Real Fusion making Great advances

Quote from Max Nozin

it is figure number 3 . You must be looking at either first or second

OK, now I see that is quite a different design (or is that 3 different designs?). The MIT talk by Whyte visualizes that number 2 diagram as a "mirror" reactor, if I understand it correctly.

I wonder what pressures they are claiming there? Heating to 150 million K gives a ~10 fold over solar temperature (core 15.6 million K). Pressure might be 2 atmospheres, and I think someone claimed that. Without inertial confinement, any terrestrial plasma is going to be very modest pressure compared with our working solar model at 250 billion atmospheres. Confinement time: minutes to hours to a year before disassembly? Versus old Sol at essentially infinity. Lawson criterion parameters of pressure X temperature X confinement time alone suggests that the fusion thermal output of such terrestrial reactors would be zero..... but again with my "wings" on, let us ignore Lawson as not being so widely scalable. And accept that there is an "activation energy" that is reached nicely at 150 or 200 million K and is insignificant at 15 million K (not implausible from chemical thermodynamics perspective, BTW). Ignoring the Solar example (the inspiration for fusion energy since Jules Verne) giving an averaged output of 276.5 microwatts per cc. And ignoring Lockheed's two or three diverse diagrams / images..... Maybe they have something they are not willing to tell us? Unfortunately I cannot presently defend them as well as I can GF, and perhaps not at all, for what that is worth.

With the superconducting magnets apparently inside the plasma vessel and fully subject to the intense neutron flux of the "reaction" not to mention the proximity to the 100 million or more K..... Sheesh!

Quote from Wyttenbach

Here some interesting fusion related work

Quote from Wyttenbach

http://www.rexresearch.com/kingmb/MorayKing2017Share.pdf

https://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/1338022

http://plasma.fisica.unimi.it/…smi/Rome_Fusione_2017.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/p…_Properties_collaboration

Thanks Wyttenbach! Very interesting and informative.

Quote from Longview

There will be little or no possibility of "splashing" since the working fluid will be completely contained on all sides.

hi Longview. Can you explain this statement? Or provide a link or citation that explains it? I do not understand it.

Quote from Debarium

hi Longview. Can you explain this statement? Or provide a link or citation that explains it? I do not understand it.

There is a very brief video whose link I cannot now locate. But, it is from GF and shows many pistons converging on a sphere, whose liquid metal contents in turn converge on a central point. I am suggesting, or perhaps insisting that a free "bubble" is not necessary. The presence of a small capsule (perhaps you can blame me for that part) containing compressed D and T is inserted in the center of the liquid metal sphere immediately prior to each compression cycle (as in the NIF model). No bubble, no splash..... at least that is the idea. Otherwise a real bubble, without the constraint of a capsule pretty much assures you could have non-conformities and of course the equivalent of "splashes" on a small scale of course. I believe the need for a vortex is also obviated by such a structured "hohlraum" capsule.

GF founder LaBerge suggests in his TED talk and elsewhere, the technology for pistons is much less expensive than giga watt laser confinement-- and in many ways may be just as effective. Other simplifications may well be possible and workable. Of course there is a lot of engineering between here and the goal of substantially over unity hot fusion by this path (I suspect).

Quote from Longview

The presence of a small capsule (perhaps you can blame me for that part) containing compressed D and T is inserted in the center of the liquid metal sphere immediately prior to each compression cycle (as in the NIF model).

OK I see. But this is not consistent with GFs process. GF requires a magnetized plasma target. Compressing cold gas, without a magnetic field, cannot conceivably produce fusion. At most, GF is hoping to achieve 1000-fold (by volume) compression. Thats not nearly enough for fusion unless the plasma is very hot and magnetized prior to compression.

Because a magnetized plasma target is required, there must be a vortex tube for injecting it.

BTW, GFs process uses TWO magnetized plasma puffs, injected from top and bottom of the vortex. The plasma puffs collide in the center and stay there (momentum is equal and opposite).

OK, that shows some aspects I had not deduced from the images and cartoons that are my main source of GF details. But, what exactly is a "magnetized" plasma puff? Magnetized implies rapidly rotating charges to me-- is that the motivation for rotating the whole system?. One video does suggest this by showing a donut shaped target (sort of like a plasmoid, ala K. Shoulders), however, if I recall, that is an early cartoon of more conventional technology, shown rapidly cooling. Another, and later GF video shows the "puff" (if that is what it is) entering apparently from only one end..... and in that cartoon, being compressed. I like the canceling of linear (but not rotational) momentum implied by "puffs" from both ends, although surely the full length vortex could be more useful than that.

Certainly the vortex tube must have (or had) a reasonable theoretical purpose. As early modeling showed, the plasma puff can cool too rapidly on insertion via such a path.

Since some sort of rod might most precisely place the "hohlraum" at the central position, it seems possible that such a rod could also be a path for an plasma generating electrical discharge immediately prior to, or corresponding with the compression phase. That "rod' could be a so-called "drop dead" terminated coaxial line made of materials that either would or would not survive the discharge.

Another possibility, and perhaps more practical, would be firing of a "hohlraum" target from one end and laser ablating it from the other end. That could provide in situ and nearly instantaneous neutral plasma generation at the exact center for the compression phase to follow. In that scenario a vortex path clearly becomes useful and practical. Further it does not have be sustained at all during the compression phase.... but usefully, the vortex might be induced to rapidly reform due to rotational momentum after the compression.

No reason why laser ablation, "drop dead" discharge, and inertial compression could not all participate in a working system. But, hard to get the discharge part to recycle at <1 per second, I would guess.

Anyway, the conjunction of plasma formation and prompt or simultaneous inertial compression being the prime motivation for GF or NIF efforts, makes for a lot of possibilities.

Now I find one animation at the beginning of this YouTube video:

That on closer examination, thanks to Debarium, is seen showing or suggesting that beams or colliding particles from both ends are meeting in the middle of the GF reactor coincident with the inertial compressions.

That would seem to sacrifice a lot of plasma density right at the outset (the beams or puffs are tenuous, it appears). But, of course that is just my quite amateur assessment.

As I suggested, it might not hurt GF to take a page from NIF's book for initializing a quite dense plasma via laser ablation of a prepared hohlraum. Perhaps the hohlraum can itself be a tiny cryogenic container of lithium and / or lead filled with liquid D & T. The laser ablator would be tuned to maximize photon absorption by any and preferably all components of the target hohlraum. Timing, as LaBerge points out, is not a difficult issue today. The exact moment of maximum energy absorption into the hohlraum can be precisely tuned to correspond to the maximum compression of the piston driven system. Right away one could see 1000 fold-increases in density over the "1 or 2 atmospheres" of typical plasmas, due simply to the direct and instantaneous conversion of D-T from liquid to supercritical plasma, and before any substantial increase in volume.

I recall that there was some company that was planning to use powerful shaped sound waves to cause the pressure increase, with sonic "pulsers" arranged somewhat similar to the pistons in the image above.

The "puffs" are basically "smoke rings" of magnetized plasma. The technical term is a "field reversed configuration". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-reversed_configuration

The magnetic field is trapped in the plasma because the plasma is electrically conductive. During compression, the magnetic field intensity increases dramatically. The field helps to confine the plasma and prevent the charged particles from impacting the liquid metal surface and thereby prevents cooling off. So the magnetic field essentially provides thermal insulation for the plasma. This maintains the high temperature in the plasma long enough for fusion burn. A magnetic field in the plasma is absolutely essential for GFs process to work.

Quote from gio06

Sergio Orlandi (ITER project leader) opinions on "cold fusion", gse Magazine "Elementi" N. 37:

Published on Apr 3, 2016

Alan Fletcher - please check the second link, 'gse' above- it seems to (possiibly) contain some problem content. Alan Smith.

Quote from H-G Branzell

About General Fusion's reactor, did you try Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Fusion

(Forgive me for being obvious!)

"The outside of the sphere is covered with steam pistons, which simultaneously impact a set of stationary anvils on the surface of the sphere to create acoustic pressure waves in the liquid metal.^[14] The pressure waves converge to become a spherical shockwave at the center of the sphere, causing the liquid metal vortex to collapse and compress the plasma. The compression increases the temperature of the plasma to the point where the deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse, releasing energy in the form of fast neutrons.^"

^{I totally fail so see how a spherical inwards moving shock wave in the red soup can compress anything. When the shock wave arrives at the inner boundary of the liquid metal it cannot propagate any further. Or are we supposed to believe that a gap will open up between the blue container and its red interior, a gap that would enable closure of the central canal?}

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It is pretty clear that you can get a significant volume displaced (via pistons) on the edge and therefore have liquid metal moving to the centre. The point is that the hole in the centre can be very small, and the total volume displacement large because it is started on the surface of a large sphere. So as the shock wave move inwards pressures scale up and also velocities scale up. Keeping exact symmetry is no joke. In fact the whole steam punk thing is probably impossible engineering, but good fun nevertheless and not in principle impossible.

Quote from H-G Branzell

Longview, lenrisnotreal:

After all, NR in LENR means Nuclear Reactions. Production of heat has never been a good indicator of NR.

(Admittedly it does work for plutonium, but that is an exception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…_thermoelectric_generator)

For instance, imagine a NR that yields 1 MeV. To produce 1 Ws would require 6.2E12 NR:s.

At a reaction rate of 1000 NR:s per second it would take 200 years to produce this lonely Ws.

Ionizing radiation on the other hand, is the hallmark of NR and we have at our disposal exquisitely sensitive instruments to to determine type and intensity of such radiation.

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Right.

And this is a big plausibility stumbling block for the E-cat. The number of gamma-level reactions to produce 3000 Ws, (let alone MWs) is huge, and to do this without noticeable bad (radioactive) side reactions is orders of magnitude even more unlikely.