Talk-Polywell.org

I think funding for fusion is based on realistic expectations, but out of desparation. Fusion success may be essential to the continuation of the great industrial experiment.

mvanwink5 wrote: I'll put my two cent bet that in a year or two that CK will rediscover his optimism

hope you're right.

It appear to me that you have changed your argurment from science does not succeed, to be that technology development does not always get to market I never made that distinction, and it's not a distinction that makes sense. Science is about producing knowledge. In that sense, fusion research is a "...

If fusion is successful as a source of electricity that is clean, cheap, and decentralized (p-11b without needing big capital investment for steam and turbines) EVERYTHING will change. Cheap electricity would: -- substitute for natural gas for electricity and heating -- help provide feedstocks for i...

So now you are saying that your failure examples were not science fails, but engineering/economic fails More hair splitting. They do not work -- not good enough to sell. The goals of the research were not met -- after big investments and much time. Fuel cells are a particularly dramatic example -- ...

Bubble memory, fuel cells practical for cars, fission powered airplanes and automobiles I don't see those as technologies that can't work so much as there being better alternatives. First, they were illustrations: not everything that is promising and close to practicality actually works -- no matte...

In addition to these there are others like Lockheed Martin I hope one of them work because electricity that is clean, cheap, and decentralized (p-11b without needing big capital investment for steam and turbines) will change EVERYTHING. The first tier of changes are possible to guess: -- no more co...

> a number of scientists and engineers that would disagree They invented a bomb in the 1950s. Not controlled fusion, not an energy source. Changing the subject (from sustained fusion to bombs) doesn't change the sad reality that fusion for energy -- so far -- has many times claimed to be close to su...

#1 "Fusion is here" Wow. That bears no relationship to reality. Every attempt to achieve fusion (breakeven, let alone practical energy) has failed, and every optimistic prediction over 60 years has been proven fatally, drastically, dramatically wrong. That's true for every approach: NiF, Tokamaks, S...

NiF, whatever else it's multiple purposes, tried to achieve break-even fusion, and failed. NiF is the successor to NOVA, which tried to achieve break-even fusion, and failed. And Nova was itself the successor to Shiva and even earlier laser-to-fusion efforts. The failure is relevant. It occurred des...

Ask anyone who is seriously into nuclear fusion to get the real story. So: you've got nothing to back that up. NiF is the successor to NOVA, NOVA was the successor to Shiva. NOVA was supposed to achieve a self-sustaining fusion reaction. It failed. So far NiF has failed too at fusion. Everything el...

ladajo wrote:Not meant to be contemptuous

Your opinion, or do you have anything to back that up?

The IEEE -- not exactly slouches -- seem to disagree. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/ene ... oondoggles

- Charles

Pretty much everyone in the field knows that NIF was never serious about being an energy research project. I can certainly see NiF was not designed as a demo of a practical electricity (or energetic neutron) generating device. It may not make sense as a bomb emulator, either. Still... it did try to...

I would not completely rule laser based fusion out. But this approach was definitely the wrong one from the start (for energy, it is still a good one for nuclear weapons research, which is what this thing was built for to begin with). The article excerpted below suggests NiF was created initially f...

[quote="Skipjack"NIF was never meant for fusion for energy. The concept is by design completely useless for that[/quote] Thanks. That's what I suspected - just 'cause it's SUCH a giant machine, all for imploding such a tiny target. And to produce steady energy it would need to be a pulse device, loa...

Are other companies investigating Polywell as a potential fusion generator? If not, why not? Isn't Polywell an old technology already proven useless? That's the skeptic view. I'm not trying to start a heated debate; I love the idea the search for power for electric warships having as a side-effect a...