[Henning]

You could maybe use just boron, but this adds inefficiency and shortens the lifetime of the parts involved. But if the beryllium is handled in a cleanroom, or like radioactive material is handled, that should not be a big issue in my opinion. The problem arises if you handle beryllium like any other nontoxic metal.

[Henning]

DPFs scale linearly with size, as opposed to Polywell or tokomaks, which get better the bigger they get.

[Henning]

I’m referring to this post: http://talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?p=26342#26342

[Henning]

Art Carlson is mainly following the “Ryder Argument” (somebody called Ryder did a rather highly valued Ph.D. thesis about the feasibility of fusion attempts, which Art happened to proof-read). That argument mainly says, only tokamaks work. So he was sceptical to polywell too, just that Dr. Bussard was a much more renowned figure than Eric Lerner. Now after some time he supports the polywell effort, but also that took some time.

And he even buys Eric’s argument about the magnetic field effect.

I value his opinions rather high, although I’m not sharing all them regarding focus fusion. He is a sceptic, and that’s good.

And he lives in Munich. Maybe it’s time for a beer (I hate beer).

[Henning]

The article itself does not describe how it is done. Most likely a publicity stunt to accept the notion “nuclear waste is not a problem, it will be eliminated eventually”.

Oh, and they need sustainable fusion, a thing unobtainable for another hundred or thousand years. That we might do sustainable fusion in five years does not count, firstly they don’t know anything about it, and secondly fission reactors would be outdated then anyway.

That they can do it in a laboratory does not mean it is economically feasible: total energy input is quite probably higher than the combination of fission reactor output and waste elimination plant energy input.

[Henning]

Brian H wrote: I many be out of date, but the last I saw, even optimistic projections of the PolyWell limited it to about 100 MW.

As far as I know, the first prototype (duped “WB-100”) would produce 100MW (Dr. Bussard). So see it as a starting point not as an upper limit. But maybe Dr. Nebel changed plans, and I’m out of date…

[Henning]

Now there’s another surge in registrations, this time on the DPF forum. Mostly their “institution” entry contain a name, and in the “Bio” there’s sometimes a link to some ad. I think the “Bio”-thing is added later, so it isn’t evident it’s spam in the first place.

I would be happy if there are so many DPF scientists around, but I doubt it.

[Henning]

Aeronaut, your idea is on earthtimes.org: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/edisons-idea-factory-to-ignite,1226053.shtml

Found this via Talk-Polywell.

[Henning]

Brian H wrote: It’s now almost 3 weeks since the last post that was actually news.

So that gives you one extra week waiting. They’re writing up monthly result documents. Rezwan reformats and posts them for FF members first, and eventually releases them on this web site. The construction time was special, that’s when she visited LPP daily and informed us in a quite timely manner.

[Henning]

The important mineral would be beryllium for the focus and the onion — price and production on this PDF. That’s currently about 200000 USD per ton, with a current production of just 100 tons per year.

[Henning]

Yes, that image is an actual image of a sheath. Rezwan explained it in some old article. Actually it’s black and white, only for aesthetic reasons it was coloured. See also the Wikipedia picture here: http://en.wiki.org/wiki/File:DPFfig2_.jpg

[Henning]

Brian H wrote:

G’day

Well, well, well and a frog will follow.

So that makes me an old timer with moving parts.

Congratulations! And I love the frog expression. I shall adopt it for appropriate occasions.
Careful! Croaking can be fatal.

You mean by reaching 777 you’re becoming a dead toad? So use you’re rest of life wisely. 😉

[Henning]

Brian H wrote: Why would you want to maximize neutron yield?

Because that means you’re having more fusion:
higher energy -> more fusion -> more neutrons

This is a per fuel comparison. So possibly a mediocre DD shot yields more neutrons than a p11B shot with q>1 (big wishes here). So we’re using DD for seeing anything at all, and more neutrons for DD shots means more fusion.

[Henning]

Rezwan reported at Preliminary Evidence of Angular Momentum Effect that a higher current through the angular momentum coil (AMC) disturbs the forming of the initial sheath.

The here discussed ring at the cathode’s base could resolve that issue, enabling the sheath to form more easily although being disturbed by an extra magnetic field.

[Henning]

There’s another technique called “Electron Beam Melting” (EBM): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_beam_melting

It’s done in vacuum, so no corrosion problem with air.

And they already tested it with Beryllium (that is AlBeMet): http://www.arcam.com/technology/ebm-materials.aspx

But still only one material.

[Author]

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