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Well, it could be lighter… was the artist trying for a 50’s magazine ad look?

The bi-colored toroid seems a bit confusing…

ikanreed: that represents the plasmoid.

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Rezwan wrote: Forgot to add link to my writeup of the event: https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/icc_recap_and_bill_gates_ted_talk_review/

Admit it: the axial coil is a clever attempt to snag some “toroidally confined plasma” funding 🙂

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Duke Leto wrote: I return to my eternal slumber!

Wake me when something changes…

Things have changed. Records set, even.

But if the endgame is what you are waiting for then I believe LPP has said that it will announce it when they start using boron in tests.

And then they’re likely to go quiet in advance of publication of results.

Hopefully, those will be successful results 🙂

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Duke Leto wrote: Dumb question:

Has LPPX now achieved Proof of Concept?

Which concept? 🙂

More seriously…

Each particular milestone reached represents further evidence in favor of the concepts behind FF but, as I understand it, the goal for LPPX-1 is to demonstrate the scientific feasibility of boron fusion as a power source.

That would move it from the “wholly theoretical” stage to the point where building an actual generator really would be “just a matter of engineering.”

Status? Seems to be a case of so far, so good. They are making definite progress and are setting records as they do so.

But they have a ways to go yet in order to reach their particular goal.

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asymmetric_implosion wrote:

asymmetric_implosion: The 500kV pinch voltage does not relate to the energy of the x-rays. The x-ray energy peak from bremsstrahlung is a function of electron temperature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bremsstrahlung_power2.svg ). If the electrons are at ~150keV then the bremsstrahlung peak will be around a quarter of this – so around 30-40keV.

Brems in the plasma might agree with a thermal spectrum if the electrons remain confined in the plasmoid but brems from the electron beam will not obey a thermal spectrum. The run away electron beam that impacts the anode is much higher energy.

Per Lerner-haklase: In an all-up FF pB11 device the electron beam doesn’t make it out of the plasmoid. Instead the electron beam contributes to further heating of the plasmoid and thus an increased fusion rate.

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Francisl wrote: Could a small onion type device be constructed now and placed close to the DPF to catch some x-rays to test the concept and do some preliminary engineering?

Well, it depends on what you want to test and what LPP could afford to spare in terms of time, effort and money.

But just showing that x-rays hitting carefully arranged layers of metal foil results in a certain amount electrical power would be nothing remarkable. The photoelectric effect is not all that mysterious… except, perhaps, when people confuse it with the relatively inefficient photovoltaic effect 🙂

If you would want to test an assembly more akin to what would go into an actual “onion” in a functional generator… then that will take time, effort and money that should instead be going to proving pB11 fusion.

First things first: proving the theory.

The “onion” will no doubt hold its own engineering surprises along the way but it’s not on the same level or the same scale as the reach for aneutronic fusion.

Now, if someone would want to build and donate a test panel of “onion” structure to LPP then perhaps something could be done that way?

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asymmetric_implosion wrote: I hope the photovoltaics work as described. Is there test data to support the 80% efficiency or are these theoretical calculations?

The FF onion uses the photoelectric effect, not the photovoltaic effect. Although the effects are related, and it’s an error that I’ve made myself in referring to FF, the photoelectric effect is different from the photovoltaic effect.

In simple terms, the photovoltaic effect encourages conduction of electrons between different bands in an atomic structure while the photoelectric effect knocks electrons loose from the surface of a material. Higher energy photons means more efficient transfer.

The effect is well understood but no one has needed to harvest x-rays for power before… that is, before FF 🙂

asymmetric_implosion wrote: If they do work why aren’t they deployed on every nuclear power plant? Tons of gamma rays are produced and could be converted to useful electrons.

Why did you switch up to gamma rays? That’s not something an FF unit would produce much of.

The FF x-rays are high energy photons but they can be stopped by a few thousand layers of metal foil: the “onion”

The gamma rays that are a copious byproduct of fission reactions are much more penetrating than FF’s x-rays and are thus much, much harder to convert.

And there are currently no commercial or natural x-ray sources worth trying to harvest for energy. Instead, people use electricity to generate x-rays that they need.

And that brings us to one of the FF spinoff techs: use as an efficient, almost self-powering portable x-ray generator. Add a partial “onion” and it becomes self-powering. Great for bridge inspections etc etc etc etc (lots of uses)

asymmetric_implosion wrote: I hadn’t considered using the heat for buildings and such. The loss seems significant but probably better than a turbine. The Russians have some data on this since they used fission plants to heat towns.

I guess the big question is will a power conversion cycle be needed at all?

The FF unit beam conversion is currently estimated to be not quite sufficient to recover the electrical energy needed for the next shot. Thus the “onion.”

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asymmetric_implosion wrote:

a_s;
“probably thermal cycle (same old same old).” Not a watt, unless you count such possible applications as heating nearby buildings with warm air, etc. The ancillary equipment to extract heat and convert it to electricity is not a) present, b) economic, or c) usable with the low-grade (low-temp) output of the FoFu.

As for the photovoltaic “inefficiency”, examine the “onion” design. It has perhaps thousands of layers/stages to extract a very high percentage of the X-ray energy.

And as with Z-pinches, sacrificing wires or metal cylinders or pellets etc. with every shot is, IMO, a complexity bridge way too far for continuous output. Murphy’s power grows exponentially with number of components.

Low temp? I’ve seen numbers of 1000C floating around this site. That is a pretty good temperature for a thermal cycle with modest efficiency (~40%).

errr…. no. That’s way too close to the melting point of beryllium at 1278 °C.

A variety of estimates for cooling systems have them handling temps of ~400 to ~600 some odd °C.

My dream would be for tests to find that the core can run at 700 °C without excessive wear… because that would make spacecraft fusion radiator arrays a lot smaller.

But the temps foreseen are no good for any type of efficient steam turbine.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: I’ve looked at the onion. It will absorb x-rays but how much will turn into useful electrons? That is where the efficiency typically comes in. You can absorb 100% of the sunlight but only about 10% is converted to useful electrons. X-rays may convert more efficiently as they are well above the band gap but you are still limited on efficiency.

Yes, estimates are that we’ll just have to live with about… 80% efficiency. It’s a tough burden to bear but someone has to do it.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: I hope it is greater than 40%. I know heat will be generated by a FoFu power plant so the question is why not use it? Turbines on the 5 MW scale are small and efficient.

Actually, they are inefficient at FF temps and are expensive to boot. The major cost of any current thermal power plant is the turbines and their maintenance.

If FF pans out then it will be cheaper and more efficient to simply add another FF unit than it would be to add and maintain an expensive turbine and all of its auxiliary gear and costs.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: A helium turbine in particular is very compact and efficient.

… and [em]very[/em] expensive.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: It adds more electrons to the grid.

You can get more power quicker and cheaper by adding another FF core.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: Some cooling is going to be required of FoFu-1 so why not put that heat to good use rather than dump it into the air needlessly.

Needlessly? Who would do that? No one here, that’s for sure 🙂

Industry uses vast amounts of heat for a vast number of processes and some processes need cooling as well. Buildings and, indeed, entire communities need heating and cooling.

Locally distributed FF units can provide both heating and cooling (via heat-powered absorption chiller systems.)

Simply substituting FF units for fossil power sources [em]lowers[/em] total industrial and habitation waste heat.

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It should pass the House early next week.

In perspective… out of something rather hideous…

Further unneeded deregulation of the financial industry that will provide about zilch jobs or stimulus on a national scale while enabling levels of fraud not seen since the 1920’s

… can come a chance for something good…

Funding for Focus Fusion Research.

This bill was made to the specific order of lobbyists… and I do not mean the well-meaning branch of the crowdfunding supporters that will inevitably be linked to in replies to my post.

This is not the reform that startup regulation needed but it’s what we’ll have to work with.

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So, if I have the right idea, then what is needed here?

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… then if I got this right…

Attached files

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96 right angles on top of any given cylinder comes out like the attached… is this the general idea?

Attached files

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Only solution I know of is to enclose the offending link (spaces in urls are bad style) in url tags.

Just the tags. As you’ve found out, inline linking doesn’t work either.

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number watch.htm

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number watch.htm

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Breakable wrote: delt0r,
Average coal power plant in US is about 330MW (if I got the comma right), so its certainly not an issue to run a 1.1 MW non-break-even fusion reactor.

… which brings us back to the fact that anyone with access to electrical power can produce neutrons even without using fusion tech.

And the advent of cheaper accelerators and subcritical reactor tech isn’t going to lessen such proliferation risks…

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Breakable wrote: As far as I see, Eric is specifically trying to workaround producing a neutron source. There are concerns of nuclear proliferation once you produce a cheap neutron source.

As I understand it the FF concept does not favor a neutron-steam-turbine setup. One reason is that the small size of the unit is not suited for the thermal output needed to drive efficient turbines. It’s going to be a chore to get 7-8 megawatts of heat out of the core of a 5 MWe pB11 FF unit but that should be doable…

… getting ~15 MWt out of the core of a 5 MWe D-T FF unit is going to be [em]extremely[/em] difficult.

Another showstopper for a neutronic FF unit is neutron activation and embrittlement. People speculate here in the forum as to the extent of the problems that may result from having occasional neutrons that carry only .2% of the pB11 reaction’s fusion energy….

… in D-T fusion the neutrons carry [em]80%[/em] of the reaction energy.

As far as I can tell an FF setup is not suitable for sustained neutronic power production… or even sustained neutron production.

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