WB-D design funding

Consider specific people in the fusion research community, business, or politics who should be made aware of polywell research, and how we might reach them.

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mvanwink5
Posts: 2143
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 5:07 am
Location: N.C. Mountains

WB-D design funding

Post by mvanwink5 »

Needed: a few hundred thousand for some basic physics and design work to be ready when WB-8 results are in.

Well, this is more than I have to donate at the moment and judging by the time it took for Famulus to get to $3k, it is not likely to happen without some contacts and positive early WB-8 scaling results. I also think EMC2's commercialization concept would be insightful to the donor.

I have contacts but an argument that convinces my contacts to donate I don't have. We need a way to get the arguments assembled if Dr. Nebel is going to get this funding. Otherwise I think we will be going the slow "safe" road. Personally my outlook is that if you don't rush to meet the future, it will bury you. Any positive thoughts?

Referencing Alan Boyles' article:
But if IEC fusion actually works, Nebel wants to be ready to commercialize the technology. "Generally what you want to do is have one machine operating, one machine being built, and one machine designed," he said. "We want to be in a position that if we have good results from WB-8, we can hit the ground running."
That's what the contributions being sought under the umbrella of the New Mexico Community Foundation would go toward, he said. Nebel doesn't expect anything near $200 million to start with. "We're just looking for a few hundred thousand to do the design work and do some basic physics on this," he said. "There are some open questions we have to take a look at."

and Dr. Nebel's article comment:
As usual, I seem to have created some misconceptions by my comments.  First of all, what we said on our website is that the work on the WB-7 has been completed.  We did not discuss the results.  If you would like to conjecture what those results are, let me suggest that you notice the fact that we are working on the WB-8 device.  The WB-8 was not a part of Dr. Bussard’s original development plan.   This device came about as a result of the peer review process which suggested that there were issues that needed to be resolved at a smaller scale before proceeding to a demo. This was a conclusion that EMC2 heartily concurred with.  I don’t want to leave people with the impression that everything on the WB-7 is identical to the WB-6.
Secondly, in our contract with the DOD, EMC2 owns the commercialization rights for the Polywell.  However, commercialization is not something that we can do with our DOD funding.  That is what we would like to look at with any contributions from the website.  This will enable us to:
1. Design an attractive commercial reactor package.
2. Identify the high leverage physics items that most impact the design (i.e.  how good is good enough).
3. Give us a base design when we are ready to proceed to the next step.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

mvanwink5
Posts: 2143
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 5:07 am
Location: N.C. Mountains

Post by mvanwink5 »

I wonder if there are retiree's or folks who have a few hours per day with design experience that could donate time to the WB-D design effort? Signing an NDA would likely be required. Donation of time is sometimes easier to get than money. Also with all the interest here, it might be a way to get some personal insight without FOIA success. And if there is success, it might be a window to a future job. Any thoughts?
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

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