[Henning]

redsnapper wrote: Henning,
Is there any info available on the size and composition of the X-ray converter? I saw that there was a patent issued, but my experience with patents is they’re unlikely to give you that kind of detail. (They’re supposed to be easily understood by someone “skilled in the art,” but that implies that they don’t tell you anything they absolutely don’t have to, presuming that you already know and/or are skilled enough to guess what they don’t say. That probably doesn’t cover me, in this context. :-)) I did actually take the link to the patent and I scanned the opening page – a couple of weeks ago – but really didn’t try to digest any of the content at the time.
Also, mjv1121 answered that the energy distribution between the two ion beams might only be determined after tests have gone to the next level – but I can hardy believe that there aren’t already some pretty concrete expectations – and there should be some fairly fundamental physics dictating the gross effects. (I took a plasma-physics course in grad school 33 years ago, and I hate to admit how much I’ve forgotten – though I’d feel worse if it was something I’d actually found a use for in the meantime!) In fact, I’d assume that if a Rogowski coil can be applied to the He nuclei, it could also be applied to the electron beam. If the electrons only emit 80% of their energy in X-rays, surely that remaining 20% is well-ordered kinetic energy worth going after with another Rogowski coil? The more energy you can get back directly as electricity, the better. Heck, because they’re moving electrons, they’re already electrcity (much more so than the He ions). Is there an even simpler and obvious way to funnel them into a conductor? Maybe that’s already part of the design – so self-evident that nobody’s mentioned it in one of these posts?

My interpretation of the x-ray photovoltaics:
The x-ray converter is a layer of thousands of conducting foils separated by non-conducting foils. Inner foils are made of beryllium, outer foils are made of metal of larger Z (proton count). Also the outer layers are thicker than their inner counterparts. An x-ray photon should pass several layers depending on its energy, and realease its energy as it passes its final layer. Together with the innermost layer it builds up a electrical potential. It’s more or less a capacitor (as I understand), with energy put in by photons. Anyone else to comment?

The best picture we have is the rendering by Torulf. That’s the logo on the Focus-Fusion Facebook-Group, or that rendering in LPP’s web-site: http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/

If you make the electrodes of about 10-20cm long, the whole shebang might have a diameter of 50cm, plus induction coils.

With the energy of the electron ray: I remember reading somewhere that the electron ray carries less than 1% of the energy. But I might be wrong here.

Currently the electron ray is lost on the anode. Maybe it’s possible to collect the electron energy with a third electrode within the anode’s hole — but I suspect it can’t be insulated enough from the anode, so a electrode that is close to mass would drain all of the anode.

[Henning]

Brian H wrote:

…
Not even a turbine and generator.
…

Turbine? Generator? Nosuch nonesuch present. That’s kind of the whole point. No steam or spinnin’ magnets.

You’re still on the mode, that direct conversion is enough. That the efficency of induction and photovoltaics is good enough to get out more than is put in. It won’t. At least in the beginning we need a steam cycle (helium in primary cycle, water or anything else in the secondary). In ten, twenty years MAYBE we’re good enough. But that’s a big maybe, which puts more “maybe” on, than with FF being a big maybe in itself.

And then there’s still excess heat, even with photovoltaics working close to optimum.

Read some discussions with Rematog. Just what he writes, ignore the others (you, me, anybody). Here is one discussion with him: https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/283/

@redsnapper:
A steam cycle is required (with helium as primary coolant), and the number of a constant 300Hz operation (because of the 60Hz grid) you read in the forums is also bogus. A beam only produces energy for a few microseconds. A capacitor or coil to smoothen out the peaks is required anyway. More likely the frequency will even vary within that 50Hz/60Hz output cycle, more shots during the maximum/minimum of the grid cycle, less when it’s close to zero.

[Henning]

redsnapper wrote: I thought cramming 1200m^2 of fin area into a two-car-garage model seemed a bit of a stretch.

That two-car-garage number didn’t include any heat exchangers, I think. Not even a turbine and generator. And I don’t know whether that’s included in the 300000 USD / 5 MWe calculation. Those numbers were only for direct conversion (I believe). But Rematog made it clear, that a conventional steam-cycle is still required.

If you do calculations, probably also include Helium as main heat conductor. It makes it invisible to x-rays (because of low Z – only two protons), as water shades the hard x-rays (8 protons in oxygen). We want the energy mainly in the photovoltaics, not just as heat. It gets heat anyway.

There are some discussions about helium as coolant in the forum.

[Henning]

redsnapper wrote: nucleon decelerator (also bigger than a breadbox, I presume, but this structure remains totally vague in my mind)

This vague nucleon decelerator is a rogwski coil.

See the design of the device on the left side at http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/ , with DPF, onion and coil. That’s about the size you would expect. Yes, shoe-box-sized.

Those pictures I’ve attached are stolen from wikipedia. They show the general idea of these coils. Hope that helps a bit. They just show a single turn of the coil.

Attached files

[Henning]

Eric already presented Focus Fusion at Google Tech Talks: https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/eric_lerner_presents_focus_fusion_at_google_tech_talks/

And they also applied to Project 10^100 : http://www.project10tothe100.com/

If you know someone with good access to those people with deep pockets, go ahead and ask them.

But first continue informing yourself by reading up more on this technology — you’ll get tough questions.

[Henning]

redsnapper wrote: Ironically, I actually spent an hour writing a second post on this subject Friday night, then went to preview the post, made a booboo of opening another tab in IE, went back to the original tab, thinking I was still on the new tab, and lost everything! The “back” button took me to an *empty* reply window, and I couldn’t find any way to get back to my original text! Argh! If I’m smart, I’ll do all my creative writing in another text editor first, and then paste it in here. Webmaster, is there any hope of avoiding this problem otherwise?!

I often edit my articles in a text-editor, before pasting it to the browser’s input field. But this forward-and-back thing I just did myself a few minutes ago with a different article, but luckily Firefox remembered it. So one way of getting around this problem is using Firefox and/or an external text-editor.

[Henning]

Can’t access Flickr at the moment, but I suspect it’s the knife-edge of the DPF you’re refering to: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=dense+plasma+focus+knife+edge&hl=de&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

See also http://www.physicsessays.com/doc/s2007/PF50-7-_03_07-CurrentTrends-bk.pdf from page 30 on.

It helps forming the initial plasma. BTW: A negative knife-edge affects the neutron count negatively. I don’t have the article at hand, but that’s what I remember. I think it was written by Brzosko et al.

Some more: “A slotted knife-edge around the insulator base was employed to enable operation at the higher pressure.”
http://www.space-nation.org/images/1/14/Prospects_for_p11B_fusion_with_the_Dense_Plasma_Focus_-_New_Results.pdf (page 2)

[Henning]

McKay only has a short passage for decommissioning:

Economics of cleanup
What’s the cost of cleaning up nuclear power sites? The nuclear decommissioning
authority has an annual budget of £2 billion for the next 25
years. The nuclear industry sold everyone in the UK 4 kWh/d for about
25 years, so the nuclear decommissioning authority’s cost is 2.3 p/kWh.
That’s a hefty subsidy – though not, it must be said, as hefty as the subsidy
currently given to offshore wind (7 p/kWh).

That’s what the government sets aside, £2 billion (is that American billion or British billion, that’s a 1000-fold difference. McKay is British…), isn’t the actual cost. Cost will come in later years and payed up by the public.

Two chapters later he discusses how small the dangerous waste is. Well, that waste gets buried somewhere, but not safely. It gets in the water system again, like with Asse II.

But all in all an interesting read.

[Henning]

Generally the rethinking of nuclear fission opens up other resources, now available to water, wind, solar, and possibly fusion.

It’s a chance, not a detriment.

Just watch the anti-nuclear (anti-fission) movement in Germany. The old government (social democrats and greens) decided a phase-out of fission plants, the new government (christian democrats and so called “liberals”, more in an Australian way “liberal” than American “liberal”, they go where the money is) reverted that phase-out. But people understood that investing in fission locks resources required for a switch to more renewable energy construction, storage, and distribution.

That’s why they are protesting now. They smell a chance of pressing the government in their direction, especially as in the next few weeks several elections will take place. Oh, and with these elections Merkel now reverts the revertment of the phase-out. She isn’t concerned about safety, just about elections. After elections all the German fission plants will go online again, if she doesn’t get stopped.

Nuclear fission always has been enormously subsidised. In this subsidy the deconstruction and (safe) deposition of waste isn’t even included. Cost-calculations are way off.

——————————————————

PS: Es geht um unsere Zukunft.

[Henning]

I may be lacking some background knowledge, but a royal order to keep calm and carry on just wouldn’t fit my personal opinion.

[Henning]

It was in the top ten for some time, and in the top twenty for most of the day. But sadly didn’t get picked up by the editors. The tag “vaporware” (given by others) most likely spoiled our success. :-/

[Henning]

… and it’s at CUNY, where as it seems Rezwan already has contacted a professor who is interested in FF:
https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/762/P15/#7717

Until now, there’s no much info on that TEDx event, though. Maybe that means speakers are still welcomed.

With the new publication and other advances, it could be worth a try.

[Henning]

This one is at Lerner Hall. 🙂

[Henning]

QuantumDot wrote:
a Japanese researcher has used red wine to create a superconductor at a much higher temperature using FeTe0.8S0.2 by sealing iron (Fe), tellurium (Te) and tellurium sulfide (TeS) powders into an evacuate quartz tube and heating the mixture at 600°C for 10 hours.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-hot-booze-material-superconductor.html

But that’s just rising the temperature from 2K to 8K (at least as I’ve seen from the graphs): http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1008/1008.0666.pdf

[Henning]

Seems as the producer of the switches is Pulsed Technologies LTD in Russia.

Here are the pulsed drivers: http://www.pulsetech.ru/pulsedrivers.htm

They also produce triggered spark gaps: http://www.pulsetech.ru/3el.htm

[Author]

Posts