General Fusion in the news

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

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Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

mvanwink5 wrote: TriAlpha is the best bet at this point in the horse race as they have the team, the results, and the money. All three are needed.
If I remember correctly Binderbauer said that they are still at least 5 years out. They are very ambitious, though, going for PB11. If everything goes well, then JET will beat that. MIT and Tokamak Energy are also planning test reactors that might make break even earlier than TAE.
PPPL too, it seems. Lots of movement in the field right now.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

Claims are one thing; I have no belief in commercial tokamaks (nice science projects). Does anyone see a path to commercial for any tokamak (other than as a career for government funded physicists)?

TriAlpha has enough results with C2U to make me optimistic,
“We have totally mastered this topology,” Binderbauer says. “I can now hold this at will, 100% stable. This thing does not veer at all.”
TriAlpha, stability has been achieved at full scale, massive accomplishment. They are going for temperature now, cash is not an obstacle. More importantly, they are optimistic.

EMC2 has stability and temperature (potential well) separately, but needs to prove the two simultaneously and that is dependent on getting cash.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

ladajo
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by ladajo »

mvanwink5 wrote:Actually, as I understand it, the problem GF has at the moment is achieving adiabatic plasma compression. Plasma stability and progress towards compression has been made, but the idea is that temperature needs to go up with plasma compression and that is not tracking what is needed. That is the last I heard. Plasma is tricky and unpredictable stuff.

TriAlpha is the best bet at this point in the horse race as they have the team, the results, and the money. All three are needed.
mvanwink5 wrote:Claims are one thing; I have no belief in commercial tokamaks (nice science projects). Does anyone see a path to commercial for any tokamak (other than as a career for government funded physicists)?

TriAlpha has enough results with C2U to make me optimistic,
“We have totally mastered this topology,” Binderbauer says. “I can now hold this at will, 100% stable. This thing does not veer at all.”
TriAlpha, stability has been achieved at full scale, massive accomplishment. They are going for temperature now, cash is not an obstacle. More importantly, they are optimistic.
Plasma stability remains an issue as they implement chamber based compression. As I understand, they are still working sims, not real plasma, regarding an integrated test device. Thus they have not yet integrated plasma generation and injection with the acoustic compression (sounds just like EMC2).
Did I miss something?
Delage explained that in the full-scale prototype, twin plasma injectors resembling five-metre-long cones, each attached to opposite ends of a three-metre-diameter sphere, would pulse a few milligrams of hydrogen gas, heat it until it becomes a plasma, and inject it into a vortex of swirling liquid metal.
Globe and Mail GF Reuters Article Mar/May 2015

While they have worked on compact toroid generation (not there yet), they have not injected yet into the actual chamber, nor attempted the compression cycle. This has all been sim based as I understand to date.

See Section 3 & 3.1, pages 8-14.
GF Project Status Paper as of 2013

and...
To start the reactor, each cannon would fire a plasmoid into a central chamber, where the two would merge into a larger, free-floating plasmoid that would survive for as long as it could be fed with additional fuel.
and, which appears to state they have done it live in the full machine, until you read the refs from notes 2 and 3...which show they have not, it was speaking to FRC compact toroid merging component, not merged toroid "acoustic compression" as would happen it the full machine.
With its current test machine, a 10-metre device called the C-2, Tri Alpha has shown that the colliding plasmoids merge as expected(2), and that the fireball can sustain itself for up to 4 milliseconds — impressively long by plasma-physics standards — as long as fuel beams are being injected(3)
GF 2014 Nature Article
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

mvanwink5 wrote:Claims are one thing; I have no belief in commercial tokamaks (nice science projects). Does anyone see a path to commercial for any tokamak (other than as a career for government funded physicists)?
I have always been very skeptical of Tokamaks, but with REBCO HTSCs, the metrics change quite a bit.
Dennis Whyte and his team at the MIT are putting a lot of effort into the ARC reactor design, which is making use of REBCOs and some other innovations to make Tokamaks viable. I would highly recommend, you take a look at his PARC presentation from January. In this he shows a credible 500 MWth fusion reactor with a radius of 3.2 meters. REBCOs and other HTSCs are improving rather quickly right now and they were able to up- rate the output of the same size reactor to 1 GWth since then.
Tokamak Energy, a commercial company, is betting on it. TE also wants to use spherical tokamaks to further reduce the size. REBCO HTSCs are pretty much an enabler for HTSCs because they allow a compact enough central solenoid that fits. The two biggest advantages that REBCOs have is that they don't require as much cooling, which solves a lot of problems and that the current they can hold does not degrade with the strength of he magnetic field. So they can produce much stronger magnetic fields. All this has a cascading effect on the design that is quite amazing. I am still not a big fan of Tokamaks but I do see them as a viable path now. It is also worth mentioning that REBCOs will benefit all magnetic confinement or magneto- inertial confinement concepts, not just Tokamaks. E.g. PPPL has been using them with great success for their now very compact FRC reactor that they presented at NIAC 2 days ago. I am sure that the likes of Helion, TAE and others will equally benefit from them.
Here is the video of Dennis Whyte's presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
There is also a follow up video on youtube on their new divertor design in which they mention an up- rating to 1GWth for the same size machine. Quite impressive for Tokamaks.
mvanwink5 wrote: TriAlpha has enough results with C2U to make me optimistic,
“We have totally mastered this topology,” Binderbauer says. “I can now hold this at will, 100% stable. This thing does not veer at all.”
TriAlpha, stability has been achieved at full scale, massive accomplishment. They are going for temperature now, cash is not an obstacle. More importantly, they are optimistic.
Oh, I am quite optimistic about TAE. I really like their design and the fact that they will be doing PB11. But they are very ambitious and they are reaching high. They will succeed, but I don't think they will be the first. Here Binderbauer carefully talks about the time scales he envisions. He mentions 3 to 4 years for turning science risk into engineering risk. I am not sure whether that means break even or not, but that is the most near term, I have heard him mention for anything.
http://www.setventures.com/unlimited-en ... -magazine/

crowberry
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by crowberry »

To take the guesswork out of what GF is doing one can have a look on the abstracts of the upcoming 58th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics, October 31-November 4 2016, San Jose, California http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP16/. GF has submitted at least the following five abstracts to the conference:

Acoustically Driven Magnetized Target Fusion At General Fusion: An Overview

Magnetic Compression Experiment at General Fusion

Simulation of MTF experiments at General Fusion

Plasma Studies in the SPECTOR Experiment as Target Development for MTF

Thomson Scattering Results from General Fusion's SPECTOR

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

This paper abstract seems to counter Ladajo's assertion that only simulation work has been conducted by GF:
The magnetic compression experiment at General Fusion was designed as a repetitive non-destructive test to study plasma physics applicable to Magnetic Target Fusion compression. A spheromak compact torus (CT) is formed with a co-axial gun into a containment region with an hour-glass shaped inner flux conserver, and an insulating outer wall. The experiment has external coils to keep the CT off the outer wall (levitation) and then rapidly compress it inwards. Experiments used a variety of levitation/compression field profiles. The optimal configuration was seen to improve levitated CT lifetime by around 50{\%} over that with the original design field. Suppression of impurity influx to the plasma is thought to be a significant factor in the improvement, as supported by spectrometer data. Improved levitation field may reduce the amount of edge plasma and current that intersects the insulating outer wall during the formation process. Higher formation current and stuffing field, and correspondingly higher CT flux, was possible with the improved configuration. Significant field and density compression factors were routinely observed. The level of MHD activity was reduced, and lifetime was increased further by matching the decay rate of the levitation field to that of the CT fields. Details of experimental results and comparisons to equilibrium models and MHD simulations will be presented.
On the other hand, we can make a safe guess that GF hasn't reached their plasma adiabatic compression target as no announcements of such have been made. At least that is my opinion.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

crowberry
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by crowberry »

mvanwink5 wrote: On the other hand, we can make a safe guess that GF hasn't reached their plasma adiabatic compression target as no announcements of such have been made. At least that is my opinion.
Sure I would agree with that, but the interesting thing with GF is that if they get their plasma injector to work, then they might be able to demonstrate it nicely with their explosive tests. If they are successful, then they will surely tell about it.

ladajo
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by ladajo »

This furthers my point. They have only been working on plasma generation in the real world. (I think I noted that without looking back). What they have NOT done, other than sims (and same is true of Tri Alpha) is do real world plasma in the machine. Again, unless I have missed something.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

ladajo wrote:This furthers my point. They have only been working on plasma generation in the real world. (I think I noted that without looking back). What they have NOT done, other than sims (and same is true of Tri Alpha) is do real world plasma in the machine. Again, unless I have missed something.
Considering that Tri Alpha has reported plasma confinement times of more than 5 ms in their C2U, I think you are wrong about them.

ladajo
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by ladajo »

Ok, show me whwre they have moved beyong generation and gone for full compression. I am all ears.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

ladajo wrote:Ok, show me whwre they have moved beyong generation and gone for full compression. I am all ears.
You might want to read their major paper they released in Nature last year:
http://www.trialphaenergy.com/images/up ... ection.pdf

They have a pretty cool research library on their website now:
http://www.trialphaenergy.com/research-library/

Edit: This is the paper with the most up to date results where they achieved 11ms plasma lifetime (at reduced power) and 5 ms at full power.
They also talk about their next machine and the next steps:
http://www.trialphaenergy.com/images/up ... legacy.pdf

ladajo
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by ladajo »

Thanks, I'll give them a spin.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

ladajo
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by ladajo »

TAE has begun the design and construction of a successor machine, C-2W. The goal of this device will be to test the emerging energy confinement at higher temperatures and elevated system energies. The aim is for total plasma temperatures of 3 keV, with 1 keV electrons. Plasma densities will be similar to C-2U, i.e. around mid 1013 cm-3 and with applied magnetic fields around 3 kG.
Still got a ways to go. Be interesting to see how the upscaled unit ends up performing. I wonder when they plan on making neutrons.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

crowberry
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by crowberry »

General Fusion attended the US-Japan Compact Toroid Workshop 2016, http://www.physics.uci.edu/US-JAPAN-CT2 ... dings.html.
Michel Laberge talked about Plasma compression experiments at General Fusion and StephenHoward talked about Experimental results from the SPECTOR device at General Fusion. GF is doing nice steady progress.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

Convex outer wall design (D-shaped) expected to have good plasma stability during compression.
Contrary to Ladajo's belief, GM is doing all their plasma work experimentally. Compression during the experiments is achieved with explosives, as it has since the start. Classified US nuclear lab access has required all the work to be done in house. I might guess that as the compression experimentation looks more and more like a weapon. :shock:
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

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