Talk-Polywell.org

Art: Two comments on cusp confinement: 1. Just like with FRCs, confinement times in a Polywell don't have to be comparable to those in a Tokamak since it is envsioned that the system will operate in the 1e16/cm**-3 (average density) range. The parameters for these machines tend to be between ICF and...

Hi Art. (I hope we can forgo titles here). Anybody from UW can't be all bad! I've also done some work on FRCs, but mostly at LANL I worked on Reversed-Field Pinches and fiber Z pinches. I know most of the UW FRC crew. I've worked on electrostatics off and on for over 15 years. What I think you will ...

Scareduck: At the risk of putting my foot in my mouth, the usual answer is that ion-electron collisions are much smaller than ion-ion collisions. It's much easier for particles of the same mass to transfer momentum to one another. This is the same effect as shooting pool with a cue ball that weighs ...

Carlson is a Tokamak researcher from Garching (Germany). I don't know him personally. I have had some off-line exchanges with him and he has some interest, even if that interest is primarily in shooting down Polywells. I've never quite understood why this is, but a lot of the plasma people not only ...

If you are interested in plasmoids, take a look at Caroline Wurden's INTEL science fair projects for the last 2 years on ball lightning. She's making it in her garage. This year she won the Physics category at the international fair. You can look her up on Google.

1. Proliferation really isn't an issue with Polywells. If you introduce neutrons into the system (via D-D or D-T) you destroy the coils. These are inherently advanced fuel systems. 2. The worries about tritium production in ITER are also probably a red herring. To my knowledge, tritium isn't classif...

to all: The IEC contact in Australia is Joe Khachan at the University of Sydney. I know Joe reasonably well. My experience is that he is a very nice person to deal with. Obviously, my suggestion for selling turnkey Polywells is not one of complete benevolence. We could use a revenue stream at EMC2, ...

One of the things we have been considering is selling a "turnkey" version of the WB-7. In this case we would design, build, license and deliver an operating Polywell, probably on the scale of the present machine. Operator training and tech support would also be part of the deal. The model is to use ...

general answers: We don't see major issues to exporting the technology. Right now any follow-ons to the WB-7 are up in the air. We have time resolution down to the sub-microsecond range. That's pretty typical for magnetic fusion experiments. That gives resolution down to the ion inertial timescale.

M. Simon:

Thanks for the links. We do have spectrum analyzers in our data system. I suspect that these will be of increasing value as we get more sophisiticated diagnostics

I'm not sure that I know the answers to all of your questions, but I'll tell you what I do know. First of all EMC2 owns the patents and the commercialization rights. DOD retains the right to use the technology free of charge. That's a pretty standard arrangement. As for DOD taking control of the tec...

Rostaker's work is a follow-on to the electron/ion ring work that was started at Cornell. It dates back at least to the early 70s and probably the 60s. It falls in the field-reversed configuration (FRC) category.

The contract is through the end of August.

To Keegan: The worldwide electricity market is $6,000,000,000,000/year. Noone has ever cornered a market anywhere near this size. We don’t think that a little 5 person company in the New Mexico desert is going to pull that off, and we’re not going to try to do that. We are presently developing comme...

zbarlici: I think the WB-6 neutrons are probably real. The measured neutron rate matches well against the expected rate if the plasma was operating in the wiffleball. But if we don't see them, then the question will be whether they aren't real or something just got screwed up. If there are open ques...