Talk-Polywell.org

Skipjack wrote:

JoeP wrote:I still do not get why one of the silicon valley mega-rich nerds doesn't privately fund this as a project.

They are all green energy liberal tycoon types. You would think they jump at a chance to pioneer an energy system like this. It is a drop in the bucket for some of them. This is why Bussard went to Google in the first place and nothing came of it as far as I know. Instead, you hear of people like Paul Allen trying to buy up sports teams as a private collection for whatever pleasure that gives him.

These are technology nerds, they should grok the possibilities without too much trouble.

Rich investors are generally risk averse.

But seriously, the perspective/context there should be that those millions spent ruling out this particular path would narrow things down closer to actual working fusion. Park, Lerner & co, wouldn't come out of these efforts no wiser. Paul Allen is a fairly extreme case even among the mega-rich, but in his case he could easily pay for LPP and EMC2 on his own, on top of Tri-Alpha.

I wish it were otherwise, but an NBA team is a better investment than Polywell fusion.

How does that work? What is the weight of an NBA team, versus bringing fusion closer by that many years? IOW the time it would take to get those 7/8/9 digits of funding at Donner Party contractual rates, versus from someone like Allen/Page/Brin/Gates/Musk/etc ? What is an NBA team, directly and indirectly, compared to everything gained and avoided in the years skipped, given that funding, towards useful fusion ? IOW everything from bottom line humanitarian consequences, to all the consequences like 38 days to Mars and 76 to Titan.

It is a lot like comparing owning an NBA team versus bringing a cure for 50% of aging closer by so many months/years. The consequences do no show instantly, but the final tally of deaths avoided is still there even if mostly in the future.

Never mind the abstract humane value. The future economic value of these game changers should make for respectably ROI, even with just reasonable clauses for it.

I meant in strictly economic terms. Even if it turns out a success, it will take 20 years to integrate the polywell into the grid and see a significant return.

Besides, I'm not sure energy efficiency is even a profitable solution, despite the benefits to civilization and the environment (if that were the case, why have nations in the past been so quick to give up on fission reactors?).

Capitalism rewards productivity, but not necessarily efficiency.

derg wrote:I meant in strictly economic terms. Even if it turns out a success, it will take 20 years to integrate the polywell into the grid and see a significant return.

I expect that a working fusion technology would be installed as existing power stations are retired. Given patents that could mean a near 20 year stream of revenue to the developers as those new power stations are built.

why have nations in the past been so quick to give up on fission reactors?

Idiot decision makers. Idiot regulations multiplying the cost to install and operate a fission reactor, and slowing development of better designs.

Capitalism ...

... is a dirty Marxist term. The free market rewards value production. And a working fusion technology is a lot of value, even if it takes many years for that value to fully materialize.

And I'd forgotten about L. Page's apparent intention to donate his tens/hundreds of $B to something like Tesla instead of charity. So that kind of tips the balance back towards something more seemingly sane.

It is a lot like comparing owning an NBA team versus bringing a cure for 50% of aging closer by so many months/years

We already have one. Don't even get me started. You know how I am on the subject. Insufferable.

Tom Ligon wrote:I don't get the sense that there is much jealousy between these small fusion projects. I doubt Allen will back EMC2, but that's because he's already invested. This is somebody else's turn. But I'll bet, if that somebody else asked Allen if he should back EMC2, the answer would be "Go ahead. One or the other has a good chance of succeeding first, and whichever one it is, the other will benefit. Each company has expertise needed to make fusion a commercial reality."

EMC2, Tri-Alpha, and LLP all want to do p-B11. The first one to get fusion going with DD or DT reinforces this goal.

I had a Lerner protege give me some minor flack on a blog post (not my blog) a few days ago. I gave him a little flack back. That was the first of that sort of thing I had ever seen from his groupies. Normally if you say Polywell they retort "And..."

Tom Ligon wrote:There was an encouraging amount of American VC interest in 2007, and they were capable of raising the whole amount,...

I can confirm that. It was wild and wooly with proposals and counter proposals coming in at the rate of about one major offer every two or three months. The sentiment back then (generally) was "We have $10 million, what can you do in the way of verification?"

General Fusion and VC's have used staged funding and verification steps and are on their way to funding a full scale prototype by years end with target of 3 years for prototype operation. That is the usual way to control funding risk, by funding stages. No doubt Park is lining up the program, but the question is with what group and what will be made public?

By now the mushrooms here should be used to the dearth of news.

classicpenny wrote:We desperately need working commercial sized Polywells -or some comparable fusion devices- taking the place of fossil fuels on the grid.

There really is no need to panic. We have hundreds of years of fossil fuels available.

As far as shielding goes (an earlier topic in the thread) Polywell pBj is only about 3 or 4 orders of magnitude down from a fission nuke. That sounds like a lot but it only reduces the shielding by 30 to 40% (BOE calculations). That is a good savings. But it is not a huge savings. Where the lower neutron flux really helps is equipment lifetime. Think of going from 100 hours operation to 100,000 hours of operation.

If 1 ton of material will reduce the flux by a factor of 10, 10 tons of material will reduce the flux by 1E10 (that is the correct order of magnitude for a nuke). If Polywell is down 3 orders of magnitude from the nuke you will need 7 tons of shielding. Assuming everything is of a similar size. Now of course that is not all there is to it. But it gives you the correct frame of thought.

I guess spark plug is more technical than "pop the clutch."

So, the question is what level of spark plug pulse will be required for a 100 MW Polywell, and does EMC2 have a technical solution on how to do it (and what is it)?

MSimon wrote:

It is a lot like comparing owning an NBA team versus bringing a cure for 50% of aging closer by so many months/years

We already have one. Don't even get me started. You know how I am on the subject. Insufferable.

Gonna take this off to another thread..

mvanwink5 wrote:I guess spark plug is more technical than "pop the clutch."

So, the question is what level of spark plug pulse will be required for a 100 MW Polywell, and does EMC2 have a technical solution on how to do it (and what is it)?

Yes.

Has anyone seen Joe around? I think that paper cause him to disappear.