Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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mvanwink5
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by mvanwink5 »

Out of the closet. Compelling video on their website.
Thanks for the link, always in your debt.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by Skipjack »

Very cool!

Skipjack
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by Skipjack »

Here is a new TAE paper presented at this years Fusion Power Associates meeting:
http://fire.pppl.gov/fpa15_TAE-Progress_Binderbauer.pdf
Overall, it looks like they are having some successes.

crowberry
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by crowberry »

What’s the Big Idea? A venture capitalist takes on fusion energy by Ray Rothrock is an interesting article on Tri Alpha Energy published in Issues in Science and Technology at http://issues.org/32-2/whats-the-big-idea/.

mvanwink5
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by mvanwink5 »

Nice article on venture capital. I thought the salient point was at the end where the author characterized the development cost, risk, and time horizon to a pharmaceutical drug development cycle. However, the fusion physics is outside of the normal VC science comfort zone and that is perhaps where fusion hits a snag with the VC people? The other point buried earlier in the article was very early on in the VC start up phase where some researcher 'proved' the central idea would not work. Sound familiar?
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by Skipjack »

Seems like Tri Alpha increased confinement times to 11.5 ms and now has funding all the way to a prototype reactor in 2020ies. Not too soon, but not that far away anymore either:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/05/nuclea ... .html#more

mvanwink5
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by mvanwink5 »

If Polywell is so good, where is the funding?

The confinement time for Tri Alpha was limited only by the neutral beam injection, or in other words, confinement is solved. The goal now is increasing plasma temperature. Then, going to PB.

General Fusion's issue now is adiabatic compression.

EMC2 issue is cash containment.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by Skipjack »

If I remember correctly, Tri Alpha roughly achieved 1keV plasma temperature so far. Pulsed FRC devices like some of Helion's prototypes have routinely achieved over 5 keV. So it seems relatively plausible that Tri Alpha will achieve the temperatures, they need. What worries me a bit, is that their device is not exactly small anymore and if they get any larger, they will be competing with ITER for scale ;)
Granted, Tri Alpha is aiming for PB11 which is a lot harder. So the comparison to a D+T- tokamak is not entirely fair.

D Tibbets
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by D Tibbets »

Skipjack wrote:If I remember correctly, Tri Alpha roughly achieved 1keV plasma temperature so far. Pulsed FRC devices like some of Helion's prototypes have routinely achieved over 5 keV. So it seems relatively plausible that Tri Alpha will achieve the temperatures, they need. What worries me a bit, is that their device is not exactly small anymore and if they get any larger, they will be competing with ITER for scale ;)
Granted, Tri Alpha is aiming for PB11 which is a lot harder. So the comparison to a D+T- tokamak is not entirely fair.
Also, all of the hardware hanging off the sides of the FRC vessel adds bulk but the reactor space itself still is orders of magnitude less than ITER. These neutral beam injectors are also key ingredients for Tokamaks, Lockheed designs and possibly even Polywells. They grow in size based on the power they need to achieve- much larger for Tokamaks and as such they add proportianatly to the total area dedicated to operating and supporting the reaction space. The pictures of the little man beside ITER only shows the tokamak assembly. They injectors, etc probably will extend many meters beyond that. ITER retains it's relative elephantine size compared to other approaches (except perhaps NIF schemes). Some recent pictures of the ITER site shows the the small city growing outside of the Tokamak proper that is required for operation.

Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.

Skipjack
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by Skipjack »

D Tibbets wrote:
Skipjack wrote:If I remember correctly, Tri Alpha roughly achieved 1keV plasma temperature so far. Pulsed FRC devices like some of Helion's prototypes have routinely achieved over 5 keV. So it seems relatively plausible that Tri Alpha will achieve the temperatures, they need. What worries me a bit, is that their device is not exactly small anymore and if they get any larger, they will be competing with ITER for scale ;)
Granted, Tri Alpha is aiming for PB11 which is a lot harder. So the comparison to a D+T- tokamak is not entirely fair.
Also, all of the hardware hanging off the sides of the FRC vessel adds bulk but the reactor space itself still is orders of magnitude less than ITER. These neutral beam injectors are also key ingredients for Tokamaks, Lockheed designs and possibly even Polywells. They grow in size based on the power they need to achieve- much larger for Tokamaks and as such they add proportianatly to the total area dedicated to operating and supporting the reaction space. The pictures of the little man beside ITER only shows the tokamak assembly. They injectors, etc probably will extend many meters beyond that. ITER retains it's relative elephantine size compared to other approaches (except perhaps NIF schemes). Some recent pictures of the ITER site shows the the small city growing outside of the Tokamak proper that is required for operation.

Dan Tibbets
Dan, the comparison to ITER was to be understood as tongue in cheek (see the smiley!). I know that it is far from ITERs size. But it is not exactly "small" anymore either and bound to get bigger for the next prototype. Yes, still smaller than ITER and other large Tokamaks, of course :)
Anyway, I am actually quite excited about their progress.

mvanwink5
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by mvanwink5 »

Reactor size is not what is being increased, the neutral beam injectors need to be made more powerful and need to be continuous duty.

It would be nice to get the details, I think I have seen a presentation where this was discussed. Anyone?
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by Skipjack »

For some reason, I missed this video they posted on their youtube channel 6 months ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezluaNMzHjE

Carl White
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by Carl White »

A startup in California has raised $500 million to chase the elusive dream of fusion power. Is this crazy, or is the company on to something?
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6014 ... er-source/

DeltaV
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by DeltaV »

I sincerely hope that EMC2, Tri-Alpha, Sorlox, Helion/MSNW, General Fusion and other left-coast fusion labs continually archive their latest results in a safe area, in preparation for slippages of the Cascadia Subduction Zone and San Andreas Fault.

Image

crowberry
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Re: Small Tri Alpha news blurp

Post by crowberry »

Tri Alpha Energy also gave a talk at the US-Japan Compact Toroid Workshop 2016 http://www.physics.uci.edu/US-JAPAN-CT2 ... dings.html. Erik Trask gave the overview talk Overview of Tri Alpha Energy's Experimental Program and Recent Progress on Transport Analysis on their progress and upgrade plans. There were three more TAE talks at the conference.

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