General Fusion in the news

[mvanwink5]

Yes, it has worked so well for Polywell (sarc), EMC2 couldn't even get an electron gun powerful enough to power a WB larger than a coffee can. Right. And who ever said that VC's were nicer than Rumpelstiltskin? Just that they are vested in actual fast results, which is the whole point. The best solution is to have your own money, but then those deep pocket folks rarely are the foundation developers.

[GIThruster]

It has worked well for Polywell. Name a single VC funded project in human history that has had the support of tens of millions of dollars? I don't know of a single one. Complain all you like, but the project has been getting significant funding for a very long time now. No VC would have stuck it out this long.

[mvanwink5]

GF.

[mvanwink5]

Tri-Alpha

[Skipjack]

Youtube video is slick. The video is ground work to get cash, lots of cash. PR work gets GF in a better negotiating position when talking to VC's. Money from Uncle Sam is fickle, slow, and the strings attached put the needed bridge to be built in the desert where there is no river (in other words politics yields absurdity). VC money is the way to go because these guys want the project to succeed, fast, it is the only way to get their money back (about tax credits, tax credits are like getting the cute dress for sale at a great discount, "discount" doesn't make money, it reduces money spent).

So, this is the work of their new CEO, Nathan Gilliland, to get the Big money, or at least that is my thinking.

VC money also has the outcome that the investor takes over ownership of the lion's share of the IP value and stocks. It's not the simple thing you think. there are almost no projects that VC's involve themselves in, where they take anything less than a huge portion of the cash value of the company and its properties, including all IP's, trade secrets, licenses sold in the future, etc. personally I think though it's a huge hassle, the way to go is grants when possible. But of course, GF doesn't have access to US grant funds.

IIRC, famous rocket engineer, Gary Hudson once said "Every time I did business with venture capitalists, I ended up with less than I had before". It is in line with my own experience. If you can get money from other sources, stay away from rich investors and venture capital. They will take everything you have and then some.

[crowberry]

Here is an interview with Michel Laberge. You can either read it or listen to it as an mp3. He seems to be rather satisfied with the status of their plasma injectors, but the RMI needs more work, maybe even a couple of years.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/ ... w/1000881/

[mvanwink5]

From the article:

Dave - So, that all sounds very nice and simple in theory. How close are you getting it to work?

Michel - Okay. So right now, what we’re doing is we’re making the plasma successfully – the initial plasma before the compression. So, it took us a few years to achieve that, but now, we can produce that. Today, we’re making some compression experiment. You see, when we compress the plasma, if it does indeed goes to a thermonuclear condition. Right now, we have some little issues with that, it is not quite working. The plasma goes unstable and cool off. So hopefully, we will manage to fix this problem in the next couple of years or let’s say in 2 years. And those are one of single compression experiments, it is not done with a power plant system. After those 2 years, we hope to build a prototype plant that will run at a relatively low repetition rate. Like in those pulse systems, you have to show that every second or so to make some energy, this machine would be slower than that and that would probably take about 3 years. If that's successful then we will build a real power plant, something that make electricity on the grid, and that would take another 5 years after that. so, if you add 2 plus 3, plus 5, we’re thinking about putting electricity on the grid in gain of 10 years.

As I read this, given that the prototype will take two years to put into service and is a single shot device, the interview puts GF where I had optimistically imagined them to be at, and that is full size prototype funding to initiate by the end of this year. Further, the full size plasma injector seems to be essentially done. The tough part is stable compression in the liquid metal sphere, but then again, they only have a 14 piston, small 1/3 scale sphere to work with at this time. GF needs the full size sphere and all its pin cushion steam pistons to take it out for a real test drive.

Someone else though might have a less than optimistic view on when the full scale sphere will be built... It is a shame that that small detail wasn't clarified better.

[crowberry]

The American security Project arranged several panel discussions on the 30th of September with the title What’s Next? Fostering the Next Generation of Energy Security Conference. The fourth panel on Prospects for Fusion Energy was chaired by Kate Ling (Technology and Innovation Reporter for Greenwire) and consisted of Andrew Holland (American Security Project) Stephen O. Dean (Fusion Power Associates) and Michael Delage (General Fusion).
http://www.americansecurityproject.org/ ... onference/

The discussion was mainly on ITER, General Fusion and NIF and fusion in general. It seems that General Fusion will use some 2-3 years for research and planning before starting the construction of the demonstration reactor. The panel discussion is 75 min 28 s long and is on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLgWskwsxRo.

[mvanwink5]

Crowberry,
Thanks for that link. Your sleuthing is super.

It is really hard (for me) to pull a clear message from GF. Lately it seems that GF has said words that seem to say they have 2 to 3 more years of testing before funding the full scale, take a shot once a day, test machine, which would then take 2 to 3 years to build... Or are they saying that the full scale once a day test machine will be available to use in 2 to 3 years and that in the mean time they will continue to run tests?

And where is Nathan Gilliland these days? If the big money isn't needed for 2 to 3 years why was he brought on board now, with nothing to say? Looks like mixed up messages, or maybe it is the translation from French that is confusing.

The conference gives a brutally clear reason that "government should do xxx" or "government should fund xxx" makes no sense. Always the believers in government fantasize what it would be like "if only government lived up to what it could be," never realizing that what they are seeing is really as good as government ever gets, massive waste is as good as it gets, massive obstruction or destruction is truly the norm... because of the nature of government. So, the laments continue from the big government solution fusion believers, "if only ITER got the money 20 years ago..."

Enough of my ranting... What I thought was interesting and that I had not heard from my sheltered tiny TP blog bubble is the German Tokamak with significantly more powerful superconductor magnets, shooting for much (factor of 2 or 4) smaller size reactor (than the France leviathan ITER tokamak). But then the chief question for tokamaks is the first wall material issue which would only seem to get worse with a smaller (higher plasma density) machine. (It is just a bit of engineering, not hard like the science).

So, again, thanks Crowberry for that video link to the conference.
Best regards

[crowberry]

Crowberry,
Thanks for that link. Your sleuthing is super.

...

Enough of my ranting... What I thought was interesting and that I had not heard from my sheltered tiny TP blog bubble is the German Tokamak with significantly more powerful superconductor magnets, shooting for much (factor of 2 or 4) smaller size reactor (than the France leviathan ITER tokamak). But then the chief question for tokamaks is the first wall material issue which would only seem to get worse with a smaller (higher plasma density) machine. (It is just a bit of engineering, not hard like the science).

Thanks mvanwink5, it is quite fun to try to see what the fusion dark horses are doing.

In the ASP panel they discussed two things that you might have mixed up. There was discussion on compact tokamaks, which have also been mentioned on Talk Polywell previously, where you can decrease the size of the reactor by using stronger High Temperature Superconductors (HTS). The drawback is as you say the first wall issues and then less space where to fit divertors and instrumentation. Tokamak energy is in the UK, but there are other groups working on that topic as well.
Tokamak Energy

In Germany the stellarator Wendelstein 7-X is becoming ready for first plasma next year. It is the most advanced stellarator desinged so far, so it will be interesting to see how it performs and what can be learned with it.
Wendelstein 7-X page

[mvanwink5]

!00% chance of success... that's a big change, it used to be 50%. Still, the worry of impatience seems to imply continued delay in the next step to build a full scale test machine.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/partners ... e21769654/
Getting Canadian innovation firing on all cylinders
Content from the Excellence in Research and Innovation feature
Published Wednesday, Nov. 26 2014, 8:01 PM EST

While Dr. Laberge puts his chances for success at 100 per cent, he adds a caveat: “I am sure we will succeed eventually, but the problem is that our investors might get impatient. If we don’t succeed quite fast, there are chances we run out of money.”

[Maui]

Yeah, that 100% strikes me as much more of a reaction to pushback from investors than a reaction to progress on the science or engineering.

[mvanwink5]

It could be just sloppy article writing as it is a blockbuster statement to say 100% certainty. That would really be big deal coming from Dr. Laberge who has been a straight shooter not a smoke blower.

[Betruger]

It's very curious just who or what could possibly be worth saying that - "100%". Misreporting seems more likely.

[crowberry]

Dr. Michel Laberge of General Fusion will give a colloquium at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on Magnetized Target Fusion work at General Fusion. The event is on December 18, 2014, 12:30pm to 2:00pm.

General Fusion is working on compressing a Compact Torus in liquid metal using an acoustic wave generated by compressed gas pistons. This approach has attractive reactor engineering features: strongly reduced neutrons damage (1E-5 reduction in neutron flux with E>2 MeV), high tritium breeding ratio (1.5), and low cost (~$2/W). General Fusion is developing reactor subsystems and presently forming long-lived spheromaks. Experiments also include an ongoing program to compress spheromaks in 80 µs using a fast liner. Results achieved so far will be discussed.

http://www.pppl.gov/events/colloquium-m ... ral-fusion

Hopefully a video of this colloquium will be available afterwards.