R. Nebel at 53rd APS Plasma Physics meeting

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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mvanwink5
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Post by mvanwink5 »

Ladago,
What is the likelihood that the Navy could cloak a fast track WB-100 effort? Would the effort leak out anyway? Just wondering what your experience says?
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

ScottL
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Post by ScottL »

I agree with Ladajo on this subject. All indications are pointing towards real work from here on out and Nebel leaving may be a way to free some funding for different development. Unless we get a quote from Nebel, I wouldn't take his departure as anything more than stepping aside. It is our duty to lobby for further information if we so desire it.

As for this disappearing under the cloak of the Navy, it could, albeit expensive, that may or may not raise eyebrows by auditors. I wouldn't discount it, but I wouldn't bet on them hiding it now.

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

mvanwink5 wrote:Ladago,
What is the likelihood that the Navy could cloak a fast track WB-100 effort? Would the effort leak out anyway? Just wondering what your experience says?
Wink, I don't think they can/could hide it. The money trial would be too obvious. Plus, to do so would take another facility leap, burying Park, the "twins" and the rest of the staff, not to mention the support companies in San Diego that have been providing the kit, which is the reason they moved back out there.

Too many moving parts to pull it off at this point.

The only way I could see them doing it, and maybe being able to bury the trail would be to manufacture a research failure tied to "budget cuts" and "high risk high cost" - think FEL here, and call it a dead animal.
Once done they could go black money and fund GA or someone to carry the ball forward at a remote facility like INEL, Aberdeen or Knox, or some other place with trees, dirt and distance between complexes. Hell, NASA has some great potential like out at Stennis or Marshall. Lots of industrial infrastructure and trees to hide stuff in physically. The old Army Ammo Plant at Stennis, or some of the old test facilities at INEL would be perfect.
I think the weak link is the people. Nowadays it would be pretty hard to hide the expertise shuffle to pull this off. Although I can think of sites and ways to try and hide it, I think the paper and body trial would give it away.

Plus, I see no real benefit to bury it. Can't hide it in the end. It will be obvious that we have it and are fielding it.

We didn't even try to hide building nuclear subs. We just out and told everyone we were doing it. Of course to be fair, we didn't tell them how, but that was more an issue of fuel life cycle control than hot rock, boil water, make steam.

Not likely the navy will bury it. Too hard. Now that said, ONR and the navy is certainly probably going to manage it as close hold as possible until they know what it will do, and that they have a means to effectively manage its deployment if successful. Think about the power struggles that will go on between program offices if this looks like it will play. Think about how embarrassed DOE will be. Not to also mention it will be fatal to DOE's puppy, Naval Reactors and their bloated supporting industry infrastructure. Gahh, the horror!

rjaypeters
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Post by rjaypeters »

Even if the WB-8 tests have been more successful than we hope, the USN will take a lot of time figuring out what to do. ladajo points out the difficulty of taking the program black, let alone the deciding how to proceed with the program as a more regular development.

Does anyone know what Dr. Park is doing? If Dr. Nebel is out, Dr. Park may the indicator to watch.

Edit: We could hire a private detective in San Diego to watch him and report...
"Aqaba! By Land!" T. E. Lawrence

R. Peters

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

rjaypeters wrote: Edit: We could hire a private detective in San Diego to watch him and report...
I reckon that wouldn't win "us" any favors.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

We aren't getting a whole lot of "favors" now!

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

How do you know?

mvanwink5
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Post by mvanwink5 »

Ladajo, thanks for that thought analysis. What are the chances that interest groups could delay fielding the development? Too much worry of being late to the party if it works?
rjaypeters wrote:We could hire a private detective in San Diego to watch him and report...
There are plenty of dedicated lawn chair area 51 watchers that would do it for free, no?

sorry, "j" now corrected.
Last edited by mvanwink5 on Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

Ladajo with a J

rjaypeters
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Post by rjaypeters »

mvanwink5 wrote:There are plenty of dedicated lawn chair area 51 watchers that would do it for free, no?
I'd worry about their conspicuity. A private detective, well, a good one, would be more discreet.:)

I think all we want to know is Dr. Park still going to work at a certain address in San Diego. A good, lazy detective would copy down the license plate numbers of the cars close to a certain location and run them through the relevent data bases. Easy, cheap.

Perhaps our S.D. correspondent will swing by again.
"Aqaba! By Land!" T. E. Lawrence

R. Peters

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

What are the chances that interest groups could delay fielding the development? Too much worry of being late to the party if it works?
In a sense, that may already be happening as ONR and EMC2 are keeping an ever lower profile. This would seem to presage a foodfight over control of the technology.

I believe that if the wrong folks get control, say Naval Reactors, their exsiting culture would so contaminate the development process that it would add significant time and cost to fielding.

Now, if ONR and EMC2 are able to prove it is viable, and then let the cat out of the bag, a potentially over-bureacratic and slow to repsond group like NR could become redundant in short order as other entities ran circles around them fielding it. This is a pre-suppossed aneutronic outcome. In the event it is neutronic in viability, that would change the game and it would be hard to keep DOE and NR out of it. They would have a number of arguments to seize and keep control. Nuclear Proliferation concerns would be at or near the top. A handy dandy high density nuetron source has many uses. Some may argue that any PB&J device could be converted fairly easily to DD, and there we are again at the handy dandy high density neutron source. It will be a circular argument at a minimum.

So, in short, yes. I think Polywell has already suffered some delay as a result of "interest group" management, and will face it again as the control mandate is hammered out. The best we can hope is that EMC2 retains some ability (barring DOE interference) to go direct to market.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

Betruger wrote:How do you know?

What mean "we" paleface?

cuddihy
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Post by cuddihy »

TallDave wrote:I wouldn't try to read between the lines too much, as tempting as it is with our dearth of information. What we've heard in terms of results is that confinement is "excellent." We've also heard funding is tight, so it's not surprising Rick might be off doing something else.

I've been following this since back before WB-7 was funded, and there's never been more reason for optimism. Now is sort of a strange time for premonitions of doom, with Bussard's WB-6 results validated, reports of excellent confinement scaling, and a reactor design (!) in the current contract.

Polywell's certainly still a long shot, but it's getting closer.
what evidence is there of excellent confinement scaling?
Tom.Cuddihy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Faith is the foundation of reason.

CharlesKramer
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Post by CharlesKramer »

ladajo wrote:We can not know for sure why Rick left.
Sure.

But his departure is a very bad sign. A similar situation exists in a publicly traded company with big management turnover, or management leaving for "personal reasons." Departing leaders may prove nothing by itself, but is a well known sign of trouble.

This goes double for Nebel. He worked with Bussard and was his chosen successor. Maybe Nebel lost faith. Maybe the Navy hopes someone else can do better. In the absence of information, speculation fills the gap. But none of the possible explanations are good news -- and if Nebel lost faith, why should anyone else believe?

Bussard made a wild claim at the end of his life -- that he had figured out the Polywell problem, and had done one last test that confirmed he knew the fix. Then that project ended, and he died. Nebel was supposed to prove Bussard's insight was correct.

The history of fusion is an illustration over and over of the cartoon principle "that last step is a doooozy!" Spitzer's "Stellarator" device in the 1950s was planned to have 4 versions: A, B, C and D with "D" being the demo of a practical efficient device for electricity generation.

But Spitzer never got beyond "C" and, metaphorically, neither has any other physics technology.

Unless we are all happily surprised -- which, sure, could happen -- Polywell for now looks like another fusion hope stuck on "C."
================================
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KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

Folks,
I have seen NO evidence that Nebel and Park were EVER "part of the company" as with "big management". AFAIK, Dolly is still management and Nebel and Park (until Nebel retired) have been GOVERNMENT employees on sabatical.
Does anyone have ANY evidence that the two were anything more than hirelings? Does "ownership" apply at all?

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