Alan Boyle update

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

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Giorgio
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Post by Giorgio »

KitemanSA wrote:
MSimon wrote:
KitemanSA wrote: Nearest order of magnitude would have been 10k! ;)
But then if he says 10K and only gets 4?
SHOULD be getting 33k including the machine size difference (8^4*2^3=8^5=~32.7k) Hmm? Sounds like they are running at a much lower B than pure 8X by spec.
Maybe they are still checking its behaviour before bringing it to full power.
This could explain the analogy he made with the ferrari.

CaptainBeowulf
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Post by CaptainBeowulf »

Ivy Matt wrote:
mvanwink5 wrote:I would have preferred "get ready for Earth to Mars in a month, here we come."
I don't think the Navy would have appreciated that. :wink:
I don't know... if the navy is able to start building starships, they might be able to put together a solid case to take over the air force. One 90 year old instance of interservice rivalry solved! :lol:

DeltaV
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Post by DeltaV »

Star Trek had admirals, not generals.
USAF better get it in gear...

Nebel's retirement frees him from Federal restrictions on commercial negotiations.

toddzilla
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Post by toddzilla »

Hello, all! I finally decided to register and start posting after years of lurking in the shadows. On a scale of chrismb <-> ivy, please file me under optimist, pragmatist, and skeptic. I think that puts me in the center left. BTW, I bet this scale is the first time chrismb has been labeled a leftist!
"Maybe they are still checking its behaviour before bringing it to full power."
My guess is they will spend most of the year and budget tuning the system for full power. To me, a well behaved machine changes output predictably as control parameters are varied (pressures, currents, timing, etc.). Assuming the diagnostic equipment is calibrated, I bet they're in the process of holding all inputs constant except for one and plotting the results. This is how they characterize the machine, define it's sweet spot, and determine operational ranges. Depending on the number of variables and the time between runs, this could take some time.

I bet this is why they can say the machine is giving positive results while the experiment is still under way.

DeltaV
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Post by DeltaV »

toddzilla wrote:I bet this is why they can say the machine is giving positive results while the experiment is still under way.
Welcome to the forum. That seems reasonable for a machine with subtle physics. Lots of state variables.

bennmann
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Post by bennmann »

Updating some other forum threads with the article:
fusor.net/board

http://www.overclock.net/technology-sci ... rks-8.html

Good discussion here on talk polywell on it. I'm glad I didn't go ahead with the last Christmas update and bother Alan then with measly little first plasma, good things come to those who wait :)

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

Ivy Matt wrote:
Betruger wrote:Look at the exact way Park put it.
Your point is that the demonstration reactor is not the next step, therefore the next step can only be WB-8.1. That's not how I read it, but I hope you're right. The question is, where would the funds come from? It looks like all Recovery Act funding is going towards WB-8. I suppose, if they get a contract to build WB-D, they could include testing of p+B11 fuel as a preliminary step.
The article isn't so clear and definitive, so I'm just seeing what are the possible scenarios, between now and Demo.. It says there may or may not be any more small scale machines. Which as I understand it means WB-D, and IIRC there's no other planned machines between WB-8 and WB-D other than the PBj 8.1 mod. Unless something happens in the year ahead that prompts it.
Park hopes that WB-8 will be the last small-scale experimental machine EMC2 will have to build.
"This machine should be able to generate 1,000 times more nuclear activity than WB-7, with about eight times more magnetic field [...] We'll call that a good success. That means we're on track with the scaling law."
"Hopes" and "should". So these points are TBD.

Ivy Matt
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Post by Ivy Matt »

toddzilla wrote:On a scale of chrismb <-> ivy
I take it I'm the one on the ultra-far-right? I'm not sure quite how I got there, but I will choose to take it as a compliment. :lol:
Temperature, density, confinement time: pick any two.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

Betruger wrote: Which as I understand it means WB-D, and IIRC there's no other planned machines between WB-8 and WB-D other than the PBj 8.1 mod. Unless something happens in the year ahead that prompts it.
The NAVY contract references a WB9 which is not necessarily equivalent to WB-D.
Boyle wrote:The $7.9 million contract covers work to see whether Bussard's fusion concept can be scaled up to a size capable of putting out more power than it consumes.
This sounds like WB9 rather than WBD which is intended to put out 100MW more power. More, 100MW more. Different statements.
Boyle wrote:should know whether it's worth going ahead with the next step, perhaps even with the big demonstration reactor.
"The next step" could be either WB8.1 OR WB9.

D Tibbets
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Post by D Tibbets »

Dr Nebel retireing from LNL? I don't know how much this has to do with work at EMC2. He apparently had enough time in a LNL, he returned one day and resumed his regular status, the next day he retires. Lots of probable benifits from the federal civil servant job (?).
That he chooses to sever ties, consult, or resume regular work at EMC2 is the more interesting speculation point.
That Dr Parks chose to apparently abandon his position at LNL in order to continue intimate work with EMC2 is also interesting. Was he given an ultimatum by LNL?
Is there some politics occuring?

PS: My upper guesstimate for WB* maximum possible output is closer to ~ 300,000 times that of WB6-7- based on assumptions of ~4,000 from B scaling X ~ 8 from size scaling X ~ 10 from voltage scaling. If they push to ~ 100 KV, they could optimistically reach ~ 1000 Watts of fusion output. [EDIT-that would be 1000 Watts if the machine ran for 1 second. For a ~ 1 millisecond pulse, that would be ~ 1 Watt wquivalent or ~ 5 *10^11 neutrons ]
Would they need radiation shielding for that level?

Dan Tibbets
Last edited by D Tibbets on Fri May 13, 2011 1:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
To error is human... and I'm very human.

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

I scratched my head over this one a little as well.

If results are Holy Shoot the Chicken! good, that can jusitfy jumping to demo (and PB&J).

If results are good, but not good enough for PB&J, that can justify jumping to a DD/DT DEMO.

If results are good enough for PB&J, but not Holy Shoot the Chicken! That can justify WB8.1 and testing for PB&J before DEMO.

If results are not good, then it dies, and the chicken lives.

Also, let us not forget that WB8.1 should more or less be built on the WB8 frame (if I have understood it all correctly).

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Again, I would be cautious about the allure of overparsing in our dearth of information. I've got nothing but love for Alan, but there's several statements in there that are, shall we say, slightly imprecise. It's very hard for anyone to put together more than three sentences about Polywell fusion without making a basic mistake somewhere, and you never know whether interviewers get these things down exactly as the speaker intended, so attempting to read between the lines is probably inadvisable given how blurry the lines themselves are.

OTOH, we have seven months to kill. Hey, if you take the second and fourth letters of every third gerund, I think it spells BUSSARD WAS RIGHT!
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...

mvanwink5
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Post by mvanwink5 »

D Tibbets wrote: PS: My upper guesstimate for WB* maximum possible output is closer to ~ 300,000 times that of WB6-7- based on assumptions of ~4,000 from B scaling X ~ 8 from size scaling X ~ 10 from voltage scaling. If they push to ~ 100 KV, they could optimistically reach ~ 1000 Watts of fusion output.
Dan Tibbets
Dr. Park was comparing WB-8 to WB-7, do we know what WB-7 output was (I guess we could include WB-7.1 in that)? A victim of information dearth again.

Best,
Mike
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

krenshala
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Post by krenshala »

CaptainBeowulf wrote:
Ivy Matt wrote:
mvanwink5 wrote:I would have preferred "get ready for Earth to Mars in a month, here we come."
I don't think the Navy would have appreciated that. :wink:
I don't know... if the navy is able to start building starships, they might be able to put together a solid case to take over the air force. One 90 year old instance of interservice rivalry solved! :lol:
Thats an interesting philosophical dilemma for me. On the one hand, the USN has all those years (okay, centuries) of experience running a vessel isolated from the rest of the world, and translating that into work in vacuum just adds a few new twists to existing problems and adds a few others. On the other hand, I'd love to be able to say I was part of the US Aerospace Force back before it got its name changed for the second time. ;)

On the gripping hand, a nice Purple Suit solution would solve the entire thing, with the exception of whether it would be Generals or Admirals running the show. ;)

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

KitemanSA wrote:
Betruger wrote: Which as I understand it means WB-D, and IIRC there's no other planned machines between WB-8 and WB-D other than the PBj 8.1 mod. Unless something happens in the year ahead that prompts it.
The NAVY contract references a WB9 which is not necessarily equivalent to WB-D.
Boyle wrote:The $7.9 million contract covers work to see whether Bussard's fusion concept can be scaled up to a size capable of putting out more power than it consumes.
This sounds like WB9 rather than WBD which is intended to put out 100MW more power. More, 100MW more. Different statements.
Boyle wrote:should know whether it's worth going ahead with the next step, perhaps even with the big demonstration reactor.
"The next step" could be either WB8.1 OR WB9.
That's right, I'd forgotten about WB-9.

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