University of Washington dynomak

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

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Enginerd
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University of Washington dynomak

Post by Enginerd »

“Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current concept,” said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.
http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/10/ ... than-coal/
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
--Philip K. Dick

AcesHigh
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Re: University of Washington dynomak

Post by AcesHigh »

Enginerd wrote:“Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current concept,” said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.
http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/10/ ... than-coal/

"The UW’s reactor, called the dynomak, started as a class project taught by Jarboe two years ago. After the class ended, Jarboe and doctoral student Derek Sutherland – who previously worked on a reactor design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – continued to develop and refine the concept."

“Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current concept,” said Thomas Jarboe

I wouldn´t expect the guy who developed it to say anything else.

It would be strange if Thomas Jarboe had said “Right now, this design has less potential of producing economical fusion power than Polywell, General Fusion, LPP, etc”

It´s easy to say.

mvanwink5
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Re: University of Washington dynomak

Post by mvanwink5 »

Enginerd,
Thanks for posting the link. It sounds like they have made good progress with their design:
Right now, the UW’s concept is about one-tenth the size and power output of a final product, which is still years away. The researchers have successfully tested the prototype’s ability to sustain a plasma efficiently, and as they further develop and expand the size of the device they can ramp up to higher-temperature plasma and get significant fusion power output.
The team has filed patents on the reactor concept with the UW’s Center for Commercialization and plans to continue developing and scaling up its prototypes.
Sounds promising. The more the merrier.

One of the article's commenters said, "EMC2's polywell is the best looking design with prototypes built, that company is looking for $30M to build break-even design."

First I have heard of EMC2 actually looking for money much less how much. Which of course leaves out the what would be built with the money... or the risk minimization business plan. Perhaps someone has heard something, anything? Of course, a business plan would assume EMC2 has acquired the business skills needed to run a business, long since overdue.
Last edited by mvanwink5 on Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

TallDave
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Re: University of Washington dynomak

Post by TallDave »

As best I can tell, just another tokamak/spheromak variant. I wouldn't expect dramatically different results.

http://meeting.aps.org/Meeting/DPP14/Session/UP8.62

http://plasma.aa.washington.edu/aps2004 ... S_2004.pdf

They do claim to get high beta.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...

AcesHigh
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Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 3:59 am

Re: University of Washington dynomak

Post by AcesHigh »

Derek Sutherland answered me on a comment I made on the link above
AcesHigh wrote:General Fusion, LPP, Polywell, etc. How can this professor be so sure his design has the most potential? Has he analyzed in depth the other concepts??
Derek Sutherland wrote:I have not only looked at these concepts, but I have also worked at General Fusion multiple times as well. What this concept is, that differentiates it from the companies above, is that it is a proposed alternative pathway to steady-state (key term, steady-state) fusion power. This means our main competitors are the mainstream devices, such as tokamaks and stellarators. We are using the exact same type of fusion as the mainstream, which is the easiest reaction to achieve, deuterium-tritium fusion. The main difference between this reactor and the mainstream is that we are relying solely on plasma currents for confinement of a fusion plasma, whereas tokamaks and stellarators generate their stabilizing field with external coils (tokamaks) or both their stabilizing and confining magnetic fields with external coils (stellarators). If you would like a more expansive discussion of the benefits of spheromaks over tokamaks or stellarators, and where the economic savings coming from, you can contact me via my email above (das1990@uw.edu) or you can read my paper published in Fusion Engineering and Design hyperlinked in "findings" above.
kbeaumont wrote: The real question is will it produce more energy out then put it in! The statement "largely self sustaining" makes me doubt it. And that is the real issue with fusion not some conspiracy favoring fossil fuels. Fusion power has been '10-20 years away' since the 1950's.
Derek Sutherland wrote: Hello, this is one of the authors of the dynomak paper. Largely self-sustaining is a statement concerning the ideal plasma power gain for a power producing reactor. Contrary to popular belief, you do not want to acheive ignition (completely self-sustaining) since it basically eliminates the knobs you have to tweak the plasma as you want. Largely self sustaining in this reactor means the plasma gain is 33, meaning you get out 33 times more power than you're injecting to keep the reactor going. The typical goal values for a power plant is 25-35, so this is right in the range. Any deteruium-tritium fusion reactor that uses the alpha heat to maintain thermonuclear temperatures will have a gain in this range for terrestrial applications.

If you have questions, please contact me. Also, you can check out my paper in Fusion Engineering and Design that shows the calculations for the plasma and engineering gains, which is hyperlinked in "findings" above. Every statement in here I've made was made for a defensible reason.

btw, I invited Derek Sutherland to post here.

AcesHigh
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Re: University of Washington dynomak

Post by AcesHigh »

Derek Sutherland answered my invitation to post here
"You're welcome to post that on Polywell forum. Believe me, I'm not anti-anytype of fusion that has some scientific basis. I'm just skeptical of fusion claims, as any scientist should be. I have talked with EMC2 before, and actually have been to their lab. Some of the high-confinement mode results in a polywell configurations were pretty interesting, but I'm more focused and interested in more traditional magnetic fusion devices since they, frankly, just perform the best. Spheromaks are derivatives of our mainstream cousins, which is why I have some hope of such a configuration working in the long run. Please contact me directly going forward instead of the comments section; I don't want to clutter it up."

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