing from plus to minus, flows in the opposite direction to the electrons (just to confuse you–when current was defined, they did not know about electrons.) The current sheath moves outwards away from the insulator and arrives at the cathode rods some 100s of ns into the shot. Then events continue as in the animation.

So current moves in the same direction as holes. We were offered either interpretation in tech school, way back when.

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote:

The WSJ ran a 3 page print version of an info-mercial yesterday about Risk Management that could get a lot of corporations looking at aneutronic fusion in a new light. The gist of it was to view risk as an early window into opportunity. 😉

Is there a link to this?

Haven’t looked at their online version at all. The print version ran on pages B6-B8 as a Special Advertising Section on Strategic Risk. The actual article title is “A 3-D View of Risk”. Page B8’s article is “Creating a Risk-Aware Culture”. Amazingly, neither was on page 1 of Google, even in quotes.

[Aeronaut]

Francisl wrote: Maybe talk to a company like Siemens USA. They appear to be innovative, aggressive and say they are willing to try new things. Maybe they can provide equipment in place of or in addition to funding for projects.

That would be a great way for them to hedge their bets while leveraging the tax advantages into bargain-priced PR. The WSJ ran a 3 page print version of an info-mercial yesterday about Risk Management that could get a lot of corporations looking at aneutronic fusion in a new light. The gist of it was to view risk as an early window into opportunity. 😉

[Aeronaut]

So a great stocking stuffer may be to hire one or two part-time interns majoring in a mix of web journalism and physics, if I understand the situation right. What would that be likely to add to the quarterly budget?

[Aeronaut]

Which brings up the question of how powerful the X-ray and neutrons are- i.e.- how far underground would a FF/DPF need to be ‘buried’ to be shielded to below background radiation levels like the existing lead-covered water jacket is? In short, I doubt it would be cost-effective to eliminate the current shielding arrangement, much as I’d like to.

[Aeronaut]

zapkitty wrote:

Let’s use the proposed $5 million dollar donation as a starting point. Would this amount be enough to build and run a 10 MW power plant – either base load or peaking?

Whoa… 🙂

As FF still needs a variety of components validated first, I think such money should be split between getting LPPX-1 through its testing regime and simultaneously funding at least the following items which I’ve put in what I imagine is the descending order of difficulty/expense:

X-ray direct conversion “onion”
Electrode erosion quantification and mitigation.
Capacitor bank lifespan and life extension.
Alpha direct conversion coil design.
Helium coolant system.

All of the above need to be worked on and validated before it becomes possible to design even a prototype power plant… and I’m sure there’s other things I’ve overlooked 🙂

Excellent list, Zap, since it covers FF-1 as well as FF-2. FF-2 could conceivably be designed and tested as a pre-production POC testbed for subsystems such as the onion and the low frequency helium cooling system. Don’t know how far $2M-3M would go in terms of helium, vacuum, and TMP pumps, not to mention a 2nd test cell, diagnostics, and additional staffing. Is the neighboring suite available for lease?

[Author]

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