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Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2015 10:10 pm
by crowberry
That was a very good, clear and understandable presentation!

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2015 10:15 pm
by Tom Ligon
Dr. Park is a real professional, and you can count on him to use the correct terminology.

Such as "big-assed capacitor." ;)

Obviously, I overcame the technical problems and made it to the end.

I saw a Microsoft logo at the end, but have not yet found a copyright notice. This may mean I can do a re-edit, incorporating slide where the video did not. I need to be careful ... Microsoft has some wicked-good lawyers.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 12:58 am
by MSimon
Tom Ligon wrote:Dr. Park is a real professional, and you can count on him to use the correct terminology.

Such as "big-assed capacitor." ;)

Obviously, I overcame the technical problems and made it to the end.

I saw a Microsoft logo at the end, but have not yet found a copyright notice. This may mean I can do a re-edit, incorporating slide where the video did not. I need to be careful ... Microsoft has some wicked-good lawyers.
The copyright is om the M'Soft page the video is on. I don't know if it applies to the video. In any case these days copyright is automatic even without a notice. Why don't you just ask them?

They do make the video embedable. And I did give them a heads up about the video locking at about the 22 min mark.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:12 am
by ohiovr
crowberry wrote:Indeed, some of the slides are new like this one: :D
Image
What does atm mean? Surely it can't mean atmosphere...

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 2:08 am
by Tom Ligon
Yup, it means atmosphere. Plasma at fusion temperatures and enough pressure to blow a locomotive boiler, bucking against a 5T field that could pull you and your wrench in from across the room. Magnetic pressure = plasma pressure, i.e. beta = 1. Versus beta = 0.03 for a tokamak in an early slide? And the fusion reaction rate should scale as beta squared. Let's see, a factor of 1100 better?

I am now allowed to let you guys in on some of the source materials used to make the video. Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 2:30 am
by MSimon
Looks like M'Soft has fixed the video/slide issue and it plays OK.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 2:40 am
by ohiovr
Tom Ligon wrote:Yup, it means atmosphere. Plasma at fusion temperatures and enough pressure to blow a locomotive boiler, bucking against a 5T field that could pull you and your wrench in from across the room. Magnetic pressure = plasma pressure, i.e. beta = 1. Versus beta = 0.03 for a tokamak in an early slide? And the fusion reaction rate should scale as beta squared. Let's see, a factor of 1100 better?

I am now allowed to let you guys in on some of the source materials used to make the video. Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

ITER is going to have 17 T fields. It doesn't even have 1,000th of one atm.

Sounds impossible.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 5:31 am
by choff
Good things come to those who wait.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 7:02 am
by D Tibbets
After watching the video, several quick observations.

First off, Dr Parks made a glaring mistake at a Microsoft conference. Did anyone else notice it?

Mention of 100 atmospheres does seem inconsistent. I wonder if it was a miscommunication. One hundredth of an atmosphere seems much closer to the often repeated capacity of ~ 10^22 particles / M^3, which is ~ one thousandth of an atmosphere. The plasma pressure equals the magnetic pressure at Beta =1. It would be easily calculatable with the formula. I also wonder if he did mean ~ 100 atm, but in this machine only. If the injected plasma was at only ~ 10 eV, then the necessary density would have to be much higher to reach Beta=1 than a comparable plasma at say 100 KeV. That has a KE 10,000 times greater, so a density 10,000 times less would exert the same pressure. That would resolve the seeming discrepancy.

The output before consideration of conversion to useful electricity is valid, but consider that Dr Parks made some basic assumptions about the easiest fuel and significant profitable Q. Many optimizations was not included (like confluence). Also the target is a two meter diameter magrid. Earlier predictions by Bussard was for a 3 meter diameter machine, and probably significantly lower difference between input and output with D-D fuel. In addition, Bussard used a target of 10 Tesla, which with scaling of density at B field ^2 would result in ~ 4 fold increase in density and 16 fold increase increase in fusion. In light of these considerations Dr Park's expectations/ hopes can be compared to Bussard's predictions. I'm not sure, but Dr Park's predictions may be even better than Bussards.

It is interesting to note that Dr Park's believes that developing deep potential wells at high efficiency is a given at relatively low plasma densities, but he is cautious to extrapolate that to higher densities without good data to prove it.

Finally, mention of transit times of ~ 7 ns for 7 KeV electrons are for this machine and uses the peak electron speed as a constant. He further states that this machine (mini-B )had a low hot electron density and there was not much of a potential well. With higher hot electron densities, the electron dynamics are different- possibly a parabolic potential well, electrons fast (peak speed) at the edge and theoretically near zero at the center. The average speed in a working machine would thus be perhaps about 50% of the peak speed, or perhaps even less depending on the shape of the potential well and the dynamics of electron acceleration and deceleration.
This would generally increase the transit time / confinement time by a factor of two. If the machine had ~ 13 times the diameter (2 meters) this would increase the transit time/ confinement time by a further ~ 13 X for a net gain of ~ 26X. This decreases further needed gains by a substantial amount.

Dan Tibbets

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 11:28 am
by MSimon
I think the pressure was in Pascals not atmospheres. I think I heard Pascals at one point in the video.

I also think he was referring to radius and not diameter.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 3:14 pm
by Tom Ligon
MSimon wrote:I think the pressure was in Pascals not atmospheres. I think I heard Pascals at one point in the video.

I also think he was referring to radius and not diameter.
I'm pretty sure I heard Pascals, too, or kPa. It makes a b1g difference ... one atmosphere is a 101365 Pa (off the top of my head ... could be off in the last couple of digits). But even 1 Pa is a lot of pressure for a vacuum system. The density would still be fairly low, but with the plasma "hot", the momentum of each particle can be intense.

I'll go in and see if I can find the spot, and see if Dr. Park can clarify. The pressure did jump out enough that one questioner pointed it out.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 3:32 pm
by Tom Ligon
Ahhh, yes, Firefox now runs it. Much more convenient.

The pressure question comes up at about 58 minutes. The questioner says "that's about 100000x higher than you said a minute ago". Dr. Park confirms that he means atmospheres! He says he'll get back to it later. I'm still scanning.

Discussing slide 49 at 1:00:40, Dr. Park does say he needs 100,000 x better confinement time to get to the proposed 5T 2M net power demonstration machine.

I've asked him to check the units issue. Atmospheres is a unit I encounter in 1805 steam engineering texts, but not much in modern science, where bars would be substituted (a bar is 100,000 Pa, a rounding off of 101,325 Pa for a standard atmosphere).

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 4:30 pm
by Peter
Dr Park says there were breakthroughs in electron confinement, such as the first ever confirmation of high beta electronic cusp confinement in October 2013. Because of that, he is now attempting to complete work on the validation of Polywell fusion in the next 3 years.
Here are the slides from that part of the talk.
http://msrvideo.vo.msecnd.net/rmcvideos ... 000045.jpg
http://msrvideo.vo.msecnd.net/rmcvideos ... 000062.jpg

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 4:38 pm
by GIThruster
I can't help wondering if this talk doesn't presage the death of Polywell. Looking for $300M for a proof of science demonstrator that is still only TRL3 does not seem to me a plausible offering, unless USG or some other extremely deep pockets funding can be found. IMHO, EMC2 needs to find a more cost effective way to press forward. Count me concerned. And I am just not buying the $300M number. That sounds like BS to me, and a completely wrong-headed approach to take for real funding.

Anyone have handy the kinds of numbers we've seen invested in the other approaches? I'm sure LockMart isn't in for $300M. Even they know better than to pony up that kind of cash and they're MIC. They're used to access to obscene amounts of cash.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 5:05 pm
by mvanwink5
GIThruster,
Usually there is a staged investment with milestones, the 2 meter radius machine is a second stage investment as I heard it and occurs after the intermediate machine where scaling is proven and quantified for engineering the large 2 meter radius $300 million machine.