Fundraising, from a marketing persons point of view.

[JohnP]

Grant, I know about the neutron side reactions. That has been troubling me ever since I found out about them. I am assuming that the neutron production is pretty small, and I am guessing that we won’t know how small until we actually have a working p-B polywell. Am I right?

Actually, there could be some good news on that. One of the members here argues that p-B11 side rxn neutrons could be a problem for Maxwellian distribution plasma, since the energies are all over the map, it's probable to hit the neutronic reaction sweet spot. In a monoenergetic system, however, it may be far less likely to enter that regime, and therefore your neutron flux would be orders of magnitude less.

Have a look at:
viewtopic.php?t=523

[culthero]

This is all good, I saw the website and while I would consider it good, it isn't as absolutely accessible and search engine friendly as it could be.

I'm going to brainstorm over some names for a public fusion information website (maybe like fusion tomorrow.org or something) and then I'm going to layout a content map in which the content should be organized. I believe it should be able to convey the point quickly to short attention spans (eye catching graphics and illustrations), but also be able to get as much information about all the different types of fusion reactors and who what why.

What is neccesary is a quick sell for the types who would get lost when talking about electron variability and containment, but a thorough and most importantly impartial and correct assessment of the science and technology as it is at the moment.

I will be using a custom built content management system to allow some of the content and copy to come from more reputable sources, but I believe it's necessary to above all be accurate in what is, what isn't in the world of fusion.


This website won't be created by scientists for scientists, it's by a normal guy with eyes to the future for normal people who have eyes to the future (and edited and compiled by scientists).

I will however will likely rely on any experts to edit the copy, because there's nothing worse then being technically incorrect in a campaign to educate people; I do not wish to have some 94 year old rock star in Physics cut my nuts off cause I copied an equation wrong - such things are really detrimental to the goal of the site which is to have public consensus that we should fund fusion. (If the experts can't get it right then who can)



Alright, I'll post updates when I buy a domain. If you have any ideas for a domain name post em here (check whois first) - and I will try and get a temporary page up ASAP. I will be going through you guys and my design forum (yayhooray) for some advice on layouts when I make them, but rest assured, I'm 1000% interested in making this thing incredible and I've got the skills to do so.

[tombo]

You will never be able to convince some people. So be it.
But, notice the even Jeremy Rifkin has come over to reluctantly supporting Fission plants as the years advance.
IMHO there are lots and lots of environmentalists who would embrace this technology as an alternative to fission.
[msimon- please stop alienating them. they are kind of like the "swing voters" and they CAN see shades of gray especially if they are over, say 30.]

re killer website:
Explain the side reaction radiation levels by comparison to things the average joe thinks he understands.

1. fission -many orders of magnitude lower. use lots of zeros
2. coal - significant radiation (uranium in northwest New Mexico is found in the same layers as coal. The fission folks have been sweeping this one under the rug for decades)
3. airplane flight
4. osha requirements

get the numbers
double check them
keep the comparisons apples to apples and oranges to oranges.
err on the conservative side

[MSimon]

You will never be able to convince some people. So be it.
But, notice the even Jeremy Rifkin has come over to reluctantly supporting Fission plants as the years advance.
IMHO there are lots and lots of environmentalists who would embrace this technology as an alternative to fission.
[msimon- please stop alienating them. they are kind of like the "swing voters" and they CAN see shades of gray especially if they are over, say 30.]

re killer website:
Explain the side reaction radiation levels by comparison to things the average joe thinks he understands.

1. fission -many orders of magnitude lower. use lots of zeros
2. coal - significant radiation (uranium in northwest New Mexico is found in the same layers as coal. The fission folks have been sweeping this one under the rug for decades)
3. airplane flight
4. osha requirements

get the numbers
double check them
keep the comparisons apples to apples and oranges to oranges.
err on the conservative side

Tom,

I have to tell the truth. If that causes alienation so be it. The real problem with "some people" is that they want life without tradeoffs. I don't know how to give it to them. BTW the first rule of Public Relations is TELL THE TRUTH. Disclosed problems are easier to deal with than pretending there is no problem when the problem is known and has been known for some time. I have done a fair amount of work on neutron shielding. I believe a long lasting neutron producing BFR can be done using superconducting coils. A flux on the order of 1E12/sq cm per second should be easy. Around 1E14/sq cm per second is possible. This is the sort of rate you find in nuclear (fission) reactors. Good for making Pu out of U238.

Those are the facts. Now the way to head this off is to think about how to make weapons production harder and more detectable. The thing we have to bear in mind is that Pu production will not be hard. Extraction (reprocessing) will still be radiation intensive so that might be some help. It will not be done by 3 guys in a shack with a Gilbert Chemistry Set.

Of course the first thing you do is to get pB11 working. Then some one modifying a BFR might get noticed at the conversion to D-D fuel stage. However, identification is not easy until you get to the reprocessing stage.

[classicpenny]

Grant, I added a footnote and a link to this page on my website:

http://www.polywellnuclearfusion.com/Cl ... _Safe.html

Let me know if there's more that you think I should do to address your concerns. Thank you for prodding me on this - it did need to be fixed.

JohnP, thanks for alerting me to that link.

Simon, yes, absolutely, we need to tell the truth. However I also believe that there are situations where the whole rigorous truth, given up front to a naive audience, without laying the proper groundwork, will either shut them down or scare them away.

[Mike Holmes]

Bill, that contact page link is exactly what I'd imagined. In fact, not sure if it's intentional, but it resolves on it's own line below the others. That makes it somewhat distinct. Which might be a good thing. Like, "now that you've read the other stuff, here's the last step."

Mike

[Grant Castillou]

Bill, I think that caveat makes it honest enough. I didn't realize myself
that likely properties of the polywell will limit the neutrons so much.
Good News!

Grant

[ravingdave]

Mike, I promoted “Contact Info” in

As should be evident from my website, I’m a “Ready, Fire, Aim” kind of guy. Yes, it gets me in trouble. A lot. (For example, I suspect that I’ve already acquired that "psuedoscience Kook" label in some quarters – ie my congressman and my senators. I’d like to think that maybe I get more done than I would if I obsessed over getting everything exactly right.

Amen Brother ! I have been in several situations where people would spend more time arguing than doing. I took that as a lesson on how to not get anything done. I have likewise found that getting too picky on the details of a project has an almost exponential effect on the time required to do it. I try to find a compromise between quality/time that I can live with.


As far as feeding boron into the reactor is concerned, I was thinking something along the lines of some sort of sputtering process, or perhaps laser vaporization?

David

[Mike Holmes]

My father-in-law, an engineer in the air-conditioning business for years had one of those plaques on his desk that read:

"There comes a time when you have to shoot the engineer and start the project."

Mike

[MSimon]

The BFR would produce neutrons at 1E-3 rate of D-D to start. D-D makes 10X to 20X as many neutrons as an equivalent fission job. So right away you are at a disadvantage.

Let us suppose by careful fuel adjustments and voltage control you get that down by a factor of 100.

Your fission reactor is operating at 1E12 n/sq cm sec. Your D-D job 1E13. Now reduce that by a factor of 1E5. You are at 1E8 n /sq cm sec. That is unacceptable. You want it below 1 n /sq cm sec. Lots of moderator plus Boron metal.

Now suppose a shielding material reduces radiation by a factor of 10 in 2". (this is now about X-ray from Boron10 n capture. etc. Not neutrons). How much shielding do you need to reduce it by 1E13? 26". How about 1E8? 16".

The need for shielding does not go away. What is the big advantage? You can control which radioisotopes you get from neutron activation (Co is verboten) you can't control which ones you get from fission. So you can design a reactor that is "cool" enough to work around in about 10 days or less. With radiation going to near zero in about a year or three.

You are not going to put these in garages.

In terms of flying a BFR - shielding is going to be the hardest part.

[ravingdave]

@ravingdave - electron ionization is the primary method of stripping electrons off nuclei. The electron - electron cross section is huge because the wave functions are matched (it is a quantum phenomena). From a pure energy perspective it doesn't take much to rip an electron out of an orbit - as pointed out by hanelyp. So that part is correct.

But I don't think describing quantum mechanics at the atomic or nuclear level is useful for getting the idea across! If polywell fusion works, "gee-whiz" with a few errors to make things simple is perfectly ok. Anybody who wants to know more can get details up the gazoo when the go digging.

I think I am not getting this. As I don't work in the field of physics there is a lot that I don't know , but i'm always interested in expanding my understanding of physics. If I understand you correctly, I believe you are telling me that you can ionize the atoms of an element by bombarding them with an electron beam ? I had always thought that it was done by using a positive potential of sufficient voltage. I must admit that I had always thought the potential was in the thousands of volts, but that's because that's the voltages i've played with when i've made ion guns, ion wind devices or "lifters" and other such contraptions.

I have heard of photons ionizing atoms, but how does a beam of electrons strip electrons off of atoms ?



David

[drmike]

I think I am not getting this. As I don't work in the field of physics there is a lot that I don't know , but i'm always interested in expanding my understanding of physics. If I understand you correctly, I believe you are telling me that you can ionize the atoms of an element by bombarding them with an electron beam ? I had always thought that it was done by using a positive potential of sufficient voltage. I must admit that I had always thought the potential was in the thousands of volts, but that's because that's the voltages i've played with when i've made ion guns, ion wind devices or "lifters" and other such contraptions.

I have heard of photons ionizing atoms, but how does a beam of electrons strip electrons off of atoms ?

David

The key word is "impact". It's not a great picture, but imagine electrons in orbits around the nucleus. They are bound to the nucleus by the electric field and sit at somewhere around 10 to 20 electron Volts (eV).

If you put a huge external electric field across an atom and it gets above this 10 eV range, then the electrons in the orbits will leave. That is your "sufficent voltage" case.

If a photon comes in, it smacks the electrons and rips them out. That is your photon ionizing case.

When an external electron comes in, it can also smack the other electrons in orbits. Imagine Jupiter slamming into earth. It will knock earth way out of the solar system! High energy electrons are the same thing - and electron-electron interactions are big because they repel each other by charge and they see each other as similar quantum particles.

In the quantum world, none of this is quite right. But at high enough energy (like 10 keV for the impact electrons) a classical picture is perfectly accurate. Electrons are similar to photons in the quantum world - they are wave-particles. So the impact and ionization that they both do are quite similar.

I've built lots of electron (and ion) beams. Ionization is good sometimes, and really bad other times. Beam impacts definitely ionize atoms.

[ravingdave]

I think I am not getting this. As I don't work in the field of physics there is a lot that I don't know , but i'm always interested in expanding my understanding of physics. If I understand you correctly, I believe you are telling me that you can ionize the atoms of an element by bombarding them with an electron beam ? I had always thought that it was done by using a positive potential of sufficient voltage. I must admit that I had always thought the potential was in the thousands of volts, but that's because that's the voltages i've played with when i've made ion guns, ion wind devices or "lifters" and other such contraptions.

I have heard of photons ionizing atoms, but how does a beam of electrons strip electrons off of atoms ?

David

The key word is "impact". It's not a great picture, but imagine electrons in orbits around the nucleus. They are bound to the nucleus by the electric field and sit at somewhere around 10 to 20 electron Volts (eV).

If you put a huge external electric field across an atom and it gets above this 10 eV range, then the electrons in the orbits will leave. That is your "sufficent voltage" case.

If a photon comes in, it smacks the electrons and rips them out. That is your photon ionizing case.

When an external electron comes in, it can also smack the other electrons in orbits. Imagine Jupiter slamming into earth. It will knock earth way out of the solar system! High energy electrons are the same thing - and electron-electron interactions are big because they repel each other by charge and they see each other as similar quantum particles.

In the quantum world, none of this is quite right. But at high enough energy (like 10 keV for the impact electrons) a classical picture is perfectly accurate. Electrons are similar to photons in the quantum world - they are wave-particles. So the impact and ionization that they both do are quite similar.

I've built lots of electron (and ion) beams. Ionization is good sometimes, and really bad other times. Beam impacts definitely ionize atoms.

Thanks. I will remeber that.


David

[Roger]

Dave, I took out “sprayed” and substituted “injected” in polywellnuclearfusion.com.

For some reason I'm thinking of a "gentle puff of gas".

[classicpenny]

Dave, I took out “sprayed” and substituted “injected” in polywellnuclearfusion.com.

For some reason I'm thinking of a "gentle puff of gas".

Neither Dr B nor Tom Ligon have seemed particularly pleased with the puff gas system. Dr. B: Valencia Paper, Physics and Engineering Aspects of Pulsed Operation, pg 11-12. Tom Ligon: Askmar version of World's Simplest Fusion Reactor Revisited, pg 8