Talk-Polywell.org

Just a random thought/question here: It occurred to me that you ought to be able to improve inertial confinement times by zapping your pellet with wiffleball-like magnetic fields just as inertial heating begins. This obviously has nothing to do with IEC, but the use of quasi-spherical B-fields was w...

That makes sense--thanks. So, if I'm understanding you correctly, we'd really like to have cold, mono-energetic electrons in the wiffle ball, but we can't, because they have to be hot to overcome the coulomb forces from the other electrons at injection and, once hot and trapped in the wiffle ball, t...

I need to ask another dumb question: Why is the temperature of the electrons important to the power balance? I'd think that, in general, you'd want the electrons to have as little energy as possible, i.e. just enough to get injected into the wiffle ball and move a few gyroradii away from whatever cu...

I've pretty much avoided this thread, but the ideas really are old and well known. I really don't doubt that this will work. I simply don't understand how. It bugs me when I have to take something on faith. I'm just hung up on one eensy tiny point and I can't get an answer: You're generating power ...

Simon, if you'd just modify this picture with a charging circuit, a load, and a way to drain charge off of the drift tube, I'd be sooooo happy... I've asked this question now several times and still haven't gotten an answer: You've effectively got an open circuit here. As electrostatic induction inc...

69 amperes of alpha current for 100 MW. Multiply by the potential between the source and sink (average 1.45 MV) and you have... 100 MW. Well, you forced me to do a little figuring of my own: neutralization current (amps): 6.900E+01 charge per alpha particle (coulombs): 3.204E-19 number of alphas ne...

Correct. If you can induce a voltage (charge a capacitor) you can extract power. It is a DC accelerator in reverse. If the particle does not induce a voltage where does the energy go (in a decelerator)? Where does the energy come from in an DC accelerator? Certainly not from the initial ionization ...

You can get a volage increase without particles recombining ! This just makes the pull between them stronger. It means that they want to recombine more forcefully. The current is caused by recombination. The decellerator grid thing creates a higher voltage because as they approach the collector gri...

93143 wrote:All I'm arguing is that the current flow for the output power is between the magrid and the collector, not between the magrid and the decelerator or the collector and the decelerator.

Would I be correct if I said that you think that power can only be generated through the neutralization current?

I don't think anyone is arguing that things can't decelerate. It obviousy did to reach 1MV, but why on earth then put a 0V collector. You are just re-accelerating it. Maybe you should stop insulting everyone else for a second because honestly you have put your foot so far down your throat its not f...

OK, I finally realized why the spherical electrode objection is bogus: You've got an E-field from any charge on the the spherical electrode (which is everywhere zero) and an E-field from the potential difference between the outer shell and the center of the wiffle ball, which looks like the E-field ...

Simon: I understand what you're trying to do with your 0V electrode plus +1MV cylindrical electrode + -1V collector plate, but let's make the gedanken experiment even simpler: We've got a 0V point source that's (magically) firing 2 MeV alphas at a +1MV infinite-plate electrode. Just before the alpha...

The trap grid is static. The net current is between the magrid and the collector. The electron uptake at the magrid has two components: the high-energy stuff that has to be minimized for efficient operation, and the low-energy stuff from ionization of the fuel. This latter is at basically the same ...

The force on a charged particle inside an EMPTY charged conducting sphere (or any other closed shape) is everywhere 0. This is true for the same reason that a Faraday cage works. Once the alphas pass the trap grid, they can be slowed down by it until they hit the wall (or collector plates, in a par...

classicpenny, I've got the following objections to the deceleration scheme on your page: 1) The force on a charged particle inside a charged conducting sphere is everywhere 0, so deceleration can't happen. (Note that this is not a faraday-cage effect, it's a geometrical effect.) 2) The two-grid dece...