Talk-Polywell.org

Hey folks, got this email today from John Santarius. Dr. Park will be speaking at Univ. of Wisc. next week, and I will be in the audience . Any questions (scientific ones) you'd like me to ask?

"Colleagues,

Dr. Jaeyoung Park, President of EMC2, will give a talk on recent
cusp-confinement experiments in one of their Polywell devices. A
flyer is attached.

Date: Monday, June 16
Time: 2:30 PM
Location: 106 ERB

Abstract:

56 years ago, Harold Grad and his team at New Your University
conjectured (and to some extent calculated) that the confinement
properties of a magnetic cusp would be dramatically improved if the
confined plasma had sufficiently high pressure to exclude the B-field
from the interior. We have carried out an experiment that
demonstrates, for the first time in 56 years, that this effect is
real. This has dramatic implications for the future of cusp confined
fusion.

Regards.
John"

I thought it was today. I'll try and see if I can find someone to go, in case you can't make it.

Solo,
If he mentions spark plugs, ask him how he came up with the analagy.
But seriously, I would ask him about how sure he is on controllability of the ion injection and if that presents issues for start up at a larger scale like WB8.
He should have an interesting thought line and answer you may find illuminating.

Spark plugs, huh? Where did you hear that?

Something in passing.

I have 43 questions, but let me try to condense them to a few.

What was the performance of WB7 and WB8 in terms of confinement and recirculation, and structure-nubs or standoffs?

Were the electron guns at the corners or face centered cusps?

What efficiencies for electron injection in various machines?

Potential well depths?

What is considered a reasonable cusp confinement, somewhere between 7 and 70 passes?

Considering recent U. W. doctoral theses, can a Helicon type device be used as a plasma injector in the Polywell?

Did the nubs in WB6 and possibly WB7.0 have some miner (?) plasma gun like contribution?

Are you looking to hire a minimally trained, occasionally insightful and frequently confused individual?

Dan Tibbets

I am ripping apart this navy paper as fast as I can.

I will shoot for technical questions by Monday.

I want to know what he thinks the next logical steps are.

Personally, I think a parametric study of the machine, looking for operating modes is what is next (but they probably did this already). It would be CFD and dimensional analysis. I heard a rumor Imperal College was trying to do this.

Not-so-technical questions I would ask:

Are there more papers in the works from the WB-8 & "Mini-B" research?

# Has EMC2 worked with hydrogen-boron fuel yet? (I would guess not.) Do they have a plan to work with it in the near future, or are they focused on more conventional fuels now?

# (To echo mattman:) What is the next step? Do they plan to keep working on Navy grants, or are they looking for private funding now?

What is EMC2's internal name for "Mini-B"?

EDIT: Will video or audio recording of the talk be permitted?

EDIT: Ignore questions beginning in "#". They've already been answered.

I have a question, EMC2 is using the words 'for the first time' and 'high Beta' and '56 years'. Isn't the Skunk Works machine called a high Beta reactor? Unless the two machines are significantly different then EMC2 is reporting older material after an embargo on publishing being lifted. Someone might want to ask Dr. Park what he can say about the Skunk Works effort as it compares to the Polywell, though perhaps I'm still using the tealeaf reading approach too much from habit.

Can you ask about if thermalization is still an issue?

choff wrote:I have a question, EMC2 is using the words 'for the first time' and 'high Beta' and '56 years'. Isn't the Skunk Works machine called a high Beta reactor? Unless the two machines are significantly different then EMC2 is reporting older material after an embargo on publishing being lifted. Someone might want to ask Dr. Park what he can say about the Skunk Works effort as it compares to the Polywell, though perhaps I'm still using the tealeaf reading approach too much from habit.

There is no information about the Skunk Works reactor that has been published in a peer reviewed paper. We do not know what sort of confinement it uses, or whether it is in any way related to the Polywell. For all we know, it might not even work as advertised.
It is therefore of no relevance to the statement by Dr. Park.

We do have this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor

They keep using the words high Beta, the confinement system description sounds like something the Polywell is doing.

choff wrote:We do have this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor

They keep using the words high Beta, the confinement system description sounds like something the Polywell is doing.

The Wikipedia article, like all other information we have about the Skunkworks system, is quoting (and deducing from), the little bit of information revealed by Chase at the Google "Solve for X" presentation and the video recording that was published of it. I have not seen a single media item published on this device that does not rely 100% on the video. The video however is not sufficient to make any definite conclusions about the type of confinement used, or whether the thing is working at all as advertised. There have been no technical publications on the device or its confinement mechanisms. So we really cant say that we know anything other than the limited information provided by Chase in the video, which I quite frankly found not convincing since it was so weak on technical detail.

I don't find the event scheduled on UW Madison web site. Anyone?
BTW Dr. Park gave the same talk a few days ago at UC Irvine:
http://www.physics.uci.edu/seminar/spec ... -high-beta

Here are a couple of questions:

What is the size of WB7 and WB8?

What is the maximum magnetic field of WB7 and WB8?

Have WB7 and/or WB8 shown plasma instabilities that need to be mitigated?

What have been the greatest technical difficulties experienced with WB7 and WB8?

Will data on WB7 and WB8 be published?

Has deuterium pulses been studied? If so, what is the best neutron yield / second and what is the best value of the triple product achieved?

What remains to be done before proceeding with a 100 MW demo type Polywell?

What is the current estimate for the size of a 100 MW pB11 reactor?