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Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2012 8:14 pm
by ladajo
As a side note, Famulus is about to make another leap forward and use his E-gun to drive his well.

http://prometheusfusionperfection.com/

Footnote is also that it seems his foray into 3D printing has paid off to some degree for his Polywell project. I seem to recall some debate on that topic here.

Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2012 10:14 pm
by 93143
Neutronicity:

viewtopic.php?p=10239#10239

Gammas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic ... 1B_reactor

There doesn't seem to be a proper reference for the Wiki claim.

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2012 1:42 am
by hanelyp
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic ... 1B_reactor:
11B + α → 14N + n + 157 keV
Reduced by the relative ease with which fusion alphas escape the wiffleball.
11B + p → 11C + n − 2.8 MeV
Practically zero if annealing works right. There will be practically zero fuel ions with enough energy for this reaction.

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 10:24 pm
by emc3
Great! only need less than 3 month for the WB8 to complete.

Something still get me confused here:
1) Is EMC2 still a NM based company?
2) Why it says here "Number of Employees: 3"? It was around 10 mentioned somewhere in this thread.
3) Besides WBs, any other products can EMC2 sale for "Annual Revenue: $451,669" ?


Dates
Date Signed (mm/dd/yyyy) : 03/29/2012
Effective Date (mm/dd/yyyy) : 03/29/2012
Completion Date (mm/dd/yyyy) : 09/30/2012
Est. Ultimate Completion Date (mm/dd/yyyy) : 03/31/2014

Amounts
Current Total
Action Obligation: $0.00 $7,855,504.14
Base And Exercised Options Value: $0.00 $11,072,329.95
Base And All Options Value: $0.00 $12,310,580.74
Fee Paid for Use of IDV: $0.00

Contractor Information
1202 PARKWAY DR STE A
SANTA FE
NM 875077253

Business Category
Organization Type: CORPORATE NOT TAX EXEMPT
Number of Employees: 3
State of Incorporation: MD
Country of Incorporation: USA
Annual Revenue: $451,669



ladajo wrote:N6893609C0125

Click on "View" to see the Mod itself..

The contract Mod finally posted in FPDS. However, no change in funding (yet).

The WB8 completion date is listed as 9/30/2012
The ultimate (WB8.1?) completion date is 3/31/2014

Hmmm.

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 5:36 pm
by Tom Ligon
I don't know the particulars of EMC2's present employment practices, but for the first 3 years I worked for Dr. Bussard, I was a "contractor" rather than an employee. That's not unusual these days. Contractors don't get benefits, partucularly health insurance. I paid for my own plan out of pocket. Construction companies and other outfits working job to job do this all the time.

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 6:24 pm
by 93143
Well, I actually bothered to do the math after almost four years, and according to my calculations, 1e12 neutrons per second is about one part in 40 million of the neutron yield from a 100 MW D-T reactor.

So it's a bit less than eight orders down - by number. By energy, it's billions of times smaller. More than nine orders of magnitude. Those D-T neutrons are real screamers...

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 10:57 pm
by Tom Ligon
Yeah, but with DD, half the reactions make protons of about the same energy as the neutrons. Don't discount them. The more fanciful DT tokamak schematics I've seen suggest they'd like to do some direct conversion from some of the charged particles those would produce.

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 8:32 pm
by 93143
What has that got to do with radiation shielding?

Correction: Nebel's number was for electrical output. He was probably assuming direct conversion for the p-¹¹B reactor, so you can probably add a factor of two or three to the difference, which puts the number flux almost exactly eight orders down.

Assuming EMC2's calculations hold up, of course...

Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2012 4:13 pm
by ladajo
Dates Amounts

Date Signed (mm/dd/yyyy) : 05/03/2012
Effective Date (mm/dd/yyyy) : 05/03/2012
Completion Date (mm/dd/yyyy) : 10/31/2013
Est. Ultimate Completion Date (mm/dd/yyyy) : 09/10/2014

........................................................Current.............Total
Action Obligation:...........................$0.00................$7,855,504.14
Base And Exercised Options Value:$5,247,611.00....$16,319,940.95
Base And All Options Value:............$5,247,611.00...$17,558,191.74

Products:
Description Of Requirement: Plasma Wiffleball 8.0

N6893609C0125 Click on "view" for Update P00010

I am very happy. But this $5.25 Million plus up also provides no indication yet of exercising options for 8.1 as I can tell.[/url]

Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2012 4:21 pm
by ladajo
and to note also, this is the official posting of the funds indentified for the 18 month project extension as noted in the latest J&A for Sole Source:

J&A

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:22 pm
by WizWom
93143 wrote:Well, I actually bothered to do the math after almost four years, and according to my calculations, 1e12 neutrons per second is about one part in 40 million of the neutron yield from a 100 MW D-T reactor.

So it's a bit less than eight orders down - by number. By energy, it's billions of times smaller. More than nine orders of magnitude. Those D-T neutrons are real screamers...
1e12 n/sec is less than the flux from our 200kW research reactor.
A concrete wall is plenty to attenuate that flux.

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 2:59 pm
by mvanwink5
Ladajo,
The WB8.1 option is only $1.8 million (old numbers carried forward apparently) so $5.4 million is relatively a lot of money. Could they be going for high power density machine to minimize onboard foot print first, then B-11 later? Or perhaps engineering wise the D-D design is quicker to deployment? Why work so hard to debug issues for such small machines when those issues should go away with larger machines? What am I missing here?
Best regards

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 8:26 pm
by Aero
mvanwink5 wrote:Ladajo,
The WB8.1 option is only $1.8 million (old numbers carried forward apparently) so $5.4 million is relatively a lot of money. Could they be going for high power density machine to minimize onboard foot print first, then B-11 later? Or perhaps engineering wise the D-D design is quicker to deployment? Why work so hard to debug issues for such small machines when those issues should go away with larger machines? What am I missing here?
Best regards
I second that general sentiment. There must be a good reason that they've not gone big somewhere along this funding trail. Or have we just not been told about them having gone big. That would quickly suck up the money.

Or are the few things we've been told very much more expensive than first thought? I wonder how far the Navy could stretch the funding and still stay within the announced scope?

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 8:26 pm
by Aero
mvanwink5 wrote:Ladajo,
The WB8.1 option is only $1.8 million (old numbers carried forward apparently) so $5.4 million is relatively a lot of money. Could they be going for high power density machine to minimize onboard foot print first, then B-11 later? Or perhaps engineering wise the D-D design is quicker to deployment? Why work so hard to debug issues for such small machines when those issues should go away with larger machines? What am I missing here?
Best regards
I second that general sentiment. There must be a good reason that they've not gone big somewhere along this funding trail. Or have we just not been told about them having gone big? That would quickly suck up the money.

Or are the few things we've been told very much more expensive than first thought? I wonder how far the Navy could stretch the funding and still stay within the announced scope? Wasn't there a design of a WB-9 somewhere within the scope of the origional contract?

Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2012 8:06 pm
by ladajo
I think we can not discount the increased overhead. More staff, operating in San Diego, etc.
I also think that in order to be ready for a potential crack at PB&J they need to sort the e-guns and be ready to drive deeper wells. Better to sort this now than later.
I also wonder about the funding level increases and ability to stay low visibility. The added money is a massive jump in funding for this contract. A 50% plus up is not cheese by any means.