Polywell: We'll know in 7 months time?!

Aero · Post by **Aero** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 12:11 am

Not to change the subject or anything like that, but this thread starts with:

PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 11:05 pm Post subject: Polywell: We'll know in 7 months time?!

So should that read "4" months now?

EricF · Post by **EricF** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 3:24 am

I think a couple pages back they figured out that we the public will probably know October 2012?

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 3:28 am

p7 has some good summaries.

ladajo wrote:CLIN 0001 - 30 Apr 2010 (= plasma wiffleball 8 ) - Completion of device build.
CLIN 0002 - 30 Apr 2011 (= Data) - Completion of WB8 testing
CLIN 0003 - 31 Oct 2011 (= Optional WB 8.1) - Completion of optional device build
CLIN 0004 - 31 Oct 2012 (= Optional Data) - Completion of optional device testing

In two months someone will know if WB-8 was completed on time. In April 2011 someone will know how well it worked. If it worked within expectations and they go ahead with WB8.1, after a year and a half someone will know if WB-8.1 can burn p-B11. Around Oct 2012 someone might know if a 100MW reactor called WB-9 is going to be built (or maybe they'll even run WB-9 concurrently with WB-8.1 if they're really excited).

And at some point, someone may share some, all, or none of this with us.

I'm guessing WB-9 is a five-year project, but Simon or others might have better-informed estimates.

Robthebob · Post by **Robthebob** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 3:50 am

I will be graduating from college next year, planning on going to University of New Mexico for grad school.

Yep, you guessed it, Santa Fe is close to Albuquerque

My doc project will be on building a polywell core.

chrismb · Post by **chrismb** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 7:38 am

TallDave wrote: What is this babbling nonsense? I've put out more numbers than you have.

This really makes me angry. You've posited a few numbers and waved your hand about to say they show Polywell to be better than tokamaks due to some spurious exponential relationship.

I've then put my time and effort where you couldn't be bothered to boil your handwaving down into a testable and comparable figure. What I have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt is that you figure polywell is better than tokamak because when you wave your hand, you wave your hand higher for Polywells.

All that you have said is utterly laking in any substance whatsoever. Unsubstantiated numbers followed by an unsubstantiated claim to non-linearity followed by unsubstantiated pedestal-setting for Polywell. While I'm peddling your numbers through the sausage maching to see if you are justified saying it (unlike yourself who appears to prefer someone else to show it for you as you clearly can't be bothered to write out one single equation to boil down the supposed "data" you've offered) you just sit back and carry on waving your hand even higher!

Give me some objective numbers. The START figure is right, just go ask someone at Culham and stop asking me to do your donkey work. I'm trying to get you to prove your claims, so if you turn that around on me to disprove your claims, then I will do likewise. It is easy enough because, unlike the idiotic secrecy that EMC2 claim to hide behind, you can ask Culham about their experiments and they'll tell you.

I mean - who's figures do you trust the most - one organisation that is open with all its work, publishes plenty of papers and hosts exchange scientists and engineers from around the world, or one that seemingly makes no attempt to make its work freely public? Are you really telling me EMC2 is higher on the veracity-scale than Culham!?

kurt9 · Post by **kurt9** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 4:53 pm

TallDave wrote:p7 has some good summaries.

ladajo wrote:CLIN 0001 - 30 Apr 2010 (= plasma wiffleball 8 ) - Completion of device build.
CLIN 0002 - 30 Apr 2011 (= Data) - Completion of WB8 testing
CLIN 0003 - 31 Oct 2011 (= Optional WB 8.1) - Completion of optional device build
CLIN 0004 - 31 Oct 2012 (= Optional Data) - Completion of optional device testing
In two months someone will know if WB-8 was completed on time. In April 2011 someone will know how well it worked. If it worked within expectations and they go ahead with WB8.1, after a year and a half someone will know if WB-8.1 can burn p-B11. Around Oct 2012 someone might know if a 100MW reactor called WB-9 is going to be built (or maybe they'll even run WB-9 concurrently with WB-8.1 if they're really excited).

And at some point, someone may share some, all, or none of this with us.

I'm guessing WB-9 is a five-year project, but Simon or others might have better-informed estimates.

The earliest any of us will know if the polywell is a valid concept will be spring of next year. If it passes that hurtle, the earliest any of us would know if it works with p-B11 and if the full scale reactor is going to get built will be fall 2 years from now.

Its going to be a long year and a half on this discussion board. We might as well sit back and wait.

We could try to drum up some investment money for John Slough's FRC concept while we are waiting for the polywell results. His is the only active concept I know of that has not been financed. I thought Art Carlson was going to get more FRC related discussion going here anyways. Its best not to put all of our eggs into one basket.

Solo · Post by **Solo** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 6:13 pm

I'm with Kurt: we should try to find something more productive to do with the forum. (I'm biased toward Slough & Helion -- I'm looking at going to UW-Seattle for grad school in physics, starting this coming Autumn.)

@ RobtheBob: cool! Best of luck with your studies!

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 7:25 pm

I am with Kurt and Solo. FRC seems really interesting too and if Art Carlson backs it up, it gotta be good

EricF · Post by **EricF** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 7:45 pm

It seems to be that the biggest thing holding back amature enthusiast contributions to Polywell is the sheer cost of equipment and manufacturing. Heck, have you seen the price on the pumps alone for creating the fusor vacuum on MSimon blog for building a tabletop fusor? Hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

I've been wondering how practical it would be to try and improvise from scratch everything involved in the tabletop fusor, Ben Franklin style (or Edison, DeVinci, whomever), so that this community can start seeing for itself what all is involved (especially from a safety standpoint). Is a home-made neutron counter even practical?

Heath_h49008 · Post by **Heath_h49008** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:29 pm

For a full-size machine, the issues that would stop a small school/group would seem be the power requirements, and the large vacuum tank/pumps.

How much could we salvage out of other machines? ie coils and cooling from MRIs, tanks from "x?", and pumps from "?", power controls and instruments from "?".

Robthebob · Post by **Robthebob** » Wed Feb 17, 2010 1:17 pm

Skipjack wrote:I am with Kurt and Solo. FRC seems really interesting too and if Art Carlson backs it up, it gotta be good

haha, good stuff.

David_Jay · Post by **David_Jay** » Wed Feb 17, 2010 6:03 pm

Rob:

With regards to your comment above and your signature, everyone spends their life doing something.

Better fusion than what Mike Rowe (discovery channel "Dirty Jobs") does!

Cheers!

jrvz · Post by **jrvz** » Wed Feb 17, 2010 6:27 pm

Heath_h49008 wrote:For a full-size machine, the issues that would stop a small school/group would seem be the power requirements, and the large vacuum tank/pumps.

How much could we salvage out of other machines? ie coils and cooling from MRIs, tanks from "x?", and pumps from "?", power controls and instruments from "?".

I believe the traditional substitute for a vacuum pump is the pump from an old refrigerator. But for a big tank you ought to have a big pump. How good a vacuum does a polywell need? Enough to require a diffusion pump?

Robthebob · Post by **Robthebob** » Thu Feb 18, 2010 3:24 am

Right now, I just would like to just study the potential well by itself.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Thu Feb 18, 2010 2:27 pm

This really makes me angry. You've posited a few numbers and waved your hand about to say they show Polywell to be better than tokamaks due to some spurious exponential relationship.

You really need to stop arguing with the voices in your head and read what I actually write. I've said I'm open to the idea toks are better at low levels of funding.

I've also said more than once that we don't know what neutron counts Polywells would produce at tok funding levels. But even if Bussard is wrong and toks do better at tok funding levels, do you really think the relationship between dollars and neutrons is linear? If you want to have a serious discussion you need to try to be just a little bit reasonable in your assumptions.

Comparing neutron/dollar between projects that have different orders of magnitude of funding is extremely stupid; it assumes neutron production is linear to dollars. I know you're smarter than that.

Either give me comparisons between like funding numbers (and don't give me crap using donated equipment and for which you have no cite to any cost numbers) or stop wasting my time with ridiculously lame arguments and even more ridiculous complaints.

If you're claiming toks are better at a given funding level, you need to prove your claim. I am only claiming an absence of comparable data.

If there isn't any data for toks in the Polywell funding range (has anyone built a tabletop tok using .1T magnets? is this possible?) then we can't really say which would be better at those funding levels (unless it's just not possible to build toks that cheaply; I don't claim to know this either).