Re: EMC2 news
Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2015 3:16 am
Don't believe everything you hear from John Slough. Maybe you should ask yourself where are the high end plasma physicists on his team. Why aren't they there?
I dont know what you are going, ladajo but I think that the people on the Helion team are competent enough as it is. They have almost 100 years of experience in this field and have published countless papers on plasma physics, nuclear fusion and related fields. Their work has been vetted by ARPA- E, the DOE and the DOD. So I would be very careful with discrediting them like that.ladajo wrote:Don't believe everything you hear from John Slough. Maybe you should ask yourself where are the high end plasma physicists on his team. Why aren't they there?
They have had several new experiments since then, some of them for scaling up as well.crowberry wrote: The previous paper by Helion Energy is from 2011 and they have been doing experiments with their present devices and planning for their next ones as wells as getting funding at the same time. So HE looks to be in a good position at least currently. How their device(s) will scale up remains to be seen.
I think you have drunk too much of the Slough marketing cool-aid. You should base your thoughts on more that a bullet header from the Helion web page.Skipjack wrote:I dont know what you are going, ladajo but I think that the people on the Helion team are competent enough as it is. They have almost 100 years of experience in this field and have published countless papers on plasma physics, nuclear fusion and related fields. Their work has been vetted by ARPA- E, the DOE and the DOD. So I would be very careful with discrediting them like that.ladajo wrote:Don't believe everything you hear from John Slough. Maybe you should ask yourself where are the high end plasma physicists on his team. Why aren't they there?
But hey, I am just a stupid software engineer. How would could I possibly know anything about all of this?
I don't quite know what grain of salt I need to take with John Slough's research resume. He is a professor at UW and he has published papers on plasma research since the early 80ies.ladajo wrote: You are apparently also lacking in understanding who the leaders in plasma physics research really are.
Go find a top 20 guy and ask him what he thinks of Slough and his team.
I am not saying they are dumb, just that the team is not top tier, and that for all the hoopla, folks should ask themselves why not.
For instance, what do you really know about George Votroubek? Or Chris Pihl? How much salt are you taking when reading Slough's actual detailed research resume?
How do these guys know each other? Why aren't there others who are older / more experienced / from other places on the team? How did they hook up with Dave Kirtley? What does he really know about plasma fusion research?
I do like Tri Alpha and I think they have the second best chance of all to get to an economic reactor design before anybody else does. But (putting Rostoker and Monkhorst aside), the guys from Helion are not that far behind in terms of experience in the field. John Slough has been around a lot longer than TAE's Michael Binderbauer, e.g.If you want to hang your hat on a team with some bench depth, you should be thinking about Tri-Alpha. The behind the scenes lineup there is really impressive.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication ... ct_ToroidsA debt of gratitude is also due to John Slough for his advice during the initial design of C-2.
I do know a tiny little bit more about their operation than what you can find on their websiteladajo wrote: You should base your thoughts on more that a bullet header from the Helion web page.
Only a Gubberment lab would make such a PR announcement.a breakeven shot
Dear ladajo, please use google. You are smart enough to know how to do that. When you do that, you will find that they all have had careers outside of MSNW LLC.ladajo wrote:So what you really are saying about the Helion team is that they know each other because primarily, they have only ever worked with each other. And that previous work (if any) by team members was on small scale plasma concepts that did not really generate any interest in the main stream.
Funding realities. They are still working on it but other, better funded projects currently have the priority.ladajo wrote: So again, I ask, why is it they do not have any of the top tier on their team? Slough, while knowledgeable in certain lanes, is really better at promises and marketing than product and advancement. What did happen with his (self promoted really) fusion engine?
Not exactly sure what that means. They have had funding problems in the past (like most fusion projects) that is why their progress has been slow. EMC2, which had A LOT more funding in the past has not been exactly fast either. In fact, I believe that Helion/MSNW has made more progress in the same time frame.ladajo wrote: I am not saying they are doing nothing, I am merely proposing that you think about if they are really doing as much as you think.
Ok, so what exactly does the Electric Power Reasearch Institute have to do with this?ladajo wrote: If you want to consider which fusion approach is best, then you need to put them all on the same ruler. Not cherry pick what you think are important singular points.
As Bob Hirsch pointed out, the best ruler on the table today is EPRI's.
Uhm, considering that Helion/MSNW has had many prototypes and years of experience with pulsed plasma, I think that this is not going to be an issue. Besides, their reactor design is shaped in a way that the "burn chamber" is a simple cylindrical piece located relatively far away from the expensive equipment. This is why their reactor design is equally suitable for D+T. It can be serviced very easily.ladajo wrote: To boil down his points into my framework: Stability, Materials, Economic Viability.
Any energetic compression, and especially cyclic compression approach is going to have issues with stability when attempting to reach Q>1 regimes. Instability = real dangers of significant down-times due to re-start requirements or machine failures resulting in reduced service life and / or repairs.
Yes, materials is an issue for all of the proposed projects. I don't think that there are any exceptions to this. So what is your point?ladajo wrote: Materials is an issue that every project faces. In real, full scale, operating plants between radiation induced material dynamics, and simply the ability to materially handle the proposed primary and support system operating regimes, this remains the biggest hurdle in my mind.
Fixed that for youladajo wrote: There are things we don't know that we don't know, and there are things that we do know, but don't know how to solve. The simpler the machine, the better of it is materially. The complexity of some approaches regarding core and supporting systems moving parts and extreme requirements is already a good indicator of the risk faced to ever achieve an actual sustainable functional design.
Economic Viability is its own issue, and is also driven by the first two. Bottom line, it is an engineering issue. Can we engineer a plant that will scale economically, in the simple balance of cost of goods sold versus market value.
How much do you know I know about Helion? You never answered my question from earlier about where your opinion is from. I read your posts and I see that you do not know very much about them. You don't know the people and you obviously have not concerned yourself more with their reactor design than what you can read on their website. I would suggest that you maybe try talking to David Kirtley or John Slough for a bit. They are very nice and approachable people, unless you come over like a total arrogant ass when talking to them.ladajo wrote: I am not trying to change your mind, I value your inherent right to see things as you wish. I am only trying to address how I see you making your deliberations. I perceive that you have gaps in your processes based on how you present your arguments. Pick a theory / theories as a framework, determine an analytic model, collect real data to support addressing the needs of the framework and analytic model, conduct your analysis, present your findings. You tend to have gaps as far as I can see, unless you are pushed.
Ok, I am confused. Helion is not doing PB11. They do D+D/ D+He3 and if that fails for some reason, their reactor is well suited for D+T. None of the competing devices is doing that. IIRC, Polywell and TAEs machine can theoretically handle D+T but their machines will IMHO suffer more from the fast neutrons. Both of them have expensive equipment right where the majority of the action is.mvanwink5 wrote:End game pB11 complexity is in the fusion machine itself rather than fuel handling and processing and for that and progress to date (plus machine generation, for instance, if Helion has to go back and develop neutral bream injection...) I would bet on Tri Alpha and GF over Helion for commercial operation. Polywell, overall, due to simplicity, if they can get funding this year.