Not quite superconducting wires
Posted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:49 pm
Mmm.... I wonder if this would have any application in the Polywell non superconducting magrid. A 10 fold decrease in Ohmic heating (and related current) would ease cooling concerns considerably. The packing fraction of wires in the magrid cans (from M. Simon's suggested ~ 40%) might be increased to 60 or even 70%. This could result in stronger B fields in smaller packages, and also decrease the magnet current required. Using the JET Tokamak example. I believe they needed upwards of a gigawatt of current to power their magnets. Reducing that magnet input power to ~ 100 MW has all sorts of benefits.
Joel Roger's conservative B field limits useable with copper wire Magrids could be multiplied by as much as 5 to 10 times at the same current (and Ohmic heating). Suddenly, 10 Tesla fields become (almost) trivial, without having to resort to super conductors. Of course survivability, etc concerns may cause problems, but since the meta material is nanotechnology, as opposed to molecular scales for super conductors, I wonder if the metamaterial would be more resistant to x- rays, neutrons, etc.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-exo ... afely.html
Joel Roger's conservative B field limits useable with copper wire Magrids could be multiplied by as much as 5 to 10 times at the same current (and Ohmic heating). Suddenly, 10 Tesla fields become (almost) trivial, without having to resort to super conductors. Of course survivability, etc concerns may cause problems, but since the meta material is nanotechnology, as opposed to molecular scales for super conductors, I wonder if the metamaterial would be more resistant to x- rays, neutrons, etc.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-exo ... afely.html
Dan Tibbets"The metamaterial should be able to increase the magnetic force without increasing the electric current in the source coil," Urzhumov said. "The phenomenon of magnetostatic surface resonance could allow magnetic levitation systems to increase the mass of objects being levitated by one order of magnitude while using the same amount of electricity."