Too cool! I put my vote that it is preliminary WB-8 results. Definitely not a web error as it is a correction.KitemanSA wrote:Please note the most recent change to the website. The WB8 "accomplishment" has been recredited to WB7.1. Unfortunately, it is still under the same picture which raises the question, is that the WB8 or not?
emc2's website
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.
WB 7.1 was modified nubs between the coils. What the mod was remains to be seen. The WB7.1 contract was to explore the electron heating of the nubs.
When all that came up we had the discussions about wall mounting the coils. On a side note, Joel's paper also shows wall mount. Or to be more accurate, flange mount...
I am not sure, but the Ion Guns were on a seperate contract to WB7 & 7.1, and they may have been used all along for WB 7. That was part of the interim funding as I recall. I would have to go back a sift througth the contract numbers again. One of these days I will make a spreadsheet...
When all that came up we had the discussions about wall mounting the coils. On a side note, Joel's paper also shows wall mount. Or to be more accurate, flange mount...
I am not sure, but the Ion Guns were on a seperate contract to WB7 & 7.1, and they may have been used all along for WB 7. That was part of the interim funding as I recall. I would have to go back a sift througth the contract numbers again. One of these days I will make a spreadsheet...
Check again. There was a $300k add-on awarded 3 Mar 09 to do pretty much what it says they achieved, "Confinement Behavior With Detailed Diagnostics". Check out the J&A linked below. It mentions WB7.1 with high temperature coil joints and using multiple probes to investigate electron heat loss, beta investigation, wiffleball formation... Report delivery date, 31 Dec 09. In Navy parlance, FY2010TallDave wrote: The picture is certainly confusing. 2010 is WB-8 territory, there was no ".1" add-on to WB-7, and the timeline below still says WB-8. My money is on a typo by a web designer.
https://www.neco.navy.mil/synopsis_file ... 9R0024.pdf
The "guns" design was "interim funding"; if it ever actually got awarded. The pre-solicitation on the FBO site does not indicate an award.ladajo wrote:I am not sure, but the Ion Guns were on a seperate contract to WB7 & 7.1, and they may have been used all along for WB 7. That was part of the interim funding as I recall. I would have to go back a sift througth the contract numbers again. One of these days I will make a spreadsheet...
The interim funding came AFTER WB7 was complete and the results had been provided to the expert panel.
I can find no mention of ACTUALLY using the guns in any varient of WB7 but maybe I missed it.
Good find KitemanSA. An interesting issue found in this pdf is that a key sole source justification for the contract award is access to the data due to the concept's initiation without the government. Hence, FOIA data requests are doomed to failure.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.
Ah, thank you, I stand corrected. I had forgotten about the coil joint add-on.KitemanSA wrote:Check again. There was a $300k add-on awarded 3 Mar 09 to do pretty much what it says they achieved, "Confinement Behavior With Detailed Diagnostics". Check out the J&A linked below. It mentions WB7.1 with high temperature coil joints and using multiple probes to investigate electron heat loss, beta investigation, wiffleball formation... Report delivery date, 31 Dec 09. In Navy parlance, FY2010TallDave wrote: The picture is certainly confusing. 2010 is WB-8 territory, there was no ".1" add-on to WB-7, and the timeline below still says WB-8. My money is on a typo by a web designer.
https://www.neco.navy.mil/synopsis_file ... 9R0024.pdf
The design still looks too complex to be WB-7.1, though. I'm still thinking it has to be mislabeled.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...
Perhaps the detailed WB-7.1 diagnostics claimed on EMC2 web site required a vacuum vesicle change, and while they were at it, why not enlarge it to accommodate WB-8? It might also have helped with the WB-8 schedule. It would also give some reason to the earlier WB-8 mislabel. Sorry, just some more speculation. Looking forward to Alan Boyle's article with hope of actual detailed substantiation of WB progress, once space plane and sail ship breaking news is past?TallDave wrote:The design still looks too complex to be WB-7.1, though. I'm still thinking it has to be mislabeled.
Why six extra large jumbo flanges? It would seem to be difficult to get a good vacuum seal unless they seal weld the flanges (not uncommon on feedwater heater heads, it's not a structural weld). But why all six sides unless the individual coils are mounted to the jumbo flanges? Is the chamber large enough to accommodate an even larger WB?
Come on Dr. N, don't be such a tease!
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.
The FOIA documentation seemed to indicate that the final Peer Review inclued WB7 and 7.1.KitemanSA wrote:The "guns" design was "interim funding"; if it ever actually got awarded. The pre-solicitation on the FBO site does not indicate an award.ladajo wrote:I am not sure, but the Ion Guns were on a seperate contract to WB7 & 7.1, and they may have been used all along for WB 7. That was part of the interim funding as I recall. I would have to go back a sift througth the contract numbers again. One of these days I will make a spreadsheet...
The interim funding came AFTER WB7 was complete and the results had been provided to the expert panel.
I can find no mention of ACTUALLY using the guns in any varient of WB7 but maybe I missed it.
I have found other contracts in the past that did not post the full paperwork chain (apparently). If you recall Dr. Nebel did talk about the Ion Gun and diagnostic funding as "keep alive" work while they waited on the full up contract for WB7. I would not think that they would work on the guns and not use them Especially since Joel's paper indicates that proper injection is a key point. I also noticed that the wording Joel used was almost verbatim to some of the commenting the Dr. Nebel has used in the past. Knobs, wiffleball determination, etc. One of the curious points from WB7 and 7.1 is how well they were able to determine wiffleball or not. So far, no comment in the public realm. I am also thinking if it was ambiguous, it wil lbe a key point for WB8. However that said, one would think that if they got no postivei wiffleball in WB7 & 7.1 that it would be a mission kill. Why continue on if there was no wiffleball? We shall see.
I really do need to go back and make a spreadsheet of all the contracts. I had a list before, but mostly worked from memory.
Where do you find that/ Did you get data you did not forward?ladajo wrote: [The FOIA documentation seemed to indicate that the final Peer Review inclued WB7 and 7.1.
The 4 documents listed included:
1) Review Commitee Evaluation of recent EMC2 Progress on the Bussard Polywell Fusion Concept of July 21, 2008.
2) Final Report; N68936-03-C-0031; of 12 August 2008
3) Final Report; N68936-09-P-0029; of 10 December 2008
4) Final Report; N68936-09-P-0133; of 13 January 2009
5) Final Report; N68936-09-C-0027; of 1 December 2009
This implies the review committee effort preceded the advent of WB 7.1 and perhaps was the driver for it.
As to the other interim funds, I suspect that the September announcement was just added to the prior funding for which the prior J&A would have covered (I think). I also think that the two October pre-solicitations were melded into the final award and J&A for the WB 7.1 award. I can't find it any longer, but I am positive that the first published pre-solicitation mentioned $200k and the final award and J&A mention almost $300k. I suspect that is the two October and the January tasks all rolled into one.
I will have to go back through the paperwork and look. I do not have the file with me right now. I believe a mention at some point of post WB 7.1 reporting and review.
Did you notice on the WB-8/WB-7.1 grpahic showing the vacuum chamber that there are large flanges on each side. Very much like the drawing in Joel Roger's paper. I really think that this is the WB-8 chamber and that they are going with wall mounted coils. Yeah! It did not seem that they got enough money for WB7/7.1 to build a whole new vacuum chamber like the type shown. But we can not really be sure unless we see a photo of the lab again. The other part is that the funding for WB8 would seem to indicate sufficient funds for a completely new chamber.
Did you notice on the WB-8/WB-7.1 grpahic showing the vacuum chamber that there are large flanges on each side. Very much like the drawing in Joel Roger's paper. I really think that this is the WB-8 chamber and that they are going with wall mounted coils. Yeah! It did not seem that they got enough money for WB7/7.1 to build a whole new vacuum chamber like the type shown. But we can not really be sure unless we see a photo of the lab again. The other part is that the funding for WB8 would seem to indicate sufficient funds for a completely new chamber.
I, too, suspect that the graphic is of WB 8, expecially since (if Tom Ligon is correct) the 30 bolt flanges are 13-14" in diameter. If they are, the coils are 50cm vice WB7's 30. And; the label originally implied WB8. I suspect when they corrected the miss-information in the "accomplished" items, they just didn't re-position the grachic further down. Of course, it may be that they were just projecting out to October, but I am under the impression that WB8 is mainly about scaling laws (seems both size and B field) leading to first demonstration of pB&j.
But...
But...
Agreed. The purpose of WB-8 is to determine B scaling, esp. in terms of confinement.
With the nubs out of the way we should learn how cross-field transport losses scale (btw, with their design it appears they agree with the TPW consensus that electrons do not recirculate into other cusps). That's really the heart of the Polywell concept: ions confined by electrons, electrons confined by B fields. PW probably lives or dies on the electron confinement (which I guess is fair justification for Kite wanting to see a dodec in action).
Nice catch on the size, guys. I will go back and run the numbers for expected output based on r*5/3. I think we're looking at around 500W for D-D. I'm going to assume they don't have access to tritium, unless they have some good friends over in TSTA (if you guys have any tritium lying around let me know).
At .8T, they should get some detectable alphas, if the contract goes that far.
With the nubs out of the way we should learn how cross-field transport losses scale (btw, with their design it appears they agree with the TPW consensus that electrons do not recirculate into other cusps). That's really the heart of the Polywell concept: ions confined by electrons, electrons confined by B fields. PW probably lives or dies on the electron confinement (which I guess is fair justification for Kite wanting to see a dodec in action).
Nice catch on the size, guys. I will go back and run the numbers for expected output based on r*5/3. I think we're looking at around 500W for D-D. I'm going to assume they don't have access to tritium, unless they have some good friends over in TSTA (if you guys have any tritium lying around let me know).
At .8T, they should get some detectable alphas, if the contract goes that far.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...
My understanding from the communication I got was that he was going to write something - even if it was just to mention the site update.Betruger wrote:Still nothing on Cosmic Log. MSimon or anyone else who talked to A.Boyle: did it sound like he might not write anything at all given the lack of news to report?
The delay may indicate something more substantial than just posting the pictures may be going on.
My theory is that the gauntlet for permissions has to be run.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.