[Rezwan]

How is it classifiable as “aneutronic fusion”?

Yes, I see the issue. This should be in the “Noise” forums as an unlikely energy idea and possible “Pons-Fleischman Award winner”. Note we diplomatically say for those forums that we don’t dismiss the ideas out of hand (after all, on one level it would be nice if we could all pack up and go home to easy energy), but it’s not ours to validate. They need to do as Jamesr says.

Jamesr – do you mean “LPP”? Also – what people post in the forums is their own opinion, although it does reflect on the community. I was wondering how to – or if to -make a post about this in the website. Don’t know what category to put it under. People do ask about cold fusion and need to see the difference between that and thermonuclear variety. We do have a post up there somewhere.

[post duly moved from “aneutronic” to noise]

[Rezwan]

Another link to the rossi story. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-italian-scientists-cold-fusion-video.html Thanks Bengt

[Rezwan]

Francisl wrote: This is a good site: All About Circuits

This is great. Finally found a place to put it on the website (under “Electricity“).

Now, does anyone perchance remember that other great link to a site about everything you needed to know to understand fusion physics? I can’t seem to locate it in my overstuffed “content to add” folder. Hoping someone out there knows the post/keyword to find it.

Thanks!

[Rezwan]

Thanks for asking. The answer is NO. The cap is still there. You can trade, though.

I just added a note to the forum description to explain how.

This post shall be deleted by tomorrow.

[Rezwan]

Roger that, Jamesr.

MTd2, that’s an older paper of theirs about MTF. This 2009 paper was designed to spell out the parameter space. I suppose it packages the info differently.

[Rezwan]

iantresman wrote: I can recommend my own site, Plasma-Universe.com which includes articles on various aspects of the Plasma Universe, and includes a page on 3rd party resources (in the side menu). Where possibles, articles try to use references and citations that are available online.

Ian, your 2011 calendar is brilliant. And nice to see that DPF is Mr. June!

[Rezwan]

opensource wrote: I finally tracked that book down, actually. It is not out of copyright or in the public domain (however, there are some less popular avenues for distributing information on the web :)… In this case, Oxford University Press holds the copyright, and I doubt they will give you permission (you could always ask, though).

We could, indeed, ask. Tell everyone you know to bombard Amazon with requests to get this on kindle/otherwise downloadable.

Or retweet on twitter:

RT Click http://tinyurl.com/23w3k5e to request Amazon make “Cosmological Electrodynamics” by Alfven & CGF available on Kindle

[Rezwan]

Eric’s recommendation is Cosmological Hydrodynamics by Alfven.

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote: Flying the US flag 24/7 is legal, provided that its lit. I’d presume that to mean lit up as if on display.

lol.

Warwick, also lol. We’ve had a discussion about FFS before. Also FF as “flying…” I can’t find it to link to it. Of course, it’s the first thing some people notice about the name. Makes them laugh, but it also makes it memorable. I agree it conveys a certain appropriate exasperation with status quo.

Brian, glad you worked that out. Now I can’t figure out why urls aren’t automatically forming links. The settings are all correct on the back end.

I’ll be upgrading the site soon, so that might fix some things. Or create chaos.

[Rezwan]

In fact, my mantra is not to cut ITER/fusion funding, but to come up with a proposal that covers all the alternatives we want to see funded. The dream fusion budget. Would the EU paradoxically fund a bigger fusion budget?

The argument would be that funding a broader range of alternatives would increase the odds for a “pleasant physics surprise” – something that can lead to a reactor that comes online sooner than ITER and also have an end cost/size/complexity less than ITER (smaller, more attractive power plants, etc.)

Unfortunately, at this point, the alternatives are even more speculative than ITER (most because we simply don’t have enough data). So this is a gamble. What you can win: hedging the bets will lead to a better solution, in less time. Once that happens, you can retire ITER. We’ll save money and the world will have fusion sooner.

What you can lose: Perhaps fusion is really flipping difficult, and none of these alternatives will work. Perhaps they will work, but not that well. Perhaps ITER is as good as it gets. If so, hopefully it has its own breakthroughs and cost reducing ideas down the line. The NIF crew certainly has come up with elegant size reductions for LIFE. ITER is working on some mega problems. These are some amazing scientists. And will NIF work? Moses is confident, but also says, “it will either work, or we’ll learn some interesting physics”.

Unfortunately, that’s the bottom line with any fusion approach. It will either work, or we’ll learn some interesting physics. ITER, NIF, LPPX. The choice here is, do we commit to a parallel course of discovery, or to a linear course?

Parallel: We spend on a diverse array of approaches. many of which won’t work and which will raise the cry that we are wasting money on speculation. NIF and ITER are part of this.

Linear, starting with NIF & ITER: We keep the focus on NIF & ITER in the hopes that they show some success that fusion is at least achievable. Their success will open up funding for alternative approaches and improvements down the line. But you’ve wasted a lot of scientists lives who wanted to try other fusion approaches and who might have done something amazing in the interim.

Linear, starting with alternatives: The course some of you are suggesting is to cut ITER and just fund alternatives. It could work. But it could backfire. We can’t guarantee LPPX will succeed, or any other alternatives. If we badmouth the ITER fusion flagship and then promote something that turns out not to work, it further discredits fusion. And now you’ve got a reduced fusion budget overall, since you axed ITER. Because it runs the risk of hurting fusion, I’m against it.

It’s all about timing.

I support the parallel approach. The logic of hedging your bets. More jobs for physicsist : ) More incentive for students to study science. More funding for fusion, explicitly including alternatives, especially LPPX! The sooner, the better.

And don’t cut off any options until you have the sure thing, proven, in your hand. Now is not the time to “down select.”

[Rezwan]

ITER hasn’t failed here. Per the article, their finance plan was rejected for the 2010 budget and,

“The commission will put forward a proposal for the budgetary resolution of Iter next year.”

I feel for them. That’s a lot of scientists whose work also has value. There are many parts to the whole of ITER and interesting experiments taking place that have crossover value. If you think cutting a few university programs is bad for the fusion endeavor, cutting ITER and giving half that money to debt will pretty much mean reducing the number of fusion scientists by half. So now you have an even smaller pool of minds working on fusion. That goes in the wrong direction.

Before you give away half of the fusion budget “windfall” from ITER cancellation to debt, get half the defense budget. AFTER you successfully negotiate with the Defense military-industry, come for energy research money. Alternatively, increase energy research funding over all, and watch the need for defense shrink.

Yes, if LPPX works out, then all this budget struggle is moot and we can all relax. But unless and until it’s proven conclusively to work, we live in a world of uncertain fusion outcomes. And for that world, fusion is woefully underfunded, as are other energy innovations.

Come to think of it, LPPX is underfunded. I feel empathy with ITER. LPPX is just at a smaller scale. At any scale, funding for fusion is hard to procure.

I wish this world was more supportive of fusion research in any form and would table all discussion of budget cuts until AFTER the amazing fusion solution is developed.

Discussion of expanding to bring more alternatives online and funding a broader base of basic plasma physics research is more constructive.

[Rezwan]

Some technical difficulties, but we should have the streamable version up next week.

[Rezwan]

For now, here is a picture of those plates before a lot of stuff was piled on top of them. Also before the triggers are attached.

Here you see the electrodes from underneath the machine, before the vacuum chamber is put over it.

I need to fill in the captions for the rest of the slide show to draw attention to how the cathodes are in this separate piece, and then you stick in the hat insulator (here, then add gasket), and then attach the result onto the machine, threading the hanging anode through the piece. Et voila!

But don’t forget, on the other side of that is the plates to which these are fixed. Now to show how the capacitors connect to the switches and then to the plates. Actually, this image might give you a sense of that.

Is it starting to get clear?

[Rezwan]

ronh1066 wrote: I thought having 12 capacitor banks ment that one was connected to each cathode,

違います

(“chigaimasu” aka “it’s different” or “not so” in Japanese).

How exactly is the power from the capacitors brought to the cathode?

Glad you asked!

The short answer is the twelve capacitors discharge onto the plates which deliver the surge to the electrodes. I’ll get a picture of the plates up soon.

I’m working on a detailed schematic/animation/slide show to put all the pieces together to show the electricity delivery system into the core electrodes. This system is also known the “driver” and is comprised of the power supply, the trigger system, the capacitors, switches and plates. All the pieces of the driver need to be precisely coordinated to dump that charge simultaneously into the electrodes via the plates.

This piece I’m working on will also explain what happens during a “prefire” and where the breakdowns occurred with the trigger system and the switches (resolved) and are now occurring with the spark plugs. It’ll be cool because you’ll see the variables and get a better sense of design possibilities.

The other piece we need is something to show a graph of the readout of a pinch on the oscilloscope – and what that corresponds to in terms of electrical flow across the electrodes.

The animations we have up so far just show what happens when the ideal pulse of electricity has been delivered into the electrodes. So we see that lovely sheath.

[Rezwan]

We’re always looking for volunteers, and would love it if people wanted to come down here and do stuff. This would be most effective if people could come here in person. Unfortunately so far, people who want to help out are not in this area. Those who can help online have done so. What’s required is physical presence and commitment.

I had contacted Rutgers a while ago about interns and got the following answers to some questions:

What is a respectable wage to give the student? $10-25.00 per hour depending on the major.
How is this handled in taxes? You will have to check with your accountant
Would we have to deduct taxes from their wages, have them fill out a W-4 and so forth? You will have to check with your accountant

I also got a few questions from them, such as, where will the intern work, (a dedicated office space?) and what about transport issues, and how does this work with their needs. Here they helpfully attached the “Starting an Internship Program” guide I’ve attached. A quote from it:

An internship is any carefully monitored work or service experience in which a student has intentional learning goals and reflects actively on what she or he is learning throughout the experience.

“Carefully monitored” was the red flag for me. Legal forms (“hold harmless” agreements) another red flag. Which underscores the idea that volunteers and interns require administration, coordination, supervision and you need to be pretty organized to be able to start using them. There’s a tipping point, I think, after which volunteers and interns are easy to incorporate into the endeavor.

“Get interns” has been on my to do list for some time, but it requires a bit more thoughtful consideration and setup and thus keeps slipping down behind other things. I should just post something simple, offering no compensation, and see if I get any nibbles and then take it from there.

I did have a CUNY professor express interest in internships – of course those students would have quite a commute.

So, wishlist: More resources to enable interns and volunteers; the development of a cool, memorable, effective, fun, worthwhile, mutually beneficial volunteer and internship program, and some fabulous people signing up! And more appreciation that this isn’t “free”.

Attached files

Starting An Internship Program – 5th Edition.pdf (156 B) 

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