Talk-Polywell.org

Tom:

All deuterium contains traces of Tritium due to nuclear testing.

Art: 2. The general rule of thumb on ion collisions is that ion collisions in the core add angular momentum to the ions (thermalization) while collisions in the edge remove angular momentum. The reasons edge collisions remove angular momentum is that as the ions reach their radial turning point, the...

Let me see if I can summarize this. The basic claim is that the electric potentials will take on the shape of the magnetic field structure. This will give electrostatic potentials that are defocusing for the ions and they add angular momentum to the ions with each pass (i.e. we have an ion optics pr...

Art: OK. I'm on the same page with you. Actually, I believe that Tom Dolan brought this up some time ago. I don't have access to Sci-Search but I believe that Tom wrote a short comment about this topic in response to the Fusion Technology paper (and I think that either Bussard or Krall might have in...

First of all, I don't think it is correct to assume that the electrostatic field will collapse into a Debye sheath at the edge. That's an l.t.e. argument applied to a non-l.t.e. plasma. The shape of the potential well depends on the detailed balance of the electrons and the ions in the core. That's ...

A few comments: When we came into this project we took the attitude that we didn’t believe anything that was in the data. There are a number of reasons for that. First of all, we were tasked to find out if the WB-6 data was real so we had to be skeptical. Secondly, Dr. Bussard had had a lot of diffi...

Wiffleball data: When I first got on board with EMC2 I looked through the files for data from the WB-2 and the WB-3. I found some data sheets, but they weren't very helpful. From discussions I had with Dr. Bussard, I believe that the way he surmised the existence of the wiffleball was to look at the...

pstudier:

Power densities scale like Beta**2*B**4 (just like all magnetic confinement machines) so if you can achieve high Beta, then you can get high power density. Whether you can achieve breakeven depends on how the power input scales.

jmc: If we have a problem with low energy electrons choking the cusp, then we'll get rid of them. If they are sitting in the cusp throat then they are at low energy so they aren't doing you any good anyway. You guys are making a bunch of "straw man" arguments where you set up a straw man and then kn...

kcdodd: It's actually an interesting question. All of these systems assume particle flowthrough. Generally, Polywells try to operate at higher densities (than other magnetic confinement machines) so the confinement time constraints aren't as stringent as they are in most magnetic confinement devices...

Hanelyp:

It depends on where you are. For the WB-6 we estimate that it is ~ 7cm. external to the coils (which is where it counts).

The thing which has been left out of the discussion in this thread is the role that electron inertia plays in maintaining these discharges. If you were to turn off the electrostatic drive or you had electrons with an infinite confinement time, then potentials would equilibrate along flux surfaces as...

Perhaps I am misunderstanding this discussion, but there are electrostatic fields along the cusp lines. We've measured them with emissive probes. If they weren't there, I don't see how the electrons would enter the device.

Just a couple of points of clarification: 1. There were some questions about how one knows that you have "wiffleball" confinement as opposed to "mirrorlike" confinement. The answer is that there are about 3 orders of magnitude difference in the confinement times between the two modes. That kind of d...

rcain

The Wiffle-ball was demonstrated on the WB-2 over 10 years ago. It's not so much that wiffle-ball confinement is so great but that mirror confinement in a cusp is so awful.