The 2006 Z machine experiments, a mostly overlooked major science hit, and the potential link to LENR

I think Haines never developed his embryonic theory . He died in 2013, 7 years later.

The Boltzmann ion-ion collisions were not high enough to account for the energy transfer.

These are dense plasmas with something like ~1 nanometer separation between the metal ions.

Perhaps the instantaneous magnetic flux transfer and induction heating of the metal ion electron clouds of Wyttenbach's NPP2 applies. https://www.google.com/url?sa=…Vaw3zYvgeddLSKu29X_mukEIF

I don't know whether the 1 nanometer separation is too far for this magnetic transfer to operate

The Zpinch with its megaAmps are really capital and energy intensive.

There appear to be cheaper, solid state methods for LENR.

There is a whole spectrum of alternative "hot fusion" approaches, based on known d+t, d=d or p+B11 cross sections, and scaling temperature, pressure, containment lifetime in different ways.

It is fascinating. Nearly all of the possible under-explored points on this spectrum are smaller/easier than traditional torus ITER fusion. Some have easier near wall probems. Unfortunately, there are (different) challenges to achieving break-even, let alone X10 or more energy production.

Points to watch:

Eric Lerner's crowd (similar to Z-pinch - with a clear remit to achieve useful fusion in a compact machine, and an outside chance of getting this. there scaling says they can but only if they conquer some technological problems about electrode life, high Z ion impurities.

TAE (used to be Tri-Alpha, well funded by google and others) go for a different point on the spectrum with FRCs - not sure quite which version of FRC work they are now trying for. FRCs are great ways to contain plasma. You can then squeeze them with magnetic fields. You can also add energy to them with electric fields and collide. So there are many different ways to achieve fusion at useful levels.

General Fusion have always had good funding for their morphing (because original ideas did not work) steam-punk version of fusion. Personally I see their stuff as more spin than reality but they are doing a lot of good work and deserve their shot at the prize.

Polywell have more or less disappeared in spite of having a uniquely interesting way to do fusion that theoretically might scale well and work.

Then of course there is Hora's well publicised in 2016 p-B11 laser fusion stuff. i think they should be funded by google to do more investigation but no signs of this. Maybe they are just getting bad reviews from anyone who looks at their science? It seems a plausible possibility with some experimental backing looking at the papers with not much expertise?

Quote from Alan Smith

@wyttenbach's theory shows the magnetic fields- though at atomic scale to be extraordinarily powerful

Haines observed the anomalous energy output as soft Xrays..I,e >250 kEV.

I'm not sure whether the magnetic flux transfer can cause this.

This was Haines embryonic idea which he never finalised

"In this Letter a new approach

to the rapid conversion of magnetic energy to radiation via short wavelength m=0 interchange MHD,instabilities,

the subsequent ion viscous heating,

then equipartition to the electrons,

and finally to soft x-ray radiationis proposed.

Maybe he could never justify all the steps.

Hot fusion is futile approach to fusion which just drains money from cold fusion and it serves ipso-facto as an evasion of its ignorance for laymen.

Quote from RobertBryant

Haines observed the anomalous energy output as soft Xrays..I,e >250 kEV.

The intermediate D*-D* field couples to all available magnetic gamma states if the coupling distance is OK! But gamma's only occur if no internal magnetic down-scaling is possible. This is what the experimenters now try to optimize.

Quote from Curbina

but such impressive results

Its hard to know if there was "over unity".

The total energy input in.. gross V x I x T...is not stated.

the energy input into the plasma is based on assumptions but I assume it is a small fraction of the gross energy.

No conspiraladia...just wrong assumptions...

Posthumous Haines info needed

Quote from Curbina

I think the overunity of the experiments is out of the question

Have you clear estimates of total energy in?

kinetic energy in(theoretical)?

soft xray energy out.?

Its hard to work out from the published details.

Quote from Wyttenbach

But gamma's only occur if no internal magnetic down-scaling

I guess there was little internal magnetic downscaling in the 250 kev and upward range.

They needed an ecological approach.

Interesting Product of Energetic Hydrino Reaction

Notice the thread like nature of the silver ash. This structure is much like nano tubes.

Magnetism of Hydrino Hydrogen

Silver has changed it nature to super paramagnetic, a hybrid of ferromagnetism and para magnetism. This is probably due to the formation of silver Rydberg clustering in a ultra dense form.

The same enclosed experiment could be performed with tungsten as in z-pinch to see if the same cluster formation occurs with the attendant development of super paramagnetism.

There are similar LENR based experiments using the application of high powered arcs such as

Low-energy nuclear reactions and the leptonic monopole

Georges Lochak*, Leonid Urutskoev**

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LochakGlowenergyn.pdf

Here, remote at a distance transmutation of uranium (U238) is produced.

Quote from Curbina

Robert, I think the overunity of the experiments is out of the question, every press release and analysis states it was detected and the surprise was so big that it took the people doing the experiments 14 months of further experiments and checks and double checks to confirm this.

This article has some key statements:

https://share-ng.sandia.gov/ne…ron/hottest-z-output.html

What happened and why?

Z’s energies in these experiments raised several questions.

First, the radiated x-ray output was as much as four times the expected kinetic energy input.

Ordinarily, in non-nuclear reactions, output energies are less — not greater — than the total input energies. More energy had to be getting in to balance the books, but from where could it come?

Second, and more unusually, high ion temperatures were sustained after the plasma had stagnated — that is, after its ions had presumably lost motion and therefore energy and therefore heat — as though yet again some unknown agent was providing an additional energy source to the ions.

Sandia’s Z machine normally works like this: 20 million amps of electricity pass through a small core of vertical tungsten wires finer than human hairs. The core is about the size of a spool of thread. The wires dissolve instantly into a cloud of charged particles called a plasma.

The plasma, caught in the grip of the very strong magnetic field accompanying the electrical current, is compressed to the thickness of a pencil lead. This happens very rapidly, at a velocity that would fly a plane from New York to San Francisco in several seconds.

At that point, the ions and electrons have nowhere further to go. Like a speeding car hitting a brick wall, they stop suddenly, releasing energy in the form of X-rays that reach temperatures of several million degrees — the temperature of solar flares.

The new achievement — temperatures of billions of degrees — was obtained in part by substituting steel wires in cylindrical arrays 55 mm to 80 mm in diameter for the more typical tungsten wire arrays, approximately only 20 mm in diameter. The higher velocities achieved over these longer distances were part of the reason for the higher temperatures.

(The use of steel allowed for detailed spectroscopic measurements of these temperatures impossible to obtain with tungsten.)

Haines theorized that the rapid conversion of magnetic energy to a very high ion plasma temperature was achieved by unexpected instabilities at the point of ordinary stagnation: that is, the point at which ions and electrons should have been unable to travel further. The plasma should have collapsed, its internal energy radiated away. But for approximately 10 nanoseconds, some unknown energy was still pushing back against the magnetic field.

Haines’ explanation theorizes that Z’s magnetic energies create microturbulences that increase the kinetic energies of ions caught in the field’s grip. Already hot, the extra jolt of kinetic energy then produces increased heat, as ions and their accompanying electrons release energy through friction-like viscous mixing even after they should have been exhausted.

High temperatures previously had been assumed to be produced entirely by the kinetic flight and intersection of ions and electrons, unaided by accompanying microturbulent fields.

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Only this site could come to that conclusion from the Z machine experiments!

The kinetic energy in is estimated - and the conclusion the Z-pinch guys come to is that those estimates are wrong - with plasma effects allowing longer mean path and hence higher KE in ions than expected.

First of all - Z-pinches are well explored as a potential path to fusion (they do not quite work) but they have led to Dense Plasma Focus experiments where for a long time Focus Fusion (Eric Lerner) have tried to get DPFs working with p-B11 aneutronic fusion where potentially the high magnetic field helps p-B11 by reducing bremsstrahlung losses. LPP fusion is still in business but it looks a very long shot.

DPF Device - LPP Fusion

The dense plasma focus device consists of two cylindrical metal electrodes nested inside each other. The outer electrode is generally no more than 6-7 inches

www.lppfusion.com

The (formidable) difficulties relate to anode erosion in the fact that they need exact symmetry to get a dense enough focus for higher fusion rates. They are continuing to work on the many different technical problems scaling up their DPF to something that can achieve useful fusion energy gain. Latest report:

https://www.lppfusion.com/storage/LPPFusion-Report-November-30-2022.pdf

DPF work is intermediate between ICF (very short, high temp & pressure) and tokomak (long confinement, lower tempo and pressure). They get longer confinement from the magnetically confined collapsing plasma ( a few ns) but it is not as dense of hot as ICF.

I would love the DPF work to do what it promises - as with all of the fusion methods the technical problems are large - which is why the NIF data - using lasers not well designed for the purpose - is really impressive.

Anyway I'd hope this site is cheering on all the alt-fusion methods rather than scoffing. One alt-fusion method which is now pretty well dead is Polywell fusion - it seems out that the necessary electric well cannot be achieved at high plasma densities due to plasma conduction. So a very neat idea - but it does not work.

All the others:

• DPF (Eric Lerner & LPP fusion)
• Mechanically collapsing liquid metal cavity fusion (General Fusion)
• Colliding Field Reverse Configuration plasmas (Helion)

Then the tokomak-lite ones:

• (spherical tokomaks + HTS magnets) Tokomak energy (Oxford, UK) https://www.tokamakenergy.co.u…raded-st40-fusion-device/
• (high-field tokomak with HTS magnets) Commonwealth Fusion + MIT https://cfs.energy/technology/

Are continuing using private money mostly to try to get their methods working. The tokomak-lite ones look a good deal stronger than the true alt-tech ones at the moment.

None of them have a very great chance of succeeding quickly - the technical challenges are great - but they are all a much better short-term commercial bet than ITER, and in theory Tokomak Energy or Commonwealth Energy Systems or (investors favourite - but seems a long shot to me) General Fusion could get there quickly. These multiple attempts are very exciting because any one is not that likely to succeed they all have some chance - and with many different attempts the probability gets higher. Also, they all cross-fertilise enabling technologies.

This site - if it deigns to notice all these attempts - could be cheering them on.

Tokomak Energy expect their ST80-HTS (2026) to be a tech proof of concept for a proposed 2030s ST-E1 fusion plant delivering 20MW of grid power. The ST-E1 is a bit hopeful but it is true the ST80 will happen soon, and that ST-80 will demonstrate useful fusion energy production (but without the ability to deliver it as grid power).

Z-pinches can produces fusion energy: Here is 6J of fusion energy produced at a Q of 1/100000 from a Z-pinch in 2016 https://www.lppfusion.com/git-…tput-with-deuterium-fuel/

But - misreading old Z-pinch results as being what they are not is not helpful! You can be sure that if Z-pinches had fusion potential one of the Z-Pinch groups would have spun off an alt-fusion company like the above other than the clear progression from Z-pinch to DPF which has been trying now for a long time, though nobody seems (probably rightly) to rate its chances.

THH

Basically - it is only this site that equates hot fusion to ITER and dismisses it. Everyone else looks to small private companies that are using the ITER science and other stuff to try different "promises to be much smaller and work" concepts.

That, for me, is the (partial) justification of ITER. Though arguably that science could have been bought more cheaply in some different way.

Ignition Omission: Understanding the National Ignition Facility Milestone also accompanying video presentation.

1. The actual device input energy that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory omitted in its December 2022 announcement.
2. The real-world significance of fusion ignition/scientific breakeven.
3. The gap between the ignition result and the energy needed for device breakeven.
4. The extremely brief duration of the fusion reaction.
5. Why the claims that fusion is an “unlimited, abundant” source of energy are not true.
6. That one of the two required fuels for most nuclear fusion concepts does not exist.
7. That there currently are no good ways to make tritium.
8. Visually, how far away this fusion device is from becoming a practical source of energy.

Frankly, just the first objection looks as most significant one for me. Why? From the NIF history graph follows that latest achievment was done by assisting laser fusion by discharge of coil surrounding the fusion cell. This would create magnetic field impulse which would compress plasma by mechanism similar to pinch fusion. And then there is the problem, that we don't know, which amount of input energy/electricity has been actually used in this impulse.

Which is because the output laser array energy (which is an impressive piece of technology by itself) can not be increased too much anymore. So that everyone could assume, that the whole increase of fusion yield was done without contribution of lasers. But the energy which one can put into magnetic pulse and pinch can be increased nearly arbitrarily and it can easily exceed the amount of energy delivered by lasers by order of magnitude. This is because the laser array has rather low net energy efficiency, whereas the powering of solenoid required just a capacitor bank, the size of which can be increased arbitrarily. And one megajoule shot from capacitor bank is nothing spectacular here, for instance the Z-machine delivers 20 MJ into shots regularly.

One should expect that there is strong political pressure to keep the investments into USD 5 billion NIF facility running and this facility consumes one billion every year in addition. So it may be easily possible, that NIF facility was silently redesigned from laser fusion to Z-pinch machine and most if not all the ceremonially announced increase of output power actually comes from energy introduced into pinch, not from fusion reaction itself. The laser array is there just for illumination of Z-pinch discharge, literally speaking.

Quote from Curbina

I guess you did not even try to read Petit’s essay, one of many.

Curbina - I'm happy for you to detail what that I say is wrong. However just saying "you did not read this essay" is a cheap way to rubbish what somone says without bothering to see what (if anything) is wrong with it.

And you do not even link the essay...

Poor form.