The future US economy and the polywell

[MSimon]

Here is the challenge:

There are 3 countries who have IEC Fusion programs.

The USA with a number of government, government/university and commercial projects.

Japan with a government program (associatetd with a university I think) and Australia with a program I'm not very familiar with.

Which will be the next country to start a university program (or commercial venture) in IEC?

Just to pick at an old wound here: quitcherbitchin and do something. It doesn't take much in the way of resources. You are all writers here. Blog it on blogs in your native language (I'm going to have to learn Australian) and build a demand.

There is no country in the developed world (from Finland on up) that couldn't afford an IEC program. Say a start up grant of $5 million and another $2 million a year to keep the lab running and train scientists and engineers.

How many people do you think it would take with an interest to get 50,000 people to read one article on the subject? In the USA from what I can tell the core people promoting this have been on the order of 10. I have been the most relentless because I'm "retired". So in terms of getting your team together look for some one who can devote full time at no cost. A retired engineer perhaps?

Then just start cranking out the publicity and do blog posts and comments in your native language.

Heck. You can start with translating any of my stuff you want. No writing required. Just give me a credit and a link. I have an ulterior motive for this. If we get some folks on our tails we (USA) will light the afterburners. Given the current state of the world faster is better than cheaper.

[Roger]

This is not fair play.

He is an American. To not expect an American to not behave with some nationalism is simply a childish expectation.

economists are giving the US economy a 1 in 3 chance of crashing.

Many of the fundamentals are there. Though MSimon has a good point about WB-50 etc. Cranking out WB-50's like they were P-38's in WW2 would do wonders to the US economy.

[MSimon]

This is not fair play.

He is an American. To not expect an American to not behave with some nationalism is simply a childish expectation.

economists are giving the US economy a 1 in 3 chance of crashing.

Many of the fundamentals are there. Though MSimon has a good point about WB-50 etc. Cranking out WB-50's like they were P-38's in WW2 would do wonders to the US economy.

I think there will be two or three sizes of standard power converters.

25 MW, 100MW, 250MW

If it could be done that way - High Voltages may make it necessary to have a standard converter for each plant size.

It would be nice on the larger plants to operate at 50% or 75% power if one of your converters went down.

====

Once you have a working design it takes about 3 years to get a very large production line going.

The rule in WW2 was -

The first year - zero or one.
Second year - ten
Third year - as many as you want

We are a little better these days. It is possible under very extreme circumstances to get it down to two years.

The Japanese are about the best at getting a new design fielded - for a new car they can do it in about 2 1/2 years. GM is one of the worst. They take 3 1/2 years.

It is a matter of logistics. You place an order for 100 plants. The plant guys order 2,000 turbo pumps. The pump guys order 20 tons of specialty steel. The steel plant orders the material to make a batch of the steel.

And that is just one small segment of the chain. At every step there are delays for negotiations and contract signing. Tooling for some of the stages will have to be acquired. That adds more delay.

For vessel construction it is possible that the vessels will require an electron beam welding plant to be built with a large enough vacuum chamber to hold an object 2 or 3 meters across. The first units for test may have to be built in smaller segments to accommodate available manufacturing.

Figure 3 years R&D to get a prototype power plant built. Then another 3 to get production ramped up.

As soon as the power prototype is done and you have a handle on mfg costs you start taking orders.

Initial manufacturing is set up for 250 100 MW units a year. About 1 a day.

While that is going on you do the development work on 1,000 MW units. Figure turning out one of those a month.

Then you start working on intermediate sizes depending on demand.

Figure doubling the planet's electrical supply in 15 years from the end of the WB-7 program. Further doublings in 10 year increments.

And while that is going on the space guys are working on 10 GW units for LEO injection and 100 KW units for planetary/asteroid belt transport.

Ships will be built with Bussard power plants and superconducting motors. Aircraft the same. The Air force would love to have platforms that could stay in the air for 24 to 48 hours at a stretch. The Navy would love to have 100 knot sea skimmers of 1,000 to 5,000 tons. With approximately zero operating costs. About 150 kg (300 lbs American) is fuel enough for a year (assuming you make the H from sea water as needed).

[scareduck]

While we're blue-skying it, one thing that might be a fallout is a (temporary) reduction in the price of copper as some of those old power plants requiring spinning turbines to do their work get decommissioned. (No idea if that's true or not in commercial practice, but it seems plausible.)

[aa2]

M. Simon, great post.. It really showed the military advantages with having a device that can generate energy like that. Thats why I'm an optimist on the technology being developed.. if one nation decides not to develop it, it is another nation can leapfrog them in technology.


I believe each year the electrical costs for American businesses are going to get to be a bigger part of their expenses. Because we are automating the work. Or with supercomputers, I think they will explode in the next decade in corporate America. For industries there is threshold points where a supercomputer all of a sudden becomes very attractive. But sometimes like 50% of the cost of supercomputers is the electricity. An example is in biology. The pharmacuetical industry thinks only supercomputers over 1 petaflop are useful for them. But the biggest supercomputer in the world today is about 300 teraflops. Go to top500.org and see the progression of supercomputers, in only a few years we will have petaflop machines. And a few years later they will fall in cost a lot.

I imagine incredible supercomputing complexes.. and also incredible energy needed to run them. But the competitive advantage of that will force everyone to go for it, to stay in the game.

[MSimon]

M. Simon, great post.. It really showed the military advantages with having a device that can generate energy like that. Thats why I'm an optimist on the technology being developed.. if one nation decides not to develop it, it is another nation can leapfrog them in technology.


I believe each year the electrical costs for American businesses are going to get to be a bigger part of their expenses. Because we are automating the work. Or with supercomputers, I think they will explode in the next decade in corporate America. For industries there is threshold points where a supercomputer all of a sudden becomes very attractive. But sometimes like 50% of the cost of supercomputers is the electricity. An example is in biology. The pharmacuetical industry thinks only supercomputers over 1 petaflop are useful for them. But the biggest supercomputer in the world today is about 300 teraflops. Go to top500.org and see the progression of supercomputers, in only a few years we will have petaflop machines. And a few years later they will fall in cost a lot.

I imagine incredible supercomputing complexes.. and also incredible energy needed to run them. But the competitive advantage of that will force everyone to go for it, to stay in the game.

Yes.

The big pharma aspect is new to me. Very interesting.

One of the reasons this will go commercial is that the Navy has no mfg. any more. Just as in the nuclear era, companies will compete for production contracts. Then they will commercialize the technology.

[aa2]

The big pharma aspect is new to me. Very interesting.

I once read about simulating the whole process of a specific protein entering a cell to the molecular level. The writer estimated it would take I think a 5 petaflop machine a month to do. I'm going to look for some of the links and post them here in the next few days.

Biology is becoming an information science. With enough computing power you can simulate things more and more. So instead of doing multi-year experiments on one variable, you can put it onto a giant computer. The major pharmacuetical corporations have budgets of over 20 billion a year. So installing even 200 million dollar supercomputers is realistic if it can give better bang for buck then spending 200 million in other ways.

A 200 million dollar supercomputer running night and day is going to use a hell of a lot of energy. Btw I can imagine the computation needed to figure out more for genetic engineering and gene therapy would be quite high:).

[jmc]

Plenty of slips between cup and lip, MSimon. There's still a nonzero (perhaps even majority, if you believe Todd Rider) prospect that WB-7 never sees the light of day, or doesn't work if it does. There's many, many technical details yet to be ironed out. And they first have to get to D-D or D-T fusion. (If it does, the Chinese will buy one and copy it.)

I just have to make one thing clear with regards to what Todd Rider said. In his phd thesis all he said was that the bremsstrahlung emmitted from the plasmas in thermal equilibrium in aneutronic fuels exceeded the power produced by fusion. He also tried to show that there was no concieveable way to maintain the system in non-maxwellian equilibrium on a timescale significantly longer than the ion - ion collission time. He didn't say anything about Polywells not working with DT. Infact all thermal DT fusion schemes should produce about 100 more fusion power than bremsstrahlung.

In his masters thesis, he did criticise polywells even with DT. There he basically said that to stop the ions from upscattering in energy long enough to fuse you have to make the well so deep that cusp losses would kill you, however this was for a non-recirculating machine and not a recirculating one. For a recirculating machine cusp losses don't represent an energy loss as the field from the magrid simply pulls the electrons back into the cusps again.

[JD]

So the opposing views used by most antagonists are based on a masters thesis? I had assumed it was a doctoral thesis (still not a huge recommendation over others who've been actually practicing their craft for years or even decades) and I have also been led to understand the individual is not working in the specific field now.

Just out of curiosity is this the best rebuttal that the antagonists have for the potential viability? The individual may have had good points but bluntly I see little of our technological base rising on the pillars of masters thesis level work. I'm sure bright youngsters come up with good concepts but being the father of a youngster currently preparing for his own masters thesis in mathematics I don't expect revolutionary concepts to be emerging.

The late Mr. Buzzard may or may not have been over optimistic. The current efforts will decide it I guess. I can't see though why several individuals, especially the tech blog "experts" put so much credence in the thesis of a basic neophyte who's no longer even involved in the area of work.

[pstudier]

So the opposing views used by most antagonists are based on a masters thesis?

No. I studied plasma physics at Princeton in 1976 and 1977, and the infeasibility of aneutronic fusion because of bremsstrahlung was well known even then. The basic problem with fusion is that for every fusion interaction, there are many nonfusion collisions. Also remember that a black body radiates energy proportional to the FOURTH power of the temperature. One needs a tremendous power density to keep the stuff hot.

[JD]

So the opposing views used by most antagonists are based on a masters thesis?

No. I studied plasma physics at Princeton in 1976 and 1977, and the infeasibility of aneutronic fusion because of bremsstrahlung was well known even then. The basic problem with fusion is that for every fusion interaction, there are many nonfusion collisions. Also remember that a black body radiates energy proportional to the FOURTH power of the temperature. One needs a tremendous power density to keep the stuff hot.

I was referring to the antagonists not those who are simply taking an opposing view. Your own points are very clear and the supporters believe the methods employed will compensate so time and engineering will determine the right of it.

The antagonists however (one self important individual comes to mind) basically are insisting that any attempt is foolish because of ... and if you think there's a possibly solution you're a fool because.... I seem to see the young gentleman's master's thesis mentioned an inordinate amount on this issue. This is strange since the difficulties with contained plasma you referenced were being noted in the science magazines decades ago.

About the time you were studying plasma physics I was studying the probable assault routes through the Fulda Gap so no I'm not even partially versed in the field. I do think the arguments in support of this issue seem plausible enough to warrant testing. This is apparently not acceptable to the antagonistic tech blog trollers I reference.

[MSimon]

So the opposing views used by most antagonists are based on a masters thesis? I had assumed it was a doctoral thesis (still not a huge recommendation over others who've been actually practicing their craft for years or even decades) and I have also been led to understand the individual is not working in the specific field now.

Too true.

Just out of curiosity is this the best rebuttal that the antagonists have for the potential viability? The individual may have had good points but bluntly I see little of our technological base rising on the pillars of masters thesis level work. I'm sure bright youngsters come up with good concepts but being the father of a youngster currently preparing for his own masters thesis in mathematics I don't expect revolutionary concepts to be emerging.

If you read the dedication to his thesis you might come to some interesting conclusions about the politics of the situation Rider was in.

The late Mr. Buzzard may or may not have been over optimistic. The current efforts will decide it I guess. I can't see though why several individuals, especially the tech blog "experts" put so much credence in the thesis of a basic neophyte who's no longer even involved in the area of work.

I'm not even sure Dr. B had a correct understanding of his machine. It doesn't matter. I think it is a case of wrong (at least partially) explanations for observed results. If the observed results are correct we will find out why.

[MSimon]

Plenty of slips between cup and lip, MSimon. There's still a nonzero (perhaps even majority, if you believe Todd Rider) prospect that WB-7 never sees the light of day, or doesn't work if it does. There's many, many technical details yet to be ironed out. And they first have to get to D-D or D-T fusion. (If it does, the Chinese will buy one and copy it.)

I just have to make one thing clear with regards to what Todd Rider said. In his phd thesis all he said was that the bremsstrahlung emmitted from the plasmas in thermal equilibrium in aneutronic fuels exceeded the power produced by fusion. He also tried to show that there was no concieveable way to maintain the system in non-maxwellian equilibrium on a timescale significantly longer than the ion - ion collission time. He didn't say anything about Polywells not working with DT. Infact all thermal DT fusion schemes should produce about 100 more fusion power than bremsstrahlung.

Yeah. Thermal equilibrium is the big assumption. Leaving out re-normalization of ions at the inner edge of the + grids was considered reasonable. However, the MIT paper on the subject says that renormalization happens.

In his masters thesis, he did criticise polywells even with DT. There he basically said that to stop the ions from upscattering in energy long enough to fuse you have to make the well so deep that cusp losses would kill you, however this was for a non-recirculating machine and not a recirculating one. For a recirculating machine cusp losses don't represent an energy loss as the field from the magrid simply pulls the electrons back into the cusps again.

If you make the right assumptions you can get any results you want. Reality is not always so co-operative.

[scareduck]

Yeah. Thermal equilibrium is the big assumption. Leaving out re-normalization of ions at the inner edge of the + grids was considered reasonable. However, the MIT paper on the subject says that renormalization happens.

But isn't that only based on a model? Has anyone tested this theory with hardware?

In his masters thesis, he did criticise polywells even with DT. There he basically said that to stop the ions from upscattering in energy long enough to fuse you have to make the well so deep that cusp losses would kill you, however this was for a non-recirculating machine and not a recirculating one. For a recirculating machine cusp losses don't represent an energy loss as the field from the magrid simply pulls the electrons back into the cusps again.

If you make the right assumptions you can get any results you want. Reality is not always so co-operative.

Your keyboard to Maxwell's ears...

[MSimon]

Yeah. Thermal equilibrium is the big assumption. Leaving out re-normalization of ions at the inner edge of the + grids was considered reasonable. However, the MIT paper on the subject says that renormalization happens.

But isn't that only based on a model? Has anyone tested this theory with hardware?

All Rider has to go on is his model.

And yes. We need some definitive experiments. Our state of ignorance is just incredible. At this time we only know enough to do more experiments.