Talk-Polywell.org

Any cross section besides hard sphere (which is obviously inapplicable to coulomb collisions) reduces with speed, because the particles aren't near each other long enough to change course much. I think it very unlikely that a 3MV alpha is going to make much difference compared with all the failed at...

Google "gombosi" "kinetic description of shocks" and check the first result (it should be a Google Books sample). VERY interesting graph. The upshot is that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to an individual component of a system unless it's in thermodynamic equilibrium. You have to tak...

MSimon wrote: It is looking more and more like Boron is a magic material.

Quintessential, even? The legendary Fifth Element...


Supposedly the MBDA Meteor's ramrocket uses boron-loaded solid propellant to triple the specific impulse...

...yeah, yeah. Noise, not signal...

Well, I haven't managed to find out anything yet about sputter yields for energies this high, but I did find out that there will be a few 280 keV neutrons per million alpha impacts, due to formation of 14N (nitrogen) from 11B... Also, penetration depth should be less than 1/10 of a mm, if my calcula...

Non-confinement is part of it, for sure. The other part is that (if I'm not mistaken) Dr. B's bremsstrahlung calculations require a non-Maxwellian plasma in a particular configuration, and therefore the radiation loss for p-11B could be unacceptable if he was wrong about the annealing effect. You ca...

If I'm not mistaken, Gauss' Law means that nothing inside the Magrid sees it. Without the charged plasma, the entire space inside would be at the potential of the grid, so the internal electric field resulting from the grid charge is zero. Electrons outside it are accelerated in, and kept there by t...

You clump the parameters, including collision cross section. They don't behave like real particles, but hopefully the aggregate behaves like the real system.

Tracking super-particles is just one of many tricks that's easier than solving Boltzmann's Equation...

I was referring to his idea regarding adding non-reactant bulk in order to increase the pressure. I'm not disputing that POPS is a good thing; I just don't think loading up the core with stuff that won't fuse is going to help the concept. Am I wrong? I really should read the papers, but it's nearly ...

POPS core pressure should increase by using Boron based fuel with its higher mass than the usual lighter deuterium or tritium systems. Possibly some other non reactant material could be added to further increase fuel mass, allowing even higher core pressures. I don't think that does any good. The r...

That isn't the problem. The ions all start out in the ECR region at the same distance from the core, which means that the low-speed edge region for both particle potential maps is the same, at least in the ideal case. However, the energy of the borons at (or near) the core is five times that of the ...

I'm all for brainstorming - two of my three undergraduate design group projects were abject failures (well, one was; the other didn't get built, thank goodness) because we rejected all the ideas except the 'right' one during the brainstorming phase. For the project that never got built, the best way...

Toroidal configuration: EDIT: Now that I think about it, I think Gauss' Law applies strictly. You wouldn't have any way to prevent ions from hitting the inner wall. Ignoring the effect of the chamber walls, the electric field near the inner wall would be weaker due to the effect of electrons on the...

The trouble with a tokamak configuration is that the centre of charge for the electron distribution is outside the confinement area (ie: in the hole in the middle of the donut). ... Yes the center of charge would be outside the containment volume, but the electric field generated by the electron ri...

The trouble with a tokamak configuration is that the centre of charge for the electron distribution is outside the confinement area (ie: in the hole in the middle of the donut). There could be some sort of equilibrium with ions in a generally tighter ring than the electrons but with the distribution...

MSimon wrote: Nice getting all the technical details out in the open. I found your explanation quite tasty.

Thanks!

I sure hope I haven't misinterpreted anything...

As for POPS, I haven't had time to read up on it yet. It's probably significantly more complicated...