Talk-Polywell.org

'Uk set to be the first country to legislate for safe and efficient rollout of fusion energy' https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-set-to-be-first-country-to-legislate-for-safe-and-efficient-rollout-of-fusion-energy 'UKs first fusion technology centre opens in South Yorkshire' https://sheffieldcity...

I made myself watch this a few days ago. Ego and pessimism aside, the schematic on the need for Q>20 for a Tokamak was interesting. That was from generation efficiency 50% (not unkind) and power conversion to plasma injected power 10% (no idea if that makes sense). So Q=20 just drives the machine wi...

Thanks!

Let’s do this in detail. The Helion reactor runs on D+3He. Is that 50:50 or some other ratio? D+3He produces 4He. D + D produces 3He and 3H in similar quantities. The cross-section of DD is much lower than D3He, and us intrinsically less common as both species are the same. It seems quite improbable...

Thanks Skipjack, that was very informative.

The pB11 advantage would be fuel availability and price. I don’t know how quickly you can ramp up a fleet of D3He reactors, but with p11B there are no real issues with fuel.

The energy needed to run the cryo plant would eat it all up. That's very plausible but not completely obvious. Even 1% better on a 100Mw plant could justify a lot of refrigeration, couldn't it? Guess it depends how close to a heat source the coils have to be, etc. But really I was getting at the po...

The ‘just plain copper’ remark above was interesting. What might be possible with HTSC? What fraction of the 5% unrecovered power might be saved?

Depressing but consistent: everything else is weaponized, why not Greenpeace.

Can you cite any examples on the 'who-not-what' idea?

I found this:

https://energyskeptic.com/2021/why-toka ... -work-out/

Not strictly relevant to TE, but much more interesting than the lightweight hit-piece I was expecting. I'd be interested in folks' thoughts...

Try ‘Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout’. Not a great work of unbiassed literature, but an interesting peek at the start of Greenpeace from an insider, and how it got nuts. Also the quote from Paul Erlich of Stanford: “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot...

I don’t think they ‘make’ the QME. It is just what happens when the fields get high enough and the gyroradius reaches quantum scales. What is critical is that the fields get high enough as the plasmoid implodes. Which on reflection may have been what you meant...

Out of nothing really: I hear tell that TAE sees its FRC plasma stability rise with temperature, therefore p11B isn’t as daft as it might seem. That sounds like physics not technology. Isn’t Helion also an FRC? Does similar hope for p11B apply to them? Neutronic power will be considered evil as soon...

Err... a successful demonstration plant demonstrates that a commercial plant is economically viable. Notice that an unsuccessful demo plant can be anything at all. So, all construction and operation details not already well known are characterised well enough to persuade investors to build a commerc...

Because the plasma pinch stability due to flow shear increases with pinch length. Thanks Giorgio. The above is very counter-intuitive! I had already found and skimmed the paper you cite, but couldn't see any reference to pinch length. Have you got a reference for the above? Also surely creating the...