Talk-Polywell.org

I don't know how much energy the first reaction consumes. It does have the minor advantage of acting as a moderator. The second reaction does provide a lot of output energy. I wonder, if they are using the energy released from the Li6 Tritium breeding to push the Tokamak over the edge of being a net...

Well the DT reaction produces a 17 Mev really fast neutron.

n (fast) + Li7 -> H3 + He4 + n (slow) (endothermic)

n (slow) +Li6 -> H3 + He4 + 4.8 MeV (exothermic)

Providing 2 Tritium for each fast input neutron assuming no losses.

1.05... Maybe... Too soon to tell.

If things look good, people will find out. Congress would have a lot of explaining to do if they don't fund this. At this point, I'm confident that Polywell's will work. The question is will it be economical. As for ITER, it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that Tokamaks will never be economically viab...

That's a much better way of phrasing it...

With the number of posts by RNebel lately. Can it be assumed that he is mostly done with everything except waiting for the peer review committee to issue it's report?

Just asking a question, Is the arcing related in any way to actual fusion events? Since, 1) The fusion events should all occur at the very center of the polywell. 2) The density of ions may be higher near the center of the polywell. 3) Any alphas produced by fusion would have plenty of kinetic energ...

Trying to get my head around this. The fusion power may scale as R^7. The loss gain is a real unknown, but would increase as R goes up. If loss gain goes up slower than fusion power, then at a certain point, a power producing machine may be possible... Part of the problem is that the ability to cool...

Again...

The reporting in and of itself is nuanced. He can't come out and say it until the official report is out.

But what he didn't say was more important than what he did say.

He never said "Don't get your hopes up"

So, I can feel free to get my hopes up.

OK, So, the bottom line is that if B^4R^3 applies, then at a certain size machine, brem losses will become very small.

If there is no scaling at all, then this is all probably game over.

If there is some scaling but not B^4R^3, then we may just need to goto larger machines.

I'm going to assume that the overwhelming majority of brem loses are experienced by electrons since they have a much higher acceleration. Is most of the electron acceleration due to travelling through a potential gradient? Would the potential gradient be lower for a bigger machine? Or at least sprea...

Does the same reasoning apply when going from DD to pB11 as from DT to DD?

Or is the difference their more major?

x^7 is the alleged scaling factor and breakeven for DD may occur at 2 meters.

DT is a much much easier fuel. And the ITER guys can barely do that.

The ratio of power output for 2 meters and 1 meter is 128:1

I'm wondering if DT could make up that difference.

I know that the big hype is pB11 or possibly DD, but does anybody know if WB-7 was tested with DT?

Would it be possible to have net power production, (theoretical), with a WB-7 size machine if you were using DT?

Well, this may be topic drift... But I don't care. If the cost of electric generation goes through the floor, I don't see that as the death of internal combustion engines. The beauty of hydrocarbon fuels are that they are a dense, convienient storage medium for energy. They are easy to 1) Pump 2) Bu...

That's good to hear... So the way I'm understanding this is that essentially anybody who stands to lose from this technology spreading can't stop it. The only thing that can stop it from spreading right now, is one of the following. 1) It doesn't work from a physics standpoint. or 2) It can't be mad...