Talk-Polywell.org

Yes, the article about the soldered joints was very interesting. Apparently they plan to use compressed air to blow solder wherever they want it. I wondered how they'd avoid the solder short-circuiting the various joints - but then realized that would be no worse than the stainless steel that alread...

I decided quite some time ago that Commonwealth Fusion Systems would be successful with ARC. That was mainly because the they would use high temperature superconductors that would give them a stronger magnetic field (suppressing instabilities and allowing the device to be much smaller, saving cost a...

I recently ran across a paper by Parisi, Diallo, and Schwartz (DOI 10.1088/1741-4326/ad7da3) discussing the use of spin-polarized fuels to improve the performance of tokamaks. The cross section for D + T → α + n, would be increased by 1.5 if the fuels were injected with parallel polarization. I star...

Given my bad mental health, please forgive me. But this reads awful: they are quietly saying their system doesn’t work. Can anyone help understand and/or cheer me up? RERT Well, Polaris is certainly not generating electricity YET. But we shouldn't expect that. As I read the paper, they expect their...

Article with David Kirtley among the authors published monday this week: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03425 An improved understanding of Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) merging and stability in high acceleration and compression magnetic fields is needed to speed up the development of the pulsed fu...

"The physical site is big enough, flat enough and near good transportation. It has a connection to the grid after a coal power plant retired." I think that last part is important. It would be even nicer if they could reuse the turbines and generators, and simply supply the heat with fusion instead o...

For a detailed discussion of the catch hardware, I recommend "How SpaceX Caught Super Heavy - Explained" by RyanHansenSpace (currently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub6HdADut50).

Global Challenges has an article "Future Energy Breakthroughs: Implications for the Hydrocarbon Economies of the Arabian Gulf" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/gch2.202400151). Under "Energy on Demand", they discuss small modular reactors, assessing "the likelihood of heterogeneous S...

https://www.energy.senate.gov/hearings/2024/9/full-committee-hearing-to question: 00:51:00 "are you still on track to show it can produce electricity by the end of this year?" answer: 00:51:51 my summary: on track for testing before end of year, demonstrate electricity likely next year. ...and gene...

Yes, sounds good. There's a bit more information in this article from last year: https://www.naturphilosophie.co.uk/buil ... ert-china/ . Neither article says how big the power plant is, though the earlier one mentions a possible 373 MW plant by 2030.

I wonder if the chamber could be evacuated between pulses, at least in part, electromagnetically? After all, there have been proposals to use FRC fusion for spacecraft propulsion, which would require expelling the plasma at a high speed. For example: Stephanie J. Thomas, Michael A. Paluszek, and Sam...

“ In the case of copper, the highest density achievable would be about 97 density with 15 percent shrinkage, but shrinkage can be kept to under 7 percent with 10 to 12 percent porosity.”

So, definitely not vacuum tight. And I don’t see anything about printing superconductors.

I've been hoping existing coal- or gas-fueled generating stations could just be converted. They already have the licenses and grid connections. But I have to admit that having just one customer would mitigate the growing pains.

Getting a grid connection has become a significant problem for solar projects https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/climate/renewable-energy-us-electrical-grid.html , but fusion doesn't require large amounts of land. I hope they are looking at existing fossil fueled plants that already have the grid co...

I suppose you've seen this patent?
John Thomas Slough, David Edwin Kirtley, and Christopher James Pihl. Advanced D-3He fuel cycle for a pulsed fusion reactor. European Patent EP 3103119 B1, March 2021.