Heavy Ion Fusion At the National Labs

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

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MSimon
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Heavy Ion Fusion At the National Labs

Post by MSimon »

Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

Very cool! Now how exactly does this work? I am not sure I fully understand how they get fusion. Is there going to be a target of deuterium for the beam to hit?

RobL
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Post by RobL »

A bigger explanation and links for heavy ion fusion.
viewtopic.php?t=3603

In short appears to require no breakthroughs, very high gains, probably lower build costs than ITER, efficient drivers, and high conversion efficiencies but only works in huge sizes (~100 GW) using a 5-10km long beam linear accelerator and some beam conditioning equipment to drive 10-20 target chambers.

Difficult to do useful small scale experiments due to driver energy required for ignition, and once you have the driver you have most of a commercial fusion plant.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

Thanks for the info Rob, so how does the new research fit into that? I am assuming that their system would be more compact, making the idea potentially more practical?

Joseph Chikva
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Post by Joseph Chikva »

RobL wrote:probably lower build costs than ITER,...
much higher
5-10km long beam linear accelerator
induction about 40kA accelerators have several meters long but focusing section has hundreds meters as for focusing they should propagate cesium beam through the plasma column.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

Joseph, if I understand the article correctly, it looks like they solved the problem and the whole system is now much more compact.

Joseph Chikva
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Post by Joseph Chikva »

Skipjack wrote:Joseph, if I understand the article correctly, it looks like they solved the problem and the whole system is now much more compact.
I did not read article but know some people of Princeton Lab. They are from Russia.
As I know one small scale experiment of propagation of heavy ions through plasma column has been done at this moment. Nothing more. But theoretical research is financed by DOE.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

Joseph, they are using Lithium though, not cesium.

Joseph Chikva
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Post by Joseph Chikva »

Skipjack wrote:Joseph, they are using Lithium though, not cesium.
Lithium is not heavy ion. And Light Ions Fusion Program was canceled.
Welcome to the HIFS News Website
HIFS News provides brief reports and pictures of recent highlights in heavy-ion inertial fusion-energy science and technology. We have formed a Virtual National Laboratory, VNL, to more efficiently pursue heavy-ion fusion driver development.
LBNL has been working with two types of surface
ionization sources, contact ionizer and aluminosilicate. In
a contact ionizer, alkali atoms are continuously fed to a
heated surface, which ionizes the atoms. This type of
source routinely produces low emittance and highly
uniform beams. It also has the potential for a long
lifetime source, but since alkali metal vapor deposits can
deteriorate the high voltage property of accelerator
components, it is important to minimize the cesium
flow. In a recent experiment [3], the Cs’ beam current
from a 2-cm diameter contact ionizer was measured to be
> 15-mA/cm’ at 1145°C. In addition, the rate of the
cesium neutral current evaporation was measured to be
1.7x1014/cm2/s or equivalently 0.14 mg/cm2ihr.

Roger
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Post by Roger »

lithium 6 was Dr Bussards choice of fusion fuel for his eagle class interplanetary spacecraft.

IIRC 20kev worth of alphas. Though isnt the coloumb barrirer trebeled?
I like the p-B11 resonance peak at 50 KV acceleration. In2 years we'll know.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

NDCX-II is an induction accelerator that can handle compact pulses of some 200 billion positively charged lithium ions, shaping each pulse as it is accelerated, and making sure that almost all the ions are delivered to the target within a nanosecond.

Joseph Chikva
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Post by Joseph Chikva »

Skipjack wrote:
NDCX-II is an induction accelerator that can handle compact pulses of some 200 billion positively charged lithium ions, shaping each pulse as it is accelerated, and making sure that almost all the ions are delivered to the target within a nanosecond.
That's mistake. Lithium beam driven experiment called "Light Ions Fusion" and was canceled due to some problems as I know. Not only read and reread the same article but also try to get information from other sources too.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/40998
NDCX-II will accelerate a beam of 30–50 nC of Li+ ions to 1.5–4 MeV and compress it into a pulse around 1 ns long.
http://hifweb.lbl.gov/public/BeamHEDP2010/NDCX-II.html
Ion species: Li+
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/51x361vn
Li+ ions
How many do you want?

Joseph Chikva
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Post by Joseph Chikva »

Skipjack wrote:http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/40998
NDCX-II will accelerate a beam of 30–50 nC of Li+ ions to 1.5–4 MeV and compress it into a pulse around 1 ns long.
http://hifweb.lbl.gov/public/BeamHEDP2010/NDCX-II.html
Ion species: Li+
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/51x361vn
Li+ ions
How many do you want?
Sorry, it's my mistake as I thought that we told about what kind of ions will be used in final reactor while NDCX-II is a "Neutralized Drift Compression eXperiment" and is only intermediate stage for checking viability of proposed focusing principle. And any type of ions is usable for this purpose. I think they simply used an existing ions source in experiment. But common principle is to use alkali metals +1 ions for acceleration and Cesium will be used in real experiment if all preliminary studies will be successful. As Z=3 for Lithium and that is "light", while for Cs Z=55 and that is quite "heavy".
Do we not speak about "heavy ions fusion"?

polyill
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Post by polyill »

I could not resist.


Joseph Joseph (1938)
Music & Words by Casman/Cahn/Chaplin

Oh, Joseph! Joseph! Won't you make your mind up
It's time i knew just how I stand with you
My heart's no clock that I can stop and wind up
Each time we make up after being through.

So listen Joseph! Joseph! time is fleeting
And here and there my hair is turning grey
My mother has a fear, wedding bells i'll never hear
Joseph, Joseph, won't you name the day

Oh, Josef! Josef! Meine Kraft nimmst du mir
Ich sitz noch immer da und warte auf dich
Ich träume jede nacht nur von dir
Oh, Josef! Ich krepier noch an dir

A nice remake of it by Fatima Spar

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