Let us start discrediting tokamak fusion. Wrong Shape.

Discuss ways to make polywell research more widely known or better understood. Includes education and outreach.

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esecallum
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Let us start discrediting tokamak fusion. Wrong Shape.

Post by esecallum »

Recent emails have indicated the navy may resume funding for Dr Robert Bussard's POLYWELL reactor.

If this is the case then a fusion reactor proven concept could happen within 3 or 4 years at a cost of about $200 million in a fairly small size reactor.


Conventional hot tokamak fusion is a dead end and they have moved the goal posts to a distant 50 years,every year so that it's like the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow you can never actually reach it.

They say the first test reactor will cost $12 billion and cover 3 football fields and the actual problem of getting useful energy out of it will take another 20 years!...because of the huge delicate magnetic field coils....the slightest imperfection in the field and the hot plasma touches the wall and loses energy...and the fusion reaction stops.

Try balancing a pencil on it's point.

Imagine a million degree hot circular horizontal plasma ribbon writhing and kinking and twisting.No wonder it does not work after 50 years.

The tokamak is a VERY stupid design.

It's the wrong shape!

Look at the sun.What shape is it?

a SHERE!!!

HOT CHARGED PARTICLES IN A SPHERE CONFINED BY A FIELD CAN EITHER GO INWARDS OR OUTWARDS OF A SPHERE OR STAY CONFINED WITHIN THE SPHERE INCREASING THE CHANCES OF FUSING.

The degrees of freedom are limited by it's shape.

...but in a tokamak the the particles can go up,down, left, right sideways,inwards,outwards....touch the walls and lose energy and the moronic idiots in charge have been too arrogant and unwilling to admit this basic and fundamental flaw.....a torus shape is the wrong shape and will never work.....the sligtest imperfection and the plasma kinks.

The governments have been sinking money into this dead end black hole for 50 years without any success and the staff have been promising success is just around te corner but when pressed recently admitted 50 years at least and the first TEST reactor will cost $12 billion...and will not produce much useful energy.

Maybe we should start to point this to the funding agencies and get the funding pulled or diverted away from this colossal waste.

We should start a pr campaign to discredit takamak research.

It's the wrong shape and will never work.

jlumartinez
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Post by jlumartinez »

I think at last Tokamaks will work. Maybe its shape is not so good for confinement as an sphere but after the last 50 years of developments they have got closer and closer to break-even.

In my opinion if we make a campaign against Tokamaks will be suffering the consequences back very soon. 99.99% of fusion fans/researchers has all the hopes in Tokamaks (maybe because they are not aware of Polywell ...) but if we criticize those machines we will be soon in the same group as cold fusion supporters. We´ll be treated as madmen.

rexxam62
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Post by rexxam62 »

Tokamaks are flawed for the reason that they want to drive the fusion with heat as opposed to the polywell that drives it with electricity. Fusion with heat will be impossible. The high temperature makes it impossible. And who cares about Tokamak fans? All this time they spent and all thouse billions and where is my working fusion? Time to move on. Inertial electrostatic confinement Polywell is next.

Stop being so shy about the fact that the tokamak is just a jobs program intended to never reach working fusion or threatening the oil business. Time to be a lil more agressive here.
Last edited by rexxam62 on Tue Aug 28, 2007 8:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

I post stuff almost every time ITER comes up on a blog.

I wouldn't be antagonistic. Just present the other side.

Zixinus
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Post by Zixinus »

Tokamak fusion is real, published and measured. Polywell is barely, and on the verge of fringe science.

Do not demonise the competitor. There is more then one way to fusion. I'd prefer Polywell over tokamaks. That doesn't mean Tokamaks are wrong.

esecallum

Stop repeating and exaggerating what Bussard said. You sound like a crackpot, and we are not them.
The tokamak is a VERY stupid design.
No, its not. It's pretty reasonable design actually, and if you want to confine plasma, a toroid does make sense.

Thing is, confining plasma and doing fusion is not the same.
The governments have been sinking money into this dead end black hole for 50 years without any success
No success? For practical fusion, most likely yes. But studying plasma, studying fusion, studying problems of fusion? No. Tokamaks are great experimental devices. Whether they are practical devices is another question.
...because of the huge delicate magnetic field coils....the slightest imperfection in the field and the hot plasma touches the wall and loses energy...and the fusion reaction stops.
That's not it. The problems involved are more complex then that. Like putting 500 degress Celsius molten lithium next to cryogenically cooled superconductors.
HOT CHARGED PARTICLES IN A SPHERE CONFINED BY A FIELD CAN EITHER GO INWARDS OR OUTWARDS OF A SPHERE OR STAY CONFINED WITHIN THE SPHERE INCREASING THE CHANCES OF FUSING.
And plasma physicist know that. If it was that easy and obvious, we would have had fusion in the early Cold War.
We should start a pr campaign to discredit takamak research.
Can I suggest a better idea?

Maybe we should do a PR campaign to credit our concept, to get money and argue againts tokamaks with data and experiments, not with flawed, emotional rants.
Stop being so shy about the fact that the tokamak is just a jobs program intended to never reach working fusion or threatening the oil business. Time to be a lil more agressive here.
You want aggressive? Great idea, grab two radiation detectors and lets settle this debate like scientist! That is, with science.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Plasma Physicist Dr. Nicholas Krall said, "We spent $15 billion dollars studying tokamaks and what we learned about them is that they are no d a m n good."

Evidently this blog software changes D a m n to Darn.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... -good.html

To make the url work change darn to d a m n.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Zixinus,

The Tokamak is a very good design for inducing currents in plasmas.

For a fusion reactor not so much. It has instability problems. It has confinement problems. It has size problems.

I do agree that focusing on denigrating the "opposition" is the wrong way to go.
Last edited by MSimon on Wed Aug 29, 2007 4:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

JohnP
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Post by JohnP »

I'll cast another vote against denigrating tokamaks. The tokamak movement in its various guises wields enormous political influence. If you wanna have Dr Bussard shut down again, kick over the tokamak beehive, but don't complain when your butt gets stung. Better to speak softly now and when more solid results are available, let those speak for themselves.

esecallum
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Post by esecallum »

Zixinus wrote:Tokamak fusion is real, published and measured. Polywell is barely, and on the verge of fringe science.

Do not demonise the competitor. There is more then one way to fusion. I'd prefer Polywell over tokamaks. That doesn't mean Tokamaks are wrong.

esecallum

Stop repeating and exaggerating what Bussard said. You sound like a crackpot, and we are not them.
The tokamak is a VERY stupid design.
No, its not. It's pretty reasonable design actually, and if you want to confine plasma, a toroid does make sense.

Thing is, confining plasma and doing fusion is not the same.
The governments have been sinking money into this dead end black hole for 50 years without any success
No success? For practical fusion, most likely yes. But studying plasma, studying fusion, studying problems of fusion? No. Tokamaks are great experimental devices. Whether they are practical devices is another question.
...because of the huge delicate magnetic field coils....the slightest imperfection in the field and the hot plasma touches the wall and loses energy...and the fusion reaction stops.
That's not it. The problems involved are more complex then that. Like putting 500 degress Celsius molten lithium next to cryogenically cooled superconductors.
HOT CHARGED PARTICLES IN A SPHERE CONFINED BY A FIELD CAN EITHER GO INWARDS OR OUTWARDS OF A SPHERE OR STAY CONFINED WITHIN THE SPHERE INCREASING THE CHANCES OF FUSING.
And plasma physicist know that. If it was that easy and obvious, we would have had fusion in the early Cold War.
We should start a pr campaign to discredit takamak research.
Can I suggest a better idea?

Maybe we should do a PR campaign to credit our concept, to get money and argue againts tokamaks with data and experiments, not with flawed, emotional rants.
Stop being so shy about the fact that the tokamak is just a jobs program intended to never reach working fusion or threatening the oil business. Time to be a lil more agressive here.
You want aggressive? Great idea, grab two radiation detectors and lets settle this debate like scientist! That is, with science.
you are wrong again.

a torus is the worst shape to confine a very high temp unstable plasma.

too many degrees of freedom.why cant you understand that?


50 years of proof it dont work.


beating the same dead horse for years and NOW THEY WANT ANOTHER 50 YEARS!.

THE WHOLE LOT OF THEM SHOULD BE SACKED FOR FRAUD AND MISLEADING THE PUBLIC AND FUNDING STOPPED.

The money diverted to more promising approches.

It is the wrong bloody shape and it will never work.

I t is a nothing more then a job club and dead as a dodo juggernaut that is consuming our money and nothing to show fot it.

it is a dead end.

their asymtotic progress proves it will never work.

they cant even figure a way any to get any energy out of it as the whole stupid thing has to be encased in gigantic delicate magnetic fields which cannot be disturbed even slightly.I already mentioned this above and your precious 500 degree lithium will never be able to go near it as there is no space for it!

I mean the whole thing has to be encased in delicate magnetic fields BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION.... how are you going to any get energy out of it...?

I am going to write to the Government and start a massive lobby campaign to get this massive environmental waste stopped.

stop making excuses for it..we need to stop the tokamak parasites.

THEY have been promising and hoodwinking fusion for 50 years and getting VAST funding on that BASIS from the taxpayer.

do you relly think politicians would pour VAST sums into ACADEMIC reasons to study confinement.

i never quoted Dr Bussard...DO YOU REALLY THINK other people cannot arrive at similar conclusions after seeing to 50 years of failure?




why should we not discredit ITER tokamak fusion?

they were very quick to discredit cold fusion and went so far as to post fake results...it was M.I.T WHO DELIBERATELY altered the graph showing excess heat to show zero.....this is well documented and M.I.T admitted it.

Yet cold fusion excess heat has been replicated at over different labs worldwide...but cannot be explained by current theories....yes..yes and it cannot be harnessed reliably...yes..yes ,...i... know yes...and study papers denied peer review thanks to the ITER leeches.
Last edited by esecallum on Wed Aug 29, 2007 11:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

esecallum,

I think you are correct about the science and engineering.

However, I do believe you are wrong about the politics.

When it comes to the big picture a few more years of waste by ITER is nothing.

When I talk about ITER the most I will say is that it is too big and costs too much and the electrical industry would prefer smaller more economical reactors.

Be gentle. Yes it is a waste. There are worse.

We really can't afford large well funded enemies at this point. Wait 5 or 6 years until we have a working reactor.

May I suggest a strategy of indirect approach? Direct attacks on well defended positions seldom succeed and are always costly.

jlumartinez
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Post by jlumartinez »

What about others type of fusion reactors? What is your opinion about them? I think in a near future there will be some types of fusion reactor which may get net power. Then of course, for public use we need the more economical one. In this case I dough that Tokamak will be as competitive as others. Tokamak at last will get net power but at what price? Polywell will be thousand times cheaper and versatile than Tokamak

What is your idea about other promising reactors? I vote for Magnetized Target Fusion and Spherical Torus. And all your opinions ?

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

jlumartinez wrote:What about others type of fusion reactors? What is your opinion about them? I think in a near future there will be some types of fusion reactor which may get net power. Then of course, for public use we need the more economical one. In this case I dough that Tokamak will be as competitive as others. Tokamak at last will get net power but at what price? Polywell will be thousand times cheaper and versatile than Tokamak

What is your idea about other promising reactors? I vote for Magnetized Target Fusion and Spherical Torus. And all your opinions ?
I like POPS.

I have heard rumors that the POPS people will be helping Dr. B.

Interesting if the rumor is true.

jmc
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Post by jmc »

The JET tokamak was the first fusion device in the work to achieve conditions close to break-even, releasing 16.1 Megawatts of fusion power in the form of neutron heat energy, this was 62% of the heat power from external soureces absorbed by the plasma.

That's an indisputable scientifically recorded fact.

It is thanks to the D-T campaign in 1997 that fusion is once again considered a viable possibility by the main stream public.

The coming tokamak, ITER will almost certainly beat that due to well established scaling laws and is likely to produce 10 times as much power out as will be used to heat it. That expweriment has not been conducted yet but in 15 years it in all likihood will be.

As things stand right now the tokamak is the device with the best track record for achieving high fusion yields and has a very good chance of eventually achieving a net power output, to dispute that would be incorrect and insane.

****************************************************

Saying that tokamaks will never produce net power because 'a donut is a different shape from the sun' will not gain you support or credibility. The main problem with the tokamak programme is the size an cost of the machines when compared with the rate of wear and tear they are likely to sustain from the neutrons bombarding them and the damage to plasma facing components. It would still be wrong to consider them a complete write off, they may yet achieve economical power due to learning curves and cost reduction programmes but if there is a cheaper way of achieving break even its certainly worth pursuing.

I here the total world energy market is worth something of the order of 10 trillion dollars per year, ITER which will cost 10 billion dallars or so over thirty year ( or 300 million dollars per year) represents 0.00003 of this fraction so if governments spent more money on R&D for energy then there would be plenty of room for other projects alongside ITER.

WB6 is unproven technology, and saying that we should abandon the entire tokamak programme on the merit of 4 experimental runs on one machine just doesn't make sense. The only sensible thing to do is to see if the results can be replicated, if they can build a full sized reactor and if that works I guarantee the attention and stir that it will cause will exceed any 'PR tokamak slurring campaign with dancing naked women and gay men'

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

The only sensible thing to do is to see if the results can be replicated, if they can build a full sized reactor and if that works I guarantee the attention and stir that it will cause will exceed any 'PR tokamak slurring campaign with dancing naked women and gay men'
Totally agree.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

ITER, which will not produce electricity, will be built by 2016 in Cadarache, France, and will be operated for 10 years to address the scientific and technical feasibility of magnetically confining burning plasmas on a large scale. Unlike smaller scale fusion devices such as the Joint European Torus in England, ITER is designed to demonstrate that fusion energy reactions can be self-sustaining.
http://oakridger.com/stories/090307/new_196533390.shtml

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