New Post: An Industry Emerges Is Now Done.

Discuss funding sources for polywell research, including the non-profit EMC2 Fusion Development Corporation, as well as any other relevant research efforts.

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mattman
Posts: 459
Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 11:14 pm

New Post: An Industry Emerges Is Now Done.

Post by mattman »

Hello,


A new post: "An Industry Emerges" is now up. Though it has been on the web since 1/18/15 - it was finished today. It looks at alternative fusion; as a fledgling industry. I estimate that this industry engages 330 people and has 450 million in invested across 12 organizations. The executive summary is below. A PDF can also be downloaded here:

Download: An Industry Emerges - The Polywell Blog - Post #33 - 1-18-2015 - here

Download: A Summary Of Fusion Investments Here


The Polywell blog is entering it's 6th year and it has seen a massive jump in traffic. Over 122,000 hits at present. A recent fusion debate on Reddit led to 2,145 hits in one day. Dr. Parks' recent presentation on the Polywell at Microsoft has also driven a huge amount of interest. Additionally, in the past few months, several companies have been founded to push this technology.

It is important to remember: the polywell could totally fail. Hopefully, time will tell.



=========================
Executive Summary:

This post examines alternative fusion as a fledgling industry. Fusion and climate
news from July to November 2014 is summarized. An argument for alternatives over
the laser or tokamak family of concepts is made. Alternative fusion includes: polywells,
fusors, dense plasma focus, beam fusion, field reversed configurations and cusp
confinement. It is estimated that this industry has ~450 million invested and engages
~330 people across ~12 organizations. These companies suffer from the classic first mover
problems: training talent, attracting capital and technical hurdles. Designs are
compared using their neutron rates, shot time and energy extraction method. The
implications of the energy balance on conduction loss, radiation and efficiency is
mentioned. Four new principals for fusion power are presented. These are: avoiding a
thermalized ion cloud, electric heating, cusp confinement and direct conversion. The
post ends with a discussion of the implications and potential of these changes.

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