Talk-Polywell.org

Heh, if nothing else, that was a useful read to me as it has been over a decade since I saw a legitimate "THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK" message.

[now to continue reading past that page ]

[edit] Well, based on what little was in there, it does not appear there were (are) any Recovery Act paperwork/red-tape problems with the project.

It is obvious the person that wrote that paragraph knows very little about the Polywell, or the company doing the work.

It is obvious the person that wrote that paragraph knows very little about the Polywell, or the company doing the work.

It could be intentionally vague as well. In any case I cant find any new information in that document.
I guess we will have to continue waiting.

For some time I've been wondering about the accounting of the contract money. If you go to Recovery.gov and do a search for Energy/Matter Conversion Corporation, there are two contracts, "N68936-09-C-0125" and "N6893609C0125", each worth exactly $7,855,504.14, for a combined total of $15,711,008 (with 28 cents gone missing). According to the latest quarterly report, EMC2 has spent $3,382,826. I assume the combined total is an error created when someone created a duplicate contract by leaving the dashes out of the contract number for the Q1 2010 report, and there is only one contract with a total value of $7,855,504.14.

According the Inspector General report, however, there is one contract worth $1.3 million. On page 33 the exact amount of the award is given as $1,272,826. That's well below the $7,855,504.14 value of the award given on the Recovery.gov website. I'm not sure what that means.

Sounds like the Navy forked over ~$1.3M in addition to the $7M that the Recovery Act pot provided. ICBW. But if I am right, the project is going even darker than it had been!

KitemanSA wrote:Sounds like the Navy forked over ~$1.3M in addition to the $7M that the Recovery Act pot provided. ICBW. But if I am right, the project is going even darker than it had been!

That is what made sense to me, and it would allow the project to proceed without Recover.gov reporting and oversight. Yes, very dark for us. By the time actual results surface, there may be a fleet of ships in retrofit process.

Yes, the money has got a little confusing of late. But going back to my conversations with my contact at recovery.gov, as well as knowing something of contracting and processes, I think that it was no accident that final report was checked the last go around.
The recovery.gov contact told me that ist was very common that the money posted in the reports was well behind reality. It would not be a surprise that they have used up all the money. In fact, based on original schedule, they shoul dbe about there money wise anyway.
I guess the next thing to look for is an activation of the WB8.1 option. This, as a far as we can tell, based on what is publically avaliable, should be before December. WB8.1 options exercised should mean that DT is a go, and would be fantastic news.

So we would be able to tell from paper trail that that milestone/option was reached/activated?

If the USN doesn't pick up the option for WB8.1 we'll just be wondering what happened. The USN and EMC2, for that matter, are not obligated to tell us anything. Nor do they seem inclined to go out of their way to do so.

In that case, I'd predict a re-ignition of the Great FOIA debate. And ladajo might be convinced to proceed with his dormant FOIA and d-amn the torpedos.

OTOH, to paraphrase a much earlier post, 'If the USN does exercise the WB8.1 option, well...

ladajo wrote:Yes, the money has got a little confusing of late. But going back to my conversations with my contact at recovery.gov, as well as knowing something of contracting and processes, I think that it was no accident that final report was checked the last go around.
The recovery.gov contact told me that ist was very common that the money posted in the reports was well behind reality. It would not be a surprise that they have used up all the money. In fact, based on original schedule, they shoul dbe about there money wise anyway.

But, Park said in the May "Cosmic Log" interview that only 60% of the money had been spent and he thought there should be enough to test to December (with some exercised care). Then unexpectedly, this quarter's report checked off final report and just a small increment in money was added. With excellent confinement results, it is not unreasonable to conclude Navy brass was willing to take the rest of the testing out of the public immediate eye by internally funding (all?) remaining testing and development(?). It is not unreasonable speculation is it?

KitemanSA wrote:Sounds like the Navy forked over ~$1.3M in addition to the $7M that the Recovery Act pot provided. ICBW. But if I am right, the project is going even darker than it had been!

The IG was looking at Recover Act monies, so I would say it was ~1.3M$ recovery act in addition to the ~7M$ provided by ONR.

It could well be that Park did not speak of colors of money, just money on the table.

If they used up recovery funds, and are now on some flavor of ONR funds, then they can close out recovery reporting. Thus the tick in the box. In my many exchanges with my contact at recovery.gov, the one theme that held true was that the fiscal reporting was behind due to inherent delays in the entire system of processing. DOD => vendor ==> DOD ==> recovery reports. I had at one point good visibility on monthly DOD billings, but that window has since closed.

We shall see on the next cycle if they file for recovery or not.

So, the project hasn't gone dark, it's gone grey

I think that has been the case more or less all along.

When will we see a Nature article?

Not this year.