[Henning]

As far I understood Eric, the effect of the axial coil in FF1 is to get the plasma sheath into filaments as early as possible.

[Henning]

meemoe_uk2 wrote: Have you tried out copper versions of this single jagged cylinder cathode yet?

I suspect the arcs would unsportingly favour some points to arc from much more than others.

If you mean a single cathode base made out of copper including the sawtooth, but not including the cathode rods: Yes this has been tried. The current configuration, as far as I know, is a tungsten base including the sawtooth, but with copper cathode rods being screwed on.

The problem, as far as I understand Eric, is the impurity induced be the small gap that happens when elements are screwed together, or actually the increased resistance. That’s why they’re looking now into a 3D-manufactured tungsten version of the whole cathode, as it’s hard to machine.

Oh yes, and it needs to be tungsten, otherwise the sawtooth will evaporate away too quickly. Copper has been tried here before.

Small giveaway: I’ve redesinged the DPF so that this gap between cathode base and cathode rods isn’t an obstacle anymore, in a way that filaments do not cross the cathode base anymore. Let’s see how Eric likes it.

[Henning]

Could you please repost this as seperate topic under “Official Announcements” or “LPPX”?

Here it just gets overlooked.

Breakable wrote: Hi All,
Solve for X is out. Please share the link as widely as possible and post your efforts here.
Here is the link:
https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/aneutronic-fusion

Here is suggested PR text:
On June 11, 2013, LPP participated in Google’s Solve For Fusion Brainstorming Conference in Mountainside, California. Solve For encourages projects to solve the toughest technological challenges of our day. The participants were scientists from Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. and three other leading fusion energy research companies: Tri-Alpha Corporation, General Fusion, and a project supported by giant multinational Lockheed-Martin. Teams of three presenters from each participating company were joined by a panel of nine fusion experts from top academic and national fusion laboratories: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, MIT, the University of Wisconsin, and UCLA. The presentation has been posted at https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/aneutronic-fusion.

The reports given by the participants confirmed that, at the moment, LPP has achieved the best fusion results by far. LPP reported a density-time-temperature product over 2,000 times higher than that of Tri-Alpha, despite Tri-Alpha’s much larger, 150-person research team. Both of the other efforts are at considerably earlier stages of development. Professor Masaaki Yamada of Princeton commented on the great progress LPP had made since Dr. Yamada had last looked at the project after LPP’s 2007 presentation at Google Tech Talks. In particular, LPP’s results with confined plasma temperatures of 1.8 billion degrees, reported last year in the leading journal Physics of Plasmas, were far higher than the 6 million degrees reported by the Tri-Alpha team.
Two proposals emerged with broad support out of a lively discussion of the direction of fusion research. One was to draft an open letter to the US Congress urging that the US fusion energy research effort be expanded to include alternatives to the now almost-exclusive focus on the ITER tokamak project. Participants were united in their views that the present fusion program is too narrowly based. A draft of this letter is now being circulated for comments and finalization. A second proposal was some form of joint collaboration on simulation and data analysis. Participants made no firm decisions, but agreed to carry on further discussion about these and other proposals for action.

There was also a good exchange of views covering the benefits and challenges of aneutronic fusion. Both LPP and Tri-Alpha are aiming for fusion with aneutronic fuels that produce no neutrons, and thus no nuclear waste. LPP’s President and Chief Scientist, Eric J. Lerner, pointed out in his presentation that aneutronic fuels also could potentially be much cheaper than any existing energy sources, as energy could be converted directly into electricity, avoiding the cost of steam turbines and generators usually used for conversion. Other scientists agreed that eliminating neutrons from the main reaction would greatly simplify materials problems encountered using neutron-reducing fusion fuels like deuterium-tritium. Neutrons tend to destroy the materials that a DT reactor is made of, and aneutronic fuels avoid this problem. On the other hand, aneutronic fuels require higher temperatures than DT does. The event was a great opportunity to see the progress in fusion research, and an important step forward in beginning cooperative actions.

[Henning]

Hi James,

In case you’re not following the discussion on the Guardian anymore, someone’s asking for a little writeup for CIF, whatever that is. Maybe it’s worth pursing, maybe not.

http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/23196402

Cheers, Henning

[Henning]

JimmyT wrote:
He notes increased linear compression of a factor of 4 which yields increased density of a factor of 20. Four cubed is 32 not 20. He also claims that doubling the current will increase yield by a factor of 20. But this process has reliably scaled to the 5th power. Two to the fifth power is 32 Not 20.

Well, the current scaling is somewhat to the 4.7th power for a few experiments. So 20 is more accurate here. Don’t overpromise.

[Henning]

Congratulations Dr Robinson! 🙂

[Henning]

BTW: There are Christmas packages on top of the reactor (page 2). 😉

[Henning]

delt0r wrote: Its not surprising since this is what the thing was built for in the first place.

Right. That energy-sidetrack was just to get funded additionally.

[Henning]

Yes, is everyone okay over there at LPP?

[Henning]

I always wondered, whether a transformer would be a good idea.

 

So for example an 6-times step-down transformer as used in the paper would yield 4000-times increase of neutron yield with the same input power:

U_effective = U_input / 6
I_effective = 6 * I_input
P_input = U_input * I_input = U_effective * I_effective
N_n = const * I_effective ^ 4.7 = const * (6 * I_input) ^ 4.7 = const * 4542 * I_input ^ 4.7

But then I know that one of the goals is to reduce inductance (read it somewhere in Eric’s early papers on arXiv), to enable fast rise-time of the current, which seems to be crucial. I always thought a transformer will add inductance.

But as Bures et al. write, on the secondary side of the transformer, induction and resistance will be reduced 36-fold (with a 6-times step-down transformer). Someone with more electrical engineering background should take a look at that paper.

 

BTW: Dr. John Thompson (mentioned in the paper) also (co-)designed LPP’s DPF, see this Link.

[Henning]

That article requires a login, but it’s also available at the following location, which doesn’t need a login:
http://rsi.aip.org/resource/1/rsinak/v82/i10/p103506_s1?bypassSSO=1

Or direct download of PDF:
http://scitation.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=RSINAK000082000010103506000001&idtype=cvips&doi=10.1063/1.3648117&prog=normal&bypassSSO=1

[Henning]

BTW: Is that 1 million kelvins “gas” the source of the “cosmic microwave background radiation“?

Well, no, never. That would dispute the Big Bang.

[Henning]

Electrons fly off in the other direction than alpha particles, because of the magnetic field (right-hand rule).

[Henning]

… and an article that’s used by LENR / Rossi promoters.

[Henning]

ikanreed wrote: Blocked at work. A summary, maybe?

It’s a link to a Nature article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7407/full/nature11246.html

[Author]

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