D Tibbets wrote:The idea that energy is distributed globally is only viable in very carefully controlled situations. On the surface you might think that a Z- pinch is an example of this. The entire wire is rapidly and evenly heated. But, even that is not looking at the entire system. The thin wires heat quickly, but the thicker feed cables have much less resistance so they do not heat up hardly at all. A good comparison may be a spot wielder. The heavy copper rods conduct the electricity with little heating. This can be considered like the superconducting loop. Only at the point ehre the current is shorted through a much higher resistive point does the contained energy result/ concentrate int a hot spot. This would be similar to a superconducting loop had a coolant failure- the liquid helium is draining, the exposed portion of the loop warms enough that it quenches- Suddenly this portion is heated to very high temperatures. This would spread to adjacent portions but due to the thermal mass, and the speed of electrons in the loop, the energy would be expended locally before the heating could transported to more distant regions. Just like a spot wielder, except a whole lot more energy is released. Explosive fragments and vapors creates a blast wave, any nearby highly volital fluid like helium could reinforce, or at least prolong the blast pressure.
Dan Tibbets
Dan,
The single correct assertion here is not quite not uniform heating at the beginning of transient process due the skin effect in the copper matrix (stabilizer/current bypass). The rest e.g. mythical "controlled situations" (control impossible and shape of self-induction pulse is dependent only on parameters new-born circuit: inductance, capacitance and resistivity). Also it seems to me that you are attemtinting to justify the wrong statement of Dr. Bussard used by him only for introduction before more important for him part of his paper begins - description of magnetic field system of his fusion concept. As normal running superconducting cable consists of two connected parallelly conductors: superconductor with normally zero resistivity and well conductive but havinf low but non zero resistance matrix. Mission of a matrix is in the following: in case of stop of superconductivity condition to bypass current and to dissipate the stored energy. For tens thousands amperes resistivity of matrix is not low. As heat power released in conductor I^2*R
Current 52000 A (projected current in ITER’s coil in case of superconductivity condition failure) and even 0.01 Ohm resistivity (my assumption) give the Ohmic power 270MW. Enough for dissipation 2.3GJ of energy in 8.4 s. And for 0.1 Ohm in 0.84 s.
And unlike you I at least am saying where are objective facts and where are my assumptions.
You are only repeating the words of Dr. Bussard adding and exaggerating.
Kiteman and I am sure others too in the exaggeration have reached mythical 14 kilotons TNT equivalent.
Explosive fragments and vapors creates a blast wave,...
Fragments (solids) can not creat shock wave
I have showed here that in case of 10t HE explosive exlosion in 6 m^3 of volume the 7000 m^3 of gas is stored. And that is the source of shock wave and nothing else. And that gas drives then fragments.
