Talk-Polywell.org

The 16th US-Japan Workshop on IEC Fusion will be held in Madison, Wisconsin
on October 1-3, 2014. The conference web page is found at http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec2014.

The web page of this event has been updated. The titel of the workshop has changed to:

16th US-Japan Workshop on Fusion Neutron Sources for Nuclear Assay and Alternate Applications

The Workshop is by invitation only.

crowberry wrote:The web page of this event has been updated. The titel of the workshop has changed to:

16th US-Japan Workshop on Fusion Neutron Sources for Nuclear Assay and Alternate Applications

The Workshop is by invitation only.

In other words Farnsworth Fusor tubes.

This meeting is now over. With the renaming and apparently closed venue, the topics and ideas have not been shared as in previous years. One wonders why...

https://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec2014

Dan Tibbets

D Tibbets wrote:This meeting is now over. With the renaming and apparently closed venue, the topics and ideas have not been shared as in previous years. One wonders why...

https://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec2014

Dan Tibbets

This is the standard pattern of how Japanese consortium are run. Several competitors get together to pool their resources to develop a new technology. Once real developments are achieved (e.g. proprietary developments), the consortium is disbanded and the participants continue development on their own until commercial product is released. Sumco, the consortium to develop 450mm single crystal Silicon, was a classic example. Once the basic techniques were developed, all of the participants (Shin-etsu, Komatsu, etc.) disbanded the consortium and completed the proprietary parts of growing 450mm ingots on their own.

It appears a similar dynamic is at work with regards to IEC fusion. It will be quite entertaining when various Japanese companies start manufacturing and selling fusion power generators in about 5 years.

The IEC conferences have given a nice overview of the progress in the field, but unfortunately not this time. The only small piece of information on the programme is from the "Venue" link:

The Banquet will be held at Steenbock's, in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery [map], with Dr. Robert Hirsch as the speaker.

There will be a full day meeting on Wednesday, 1 October, and a half-day meeting on Thursday, 2 October. The keynote address will be given by Jae Young. There will be a tour of SHINE Medical Technologies on Thursday afternoon.

So Dr Robert Hirsch gave the dinner talk and presumably Dr Jaeyoung Park gave the keynote talk. Quite often at the IEC conference someone gives a talk on IEC research status at the University of Wisconsin. This year professor John F Santaurius gave the talk at the Workshop on Exploratory Topics in Plasma and Fusion Research (EPR) and US-Japan Compact Torus (CT) Workshop, August 5-8, 2014, Madison, Wisconsin

Overview of Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement Research at the University of Wisconsin

I agree that it would be nice if the conference talks would be public as in previous years.

Jaeyoung did present, he used a more detailed version of what was presented in Maryland.
This should become available via the U. Wisconsin webpage.

ladajo wrote:Jaeyoung did present, he used a more detailed version of what was presented in Maryland.
This should become available via the U. Wisconsin webpage.

I look forward to such a public revelation of further details.

PS: the prepublish report is aviable, but when will it appear in a actual publication like Nature?



Dan Tibbets

The presentations, abstracts, participants and photos from the conference have now been published. There is a lot of interesting material, which I have not yet have time to read. Eventually the material will be posted here:
https://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec2014/conference_record, but currently it is available here http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... index.html. Contributed photos and videos are also available here http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/contri ... index.html.

It is great to see that also this year the material has been published, even though the conference was by invitation only!

Thanks, crowberry.

The Wed afternoon link is restricted for some reason.

Highlights from the others:

Vlasov-Poisson calculations of electron confinement times in Polywell devices using a steady-state particle-in-cell method
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... llasch.pdf

Numerical and Experimental Validation of Ion Extractor Grids
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... 0Grids.pdf

Polywell – A Path to Electrostatic Fusion
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... lywell.pdf

Progress in Inertial Electrostatic Confinement at the University of Sydney
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... C_2014.pdf

Comments About Varied IEC Approaches to Fusion Power
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... 4%20v4.pdf

Experimental and Theoretical Highlights from the University of Wisconsin IEC Program
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... -GLK-4.pdf
(See streamlined coil casings, p.23)

MEASURING POLYWELL CUSP CONFINEMENT WITH A RELATIVISTIC PARTICLE CODE
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... consin.pdf

Tokamak Fusion & IEC
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... 20Talk.pdf

Thanks again crowberry!

I thought this paper was interesting as it looked at confinement time vs magrid voltage. I had thought Park had said that the Polywell would not work with a charged magrid... I must have been mistaken.
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... llasch.pdf

And another fantastic paper (probably this has been posted, but I haven't seen it.
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... lywell.pdf

Dr Parks slides are indeed very interesting to read as they also reveal WB-7 and WB-8 results. For the first time there is a credible result on neutron rates from a Polywell. The WB-6 was not instrumented well enough to have a reliable neutron rate measurement and then it broke down too early for proper studies to be performed. The important point about the WB-7 results is that they confirmed that you can get a well deep enough to produce neutrons in a Polywell. When looking at neutron rate results, one should always keep in mind the limitations of a particular device. The potential of any given fusion concept is of course much harder to estimate and usually requires building improved devices as has been the case in tokamak research.

The slides also contain some performance comparisons between WB-7 and WB-8, but not the WB-8 neutron rate. To really see the performance of the Polywell concept both the deep potential and a high beta condition needs to be achieved simultaneously. And as we all know this needs the additional funding EMC2 is trying to get.

DeltaV wrote:
Tokamak Fusion & IEC
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... 20Talk.pdf

take a look at page 20 it looks like a good simplification

Highlights from the no-longer-restricted Wed afternoon page:

Rapid Parametric Studies of Polywell Electron Injection
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... EC2014.pdf

Polywell Physics Modeling Considerations
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... shp_14.pdf

The Parallel Running of Multiple IECF Devices
http://iec.neep.wisc.edu/usjapan/16th_U ... evices.pdf