Talk-Polywell.org

Ok, unable to answer I’ll shut up! Enjoy folks. R.

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

Two layers, half thickness, offset laterally.

If anyone had reviewed the risks of Global Warming from energy use 200 years ago, they wouldn’t have seen any. In 200 years, US energy use per head might have gone up 50%, and the whole 50% more people worldwide might match them. That’s an enormous rise. Currently people inject about 0.7% of atmosph...

Just to note for distant future reference, if they do cool the mantle and stop plate tectonics, carbon-based life is going to die out… Much more dangerous than Global Warming, though might take a while.

Just sayin’…

And yes, it isn’t much compared to a thermal plant, or very large given the size of the machine. It’s just more than people seemed to be discussing just now…

Some posts back I came to understand that the operational picture was circa 40 MJ in, 10MJ of fusion power, 45 MJ out, at 10Hz, delivering 50MW net. That makes net power the same as waste power, and 50MW heat has to be defrayed somewhere. Is that right? The obvious places for heating are walls and c...

Thanks! I didn’t ever see data supporting that story, not inclined to argue with your explanation.

The data up to 2017 shows nuclear erratically drifting down from about 2005, with fossil fuels flat to up and renewables rising, seeming roughly consistent with your description.

I think ‘counter intuitive’ is a little kind. I heard that France was reducing nuclear power and adding gas to make way for renewables, because the gas plants were required for load following. In that context if Helion can load follow, it’s a big deal. If it’s baseload cost is less than wind and sol...

The obsession is not with tritium burning, it’s with evacuation being a limiting factor for power production. Evacuating less means putting up with burning waste tritium.

If Helion's reactor could run in 'dirty' mode, still evacuating at 10Hz, but with two pulses between evacuations, it would generate circa twice the power. If peaking power is worth 10X baseload, which sounds very conservative given the above data, it could run like this 5% of the time as a peaker an...

This from the UK:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... rgy-crisis

Producers getting up to £6 ~$7 per kWh at some times.

Mind you there is this: http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/prices.html I agree with you, tritium at $30,000 per gram is roughly $0.30 per kWh. I just googled to get the link above, but it seems to me to be saying the marginal price of power is over $0.50 per kWh (its about 6 am in California)....

Ok, that’ll do. The patent makes clear that choosing whether to extract tritium or not was close to front and centre of their thinking at some point. They probably made a sane choice, and I’m not inclined to argue. The fact that selling the Tritium will make them a small fortune probably wraps it up…

Thanks SJ: i really appreciate your patience. I wasn’t aware or the topics you highlight were in the patent, I will read it. I was aware the 14MeV TD neutrons are much more activating than the DD neutrons. I struggle with any intuition about what that means - flux dependent! - for costs. The point a...