rcain wrote: agreed. it is a disgrace. but unfortunately, missiles are one of the Navy's first priorities; energy production is way down their list. so we are pretty 'thankful' they are funding any of it at all.
In truth, the Navy isn't funding them at all any more. Their money comes from the much hated "Recovery Act".
vankirkc wrote:...
For my own part, I think the Polywell thing is a full employment scheme for elderly LANL physicists.
- i think you might have a good point there. except that Nebel put-on-ice a seemingly 'very interesting' research programme into POPS in order to pursue Polywell configuration (I don't think he is that old). And old or not, it was Bussard's unabashed enthusiasm for the science at the famous 'Google seminar' that got me (along so many others) hooked on the 'possibility'. [edit] ... and reacquainted with the subject[/edit]
Joseph Chikva wrote:...
If Polywell would be a really promising idea, its financing would be on orders higher.
like ITER you mean
unfortunately, the 'real-politik' of science does not seem/is not always 'rational'.
Technologies developing in ITER and NIF program’s frames may be used in others - more successful.
And I am sure that making decision people's behavior is more rational than you think.
And the reason is more primitive.
They do not see real promising concept at this moment.
At least Polywell and Focus Fusion developers (Bussard and Lerner) could not ensure them.
• TOKAMAK can achieve breakeven only if its confinement time will exceed about 600s.
• NIF - low efficiency of lasers.
• LIF - problems with beams focusing.
• HIF - do not know
Polywell had funding ready from major sources. cf. MSimon.
unfortunately, the 'real-politik' of science does not seem/is not always 'rational'.
Technologies developing in ITER and NIF program’s frames may be used in others - more successful.
And I am sure that making decision people's behavior is more rational than you think.
And the reason is more primitive.
They do not see real promising concept at this moment.
At least Polywell and Focus Fusion developers (Bussard and Lerner) could not ensure them.
• TOKAMAK can achieve breakeven only if its confinement time will exceed about 600s.
• NIF - low efficiency of lasers.
• LIF - problems with beams focusing.
• HIF - do not know
Polywell had funding ready from major sources. cf. MSimon.
you make some good points JC - and equally i have made such points myself. After all, as Betruger points out, one cannot really accuse the powers that be of funding in a totally irrational way, if some of those same funding decisions 'did' end up favoring Bussard's programme in particular.
One can even argue also, that it is the very scarcity of public funding itself that has motivated people like Eric Lerner and some others, to make the (open) progress they have.
Still, ITER remains a big fat badly managed monster, that provides bacon in the larder for many very worthy scientists. But I will lay you a wager, that TOKAMAK will be beaten in the race for economic fusion by 'some other' technology - most likely an IE(C) concept.
Joseph Chikva wrote:
Technologies developing in ITER and NIF program’s frames may be used in others - more successful.
And I am sure that making decision people's behavior is more rational than you think.
And the reason is more primitive.
They do not see real promising concept at this moment.
At least Polywell and Focus Fusion developers (Bussard and Lerner) could not ensure them.
• TOKAMAK can achieve breakeven only if its confinement time will exceed about 600s.
• NIF - low efficiency of lasers.
• LIF - problems with beams focusing.
• HIF - do not know
Polywell had funding ready from major sources. cf. MSimon.
you make some good points JC - and equally i have made such points myself. After all, as Betruger points out, one cannot really accuse the powers that be of funding in a totally irrational way, if some of those same funding decisions 'did' end up favoring Bussard's programme in particular.
One can even argue also, that it is the very scarcity of public funding itself that has motivated people like Eric Lerner and some others, to make the (open) progress they have.
Still, ITER remains a big fat badly managed monster, that provides bacon in the larder for many very worthy scientists. But I will lay you a wager, that TOKAMAK will be beaten in the race for economic fusion by 'some other' technology - most likely an IE(C) concept.
Only if some viable technology is found. Let us hope that one is, because the amount of money chasing the dream is unsustainably large...and coming out of my pocket!
vankirkc wrote: Only if some viable technology is found. Let us hope that one is, because the amount of money chasing the dream is unsustainably large...and coming out of my pocket!
rcain wrote:But I will lay you a wager, that TOKAMAK will be beaten in the race for economic fusion by 'some other' technology - most likely an IE(C) concept.
TOKAMAK is beaten already now. As if you would like to build power plant producing net power 1GW based on TOKAMAK concept with cycle time 700 s, you should gain 7E11 J of net energy per each cycle. And this is too much.
And all these in case if ITER and following DEMO or somewhat else will even reach the required confinement time. As today it seems as problematic and raises big doubts.
KitemanSA wrote:IIRC, both Dr B and Dr N have suggested that WB6 was effectively steady-state. And if it had enough time to knock the electrons off a neutral gas, bring the cold electrons up to energy, and achieve steady state, it seems likely that annealing would have happened in that time too. Just a thought.
Yes, that was broadly my impression too.
According to Bussard the cascading ionization by electron collisions is really fast, mere usecs. My guess is that the annealing process reaches a sort of equilibrium in microseconds. I suppose I should actually calculate an average number of ion transits over a period of time to get closer to something like an informed guess.
The aspects to really keep an eye on remain, imho, the cusp-plugging and the electron thermalization scaling (we know this will be more of an issue in larger machines).
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...
- i think you might have a good point there. except that Nebel put-on-ice a seemingly 'very interesting' research programme into POPS in order to pursue Polywell configuration (I don't think he is that old). And old or not, it was Bussard's unabashed enthusiasm for the science at the famous 'Google seminar' that got me (along so many others) hooked on the 'possibility'. [edit] ... and reacquainted with the subject[/edit]
