POPS Paper

[drmike]

The advantage of doing the TM wave is that it builds the acceleration in the direction you want it. The electrons will bunch on the E field, so you can build the acceleration field to any dimension you want. If you build the antennas right you will get exactly what you need every time.

A comparison between pulsed grid voltage and pulsed antennas really should be done, both "on paper" and with real devices. The advantage of the TM wave is that it is guaranteed to get high energy waves to the center. A pulsed grid simply pulses outside the plasma and it could be shielded from the core.

It'd be nice if the electron/ion density could be set up to fully absorb the wave energy too. But that's some pretty advanced tuning.

I would think the TM waves can be launched continuously, so the pulse rate would be DC up to MHz. That should be optimized for power flow, both in and out.

[choff]

Thanks msimon for setting me straight on the rexresearch site. Since just about all the information on iec fusion is on the web, are there any other sites out there publishing bogus material people should know about?

[MSimon]

The advantage of doing the TM wave is that it builds the acceleration in the direction you want it. The electrons will bunch on the E field, so you can build the acceleration field to any dimension you want. If you build the antennas right you will get exactly what you need every time.

A comparison between pulsed grid voltage and pulsed antennas really should be done, both "on paper" and with real devices. The advantage of the TM wave is that it is guaranteed to get high energy waves to the center. A pulsed grid simply pulses outside the plasma and it could be shielded from the core.

It'd be nice if the electron/ion density could be set up to fully absorb the wave energy too. But that's some pretty advanced tuning.

I would think the TM waves can be launched continuously, so the pulse rate would be DC up to MHz. That should be optimized for power flow, both in and out.

You know that got me thinking about using electrons to accelerate ions by dragging the ions along. If you could do the ramp rate right.

Just as the electrons are recoiling in the center the ions come in to space charge neutralize the electrons. It would be tough in a voltage gradient because the electrons would want to go one way and the ions another.

[MSimon]

Thanks msimon for setting me straight on the rexresearch site. Since just about all the information on iec fusion is on the web, are there any other sites out there publishing bogus material people should know about?

Next Energy News - they are on the verge of very fringe science. Plus they published a report that California was going to fund Dr. Bussard that turned out to be false.

[TallDave]

Next Energy News - they are on the verge of very fringe science. Plus they published a report that California was going to fund Dr. Bussard that turned out to be false.

Yeah, that was a fun ride. Arrgh.

I'll always wonder what the real story was on that article. Did they make it up? Did they hear something about the real funding from the Navy but miattribute it to the state of CA? Very bad journalism regardless.

[choff]

What eventually lead me to iec fusion sites was the Popular Mechanics story a few years ago with the exploding empire state building front cover. The article made the fantastic claim that while government scientists didn't believe cold fusion worked a form of it could be used by terrorists to build an atomic bomb. I concluded it must be a simple form of hot fusion described as cold fusion to conceal the true method. I checked out at least a dozen local library books on fusion. Only one book referred to Farnsworth as the inventor of television and having built a working small fusion reactor, but it gave no description of it. Not a hint in any other book. Maybe thats why iec gets played down a lot, it could possibly be used by terrorists as a neutron source to enrich uranium.

[MSimon]

What eventually lead me to iec fusion sites was the Popular Mechanics story a few years ago with the exploding empire state building front cover. The article made the fantastic claim that while government scientists didn't believe cold fusion worked a form of it could be used by terrorists to build an atomic bomb. I concluded it must be a simple form of hot fusion described as cold fusion to conceal the true method. I checked out at least a dozen local library books on fusion. Only one book referred to Farnsworth as the inventor of television and having built a working small fusion reactor, but it gave no description of it. Not a hint in any other book. Maybe thats why iec gets played down a lot, it could possibly be used by terrorists as a neutron source to enrich uranium.

I wrote about IEC both as a proliferation and anti-proliferation device:

http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/2007/ ... stuff.html

The difficulty with IEC is that the efficiency is still way too low. A SWAG (scientific wild ass guess) is that the device needs to produce 1 W (or more) of fusion neutrons for every 100 W of input to make it viable for transmutation. We are still a long way away from 99% losses. Currently we are about at 99.9999% losses.

[choff]

Just a wild idea for improving POPS performance. How about adding those harmonics of the primary frequency that boost core pressure while filtering out harmonics that attenuate the primary frequency.

[MSimon]

Just a wild idea for improving POPS performance. How about adding those harmonics of the primary frequency that boost core pressure while filtering out harmonics that attenuate the primary frequency.

There is so much we do not know.

Lots of experiments need to be done.

[choff]

POPS core pressure should increase by using Boron based fuel with its higher mass than the usual lighter deuterium or tritium systems. Possibly some other non reactant material could be added to further increase fuel mass, allowing even higher core pressures.

[Bob]

I'm unable to access the following document.

http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/pur ... 532533.PDF

Does anyone have a copy or different link?

[MSimon]

I'm unable to access the following document.

http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/pur ... 532533.PDF

Does anyone have a copy or different link?

I just loaded it.

It works fine for me. e-mail me and I can send it as an attachment.

[93143]

POPS core pressure should increase by using Boron based fuel with its higher mass than the usual lighter deuterium or tritium systems. Possibly some other non reactant material could be added to further increase fuel mass, allowing even higher core pressures.

I don't think that does any good. The reason you want high pressure is so that more collisions will happen between fusion fuel ions. Adding stuff that isn't fuel just adds non-fusion collisions, increasing the tendency to thermalize without boosting fusion rates any. It could actually make things worse, because you now have to confine the additional 'dead weight'.

There would have to be a substantial favourable nonlinearity in the POPS concept for that sort of thing to help. I haven't gotten around to reading the papers, but I do find that unlikely.

[Nanos]

I get the same issue, you could try this link instead;

http://www.osti.gov/bridge/purl.cover.j ... bviewable/

And then click to download/view the file from there.

[MSimon]

93143,

POPS is tunable. With D-D it shouldn't matter.

With pB11 it is very favorable because H has a Z/M of 1 and B11 is about 1/2 (5/11 to be exact). The discrimination in frequencies need not be very fine. So you just pick which species you want to accelerate and have at it.

There was some reason for running the reactions Hydrogen rich (Bremms?) so it might be advantageous to focus on B11. OTOH that might increase the B-B fusion rate (which is a neutron generator).

We really are about as ignorant as it is possible to be with yet some hope going forward.