[Ivy Matt]

It’s my understanding that the fusion energy gain factor (Q) is what is also known sometimes as “scientific break-even”, and compares an input of electrical energy to an output of fusion energy in the form of kinetic energy of particles or electromagnetic radiation. So, in order to power itself, a fusion reactor running at a Q of 1 would need to convert the fusion energy back to electricity with 100% efficiency, which is impossible. Although Q = 1 would be a big scientific breakthrough, a fusion reactor that generates electricity would have to have a Q of greater than 1 to power itself, let alone to produce surplus electricity. A Q of 20 is about what is needed for a practical tokamak reactor.

Regarding JET’s Q of 0.75, if you check the fusor.net thread Steven Sesselmann linked to, you’ll find Richard Hull’s criticism of JET’s energy accounting in his June 4, 2008 comment. Apparently they counted the energy required to heat the plasma, but not that used to produce the magnetic fields, run the vacuum pumps, etc. The point is that an economical reactor design would need to take these things into account. Not to discourage anyone too much, but I suppose you could compare it to the difference between breaking the sound barrier and producing an economical supersonic airliner.

The p+B11 reaction doesn’t really change the accounting of the output energy, which is still in the form of kinetic energy of particles and electromagnetic radiation. What it does change is the way that output energy could be converted back into electrical energy. Charged particles (p+B11) and neutral particles (D+D, D+T) are converted to electricity using different methods, and the method (direct conversion) for charged particles is expected to be considerably more efficient than the method (steam turbines) for neutral particles. That said, any reactor that uses the D+T or D+D reactions also produces some charged particles as well as electromagnetic radiation, and direct conversion was originally posited as a method to obtain additional electrical energy from such reactions. However, it’s my understanding that in conventional tokamak designs the charged particles are intended to recirculate to keep heating the fusion plasma, which would preclude them being used for direct conversion. As for electromagnetic radiation…I’d love to see a tokamak + “onion” reactor design. That would certainly be interesting.

[Ivy Matt]

Let me see:

*A published hypothesis that can be falsified.
*No apparent contradictions to previous experimental evidence that need to be explained.
*Experimental results reported more-or-less regularly.
*Detailed photographs of pretty much every aspect of the device, updated as changes are made to the design.

What’s not to like? :coolsmile:

[Ivy Matt]

jjohnson wrote: What recourse does our energy industry, in practically every country, have in the event that electric automobiles suddenly go viral and they are sold as fast as factories can increase their production over several years?

In China it is already becoming common for people to plug in their personal/family conveyance for the night. Not the conventional four-door sedan, of course, but rechargeable electric scooters are quite commonplace. I don’t know if any of the electric scooter companies would be particularly interested in investing in fusion, though. I imagine they’ll treat fusion power the same way the ISPs treated IPv6: they’ll use it when they need it. The obvious difference being that IPv6 was in existence, if not widely tested, well before it was needed, whereas we don’t yet have such a guarantee with fusion power. The other obvious difference being that it’s not the scooter companies’ business to supply the electricity for their scooters, although their sales would no doubt be affected in places where power outages were common.

[Ivy Matt]

Well, I hadn’t seen it before. It seems odd to me that, with all the money currently being thrown at the construction of roads, bridges, dams, apartment buildings, and so forth, that even conventional magnetic fusion has had difficulty finding funding in China. Smog is a real environmental problem in the eastern plains, and the sooner China can replace its coal plants with working fusion reactors, the better off a large portion of its population will be.

Nevertheless, if the Chinese are looking at any other options besides the tokamak, I am not aware of it.

[Ivy Matt]

Ivy Matt wrote: Funny that you’re in Korea right now. I’m seriously considering going there for work soon. (No, not to KSTAR. I’m not a scientist.)

Never mind. I’m going to China.

[Ivy Matt]

“Focii” is incorrect in Latin. The singular form of focii would be *focius, which as far as I am aware is not a Latin word. (Oddly enough, the Latin word [em]ſocius[/em] turns up in a Google search for “focius”, but it’s nothing more than the word [em]socius[/em] in antiquated orthography.) The correct Latin plural of focus is focī. Of course, that just covers the nominative case. See here if you want to know how to use the singular and plural forms in all six Latin cases.

As a Latinate English word, however, “focus” has two alternative plural forms: “focuses” and “foci” (usually pronounced “foh-sye”, sometimes “foh-kye”, neither of which is a native Latin pronunciation). I find it interesting that some English-speakers insist on the use of the “correct” (i.e. Latin) plural forms for Latinate English words that end in “-us” and, with somewhat less frequency, “-ex”, “-a”, and “-um” in the nominative case, when it never occurs to them to insist that the correct plural form of “animal” is “animalia”; that the “dense plasma focus” fires, but one should fire the “dense plasma focum”; or that the correct plural form of the word “sauna”, should one ever need to use it, is “saunat”.

Regarding the rest, it is my opinion—reasonably informed by history, I hope—that the only thing that will ever cause any monopoly to be somewhat benevolent is strong competition. As fusion power is a (pre-)nascent field, strong competition is probably inevitable at first anyway. If LPP doesn’t license their design, I expect other companies will find ways to work around their patents, or to produce fusion power using different methods, before long. Once it is proven possible to get net power from fusion, investment money will pour in to fund all sorts of different techniques. The more LPP tries to maintain control over the growing market, the smaller its share of that market will be.

[Ivy Matt]

I’m not a chemist, but my suggestion would be to avoid using anything that reacts with decaborane.

[Ivy Matt]

Yes, it’s probably related to this technology, rather than to Slough’s break-even confinement concept.

[Ivy Matt]

Fingers crossed.

Brian H wrote: Are the monthly updates actually monthly? If so, I missed the July one.

I don’t know, does this count? Not so much an update as a press release, but then there wasn’t really any testing done in July, what with the FF-1 upgrade.

[Ivy Matt]

Great news! 🙂

At 45 kV, or still less?

[Ivy Matt]

After a number of setbacks, the most expensive of which was a ruined $5000 turbopump, Mark Suppes has finally got his experiment up and running, achieving electron confinement in the world’s first amateur Polywell. Check out his pictures. There are a couple very blurry pictures of an air plasma within the copper wire-wrapped teflon Polywell inside the vacuum chamber. I believe the electron gun is the circular thing in the lower center (and slightly to the right) on the far side of the Polywell magrid, and the dark rectangle on the right is the ceramic holder of the tungsten Langmuir probe, which is collecting the data on electron confinement.

[Ivy Matt]

Second quarter update here:

As of 2Q/2011, the WB-8 device has demonstrated excellent plasma confinement properties. EMC2 is conducting high power pulsed experiments on WB-8 to test the Wiffle-Ball plasma scaling law on plasma energy and confinement.

They also added one job: a microwave engineer. Of their $7,855,504 of funding they’ve used $3,382,826, compared with $3,216,826 as of the end of Q1 2011. At that rate it looks like they’ll be able to get to the end of the year without blowing their budget. Perhaps they could share the surplus with LPP. 😉

[Ivy Matt]

Breakable wrote: Their video presentation smells as fake (actors rather than people working) and their equipment looks like props

It looks like a corporate video. Most of the scenes are undoubtedly posed, but the principal “actors” in the video are the company’s principals, unless they managed to find actors with very good likenesses. Clearly the video is telling a story of the design, construction, and testing of the “pumpkin”. The main thing I’m interested in is what exactly the pumpkin is supposed to do and what measurements Star Scientific has collected from it. I won’t deny I’m interested, but I’m not holding my breath in the expectation that they have made significant new advancements in muon-catalyzed fusion.

[Ivy Matt]

What sort of reactor are you looking to build? A DPF, a Farnsworth fusor, or some other type? I would be interested, although I don’t really have any practical experience, but I’m well to the south of you. I don’t know how many forum members are in your area. It seems we’re rather spread out except for the few clustered around New Jersey and New York City.

[Ivy Matt]

Thanks, that makes more sense.

Although I’m beginning to wonder now: is it possible the journalist heard the phrases “25 kiloelectron volts” and “100 kiloelectron volts” mentioned and decided the “electron” part was unnecessary?

[Author]

Posts