[Francisl]

Would it be practical to use a high performance cloud computing platform like https://aws.amazon.com/hpc/?

[Francisl]

I am interested in the fusion simulations. Can your software be set up to use distributed computing like Boinc? I have donated computer time to several projects for a few years.
The advantage is that you don’t have to invest in hardware that becomes obsolete quickly. You also interest a lot of people in your project because members and teams are competitive.

[Francisl]

The vacuum chamber is still having sealing problems. Is it time to think about a gas blanket?

[Francisl]

“Inventing power for the future.”

Inventing implies risk and reward. Future means the rewards won’t come right away. The whole concept implies creating new technology and unexpected benefits.

[Francisl]

Tungsten does oxidize in air and humidity but it happens well above room temperatures according to these links:
Page 43, page 50 and Wikipedia links.
It should be possible to treat the tungsten in an external chamber at elevated temperatures and then cool it to room temperature before removing it from the chamber. Then assembly can proceed as normal with very little oxidation occurring. The microwave treatment of the assembled dpf can remove surface oxides and moisture from the parts.
Tungsten is a very complex material. The brittleness of the metal changes greatly depending on so many factors including temperature treatments and inclusions of nitrogen, carbon and oxygen in the sintered metal during manufacturing and machining. See this link: Physical properties
It would be good to test any treatments on samples of the leftover tungsten from the machining to shorten the new electrode.

[Francisl]

Is it possible to add a topics viewed counter or slider? It was a good tool on the old website to judge how much interest there was in particular topics. The counter or slider could replace the voices slider if there isn’t enough room.

[Francisl]

Here is another link for BBCodes. It includes a playground for testing codes. I don’t know if everything is compatible with this site.
https://www.bbcode.org/

[Francisl]

In the Reply To there is a box that says “You can use BBCodes to format your content.” Please post a link to BBCodes for those of us who have not used them before.

[Francisl]

I like the new website. There are 11 buttons at the bottom of a reply page. Can a sample post be created using each of the buttons? They can be a little intimidating because there is no instruction on how some of them should be used. Some explanation of how the Edit function can be used would be nice too.

[Francisl]

At first I was thinking that a modified dpf could act as the ion source to accelerate the plasma to go through the magnet. Then I decided that maybe a railgun would be cheaper and easier to make. The power supply would not be as expensive as for a dpf because the rise time is not as critical. Tabletop systems could be made in university labs to test the concepts. The small dpf machines at university physics labs that are used to train fusion scientists would be ideal for testing.

[Francisl]

I admit the system is unorthodox and may not work. Can we divide it into components that collaborators could research and advise on?
Railgun systems have been built with big power supplies to handle heavy payloads. The amount of fuel for a dpf would be a light load and could use a much smaller railgun machine. There is a big difference between the mass of fuel and metal contaminants. That could reduce the size of the separation magnets. If preionization of the dpf chamber is still needed it would be handled in a different way. The vaporization of the dpf electrodes is a major unknown because the plasma sheath may not outrun the heavy electrode ions. The operators of plasma railguns could comment on how much metal is present in their plasmas.

[Francisl]

[Francisl]

Why can’t there be some kind of ventilation/purification system that maintains the purity level of the plasma? The Russian GIT-21 device mentioned from the Prague conference report was said to have puffed in fresh plasma between its electrodes before firing – so why can’t FF-1 do that too? Fresh plasma is obviously going to be of higher purity than plasma that’s sitting around absorbing more evaporated electrode material.

I like your idea. Can we expand on it? The vaporized electrode ions are much heavier than the deuterium ions. If the fresh plasma is entering the chamber at the same speed as the plasma sheath in the axial phase, then maybe the heavy ions can be left behind because they can’t accelerate as fast as the deuterium ions. Another benefit is the insulator may be exposed to less stress for a shorter time.

[Francisl]

Check the link above. There has been a lot of discussion about this topic.

[Francisl]

Laser cleaning may be a practical alternative because there is such a difference between boron and beryllium.

[Author]

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