Lawrenceville plasma physics June update

[D Tibbets]

Concerning the vacuum chamber drawing shown on the EMC2 web site. As pointed out by M. Simon in another thread, this is probably a misprint. The file name for the picture says WB8. Easy to check- just right click on it , choose save option and look at the default file name.

Dan Tibbets

[TallDave]

Did we ever come up any real basis for that 60cm though?

If you search back in my posts (sorry, quite a few of them) you will find where I used a statement by Tom Ligon related to the type of vacuum flanges used and a reference to a flange catelog which provided me with flange SIZE which became a baseline measurement to scale from. Using that baseline, I scaled the graphic to ~60cm. SO, assuming TL is right and the graphic is accurate, the item is ~60 cm. Dr. N also stated WB8 would be a "larger scale" machine and 2X scaling makes sense. This also results in a 60cm machine.

IMHO it is a 60cm machine. This opinion has changed markedly since WB8 was first mentioned.

Ah yes, thank you. I knew there was something along those lines.

[TallDave]

The next report will likely be published in the first week of August. Not likely to see it early, I think the last one was out Monday May 3.

The report will likely be published on July 30. I believe the last one was out April 30. It just took some people a few days to find it because somebody changed the award number from "N68936-09C-0125" to "N6893609C0125", creating a new page for the 2010 1st quarter results. Simply camping out on the page for the 2009 results became an exercise in futility.

Interesting.

At this point I just hope the political climate remains friendly. I'd hate to see them pull the plug on this for budget reasons. Mark Kirk is my Congressman, and I had a few discussion with his staff about the project over the years and they seemed interested, even supportive of the effort. He is now running for Senate (currently leading in most polls). There's going to be some big budget fights next year, so it probably doesn't hurt to write/call/harangue your representatives about this starting around Jan, just so it's on their radar as something that isn't just pork.

[CaptainBeowulf]

I guess it depends on the nature of the Navy contract, but if the government stops funding them, they should be able to go public with the WB-8 results, shouldn't they? Unless the Navy owns WB-8 and all the data produced by it. Presuming that WB-8 produces relatively positive results, I would think that we're getting into promising enough territory that VC funding could be found.

I suppose it would depend on how "nuanced" WB-8 results are.

[Aero]

The next report will likely be published in the first week of August. Not likely to see it early, I think the last one was out Monday May 3.

The report will likely be published on July 30. I believe the last one was out April 30. It just took some people a few days to find it because somebody changed the award number from "N68936-09C-0125" to "N6893609C0125", creating a new page for the 2010 1st quarter results. Simply camping out on the page for the 2009 results became an exercise in futility.

Yea, me too. I never did find it and finally gave up trying. So - could someone post the right link? I'd appreciate it.

[KitemanSA]

http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/Re ... =Contracts

[Aero]

http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/Re ... =Contracts

Thanks.

[mvanwink5]

The report will likely be published on July 30. I believe the last one was out April 30. It just took some people a few days to find it because somebody changed the award number from "N68936-09C-0125" to "N6893609C0125", creating a new page for the 2010 1st quarter results. Simply camping out on the page for the 2009 results became an exercise in futility.

Thanks Ivy, I hadn't realized the correct cause of the delay past the 30 day publish delay. Back then I was chomping at the bit wondering why the extra delay. I had just chalked the extra delay to administrative shuffling, not search trouble. That will shave a few days off my expectation of the non information publication time, can't wait!

[Brian H]

Getting this thread back on topic (there are plenty of other threads hashing over EMC2 funding and secrecy, IIRC), the "orders of magnitude" from the start of experimentation is about 5, and the remaining required to reach unity is about 5. So an order of mag/month is not all that unreasonable. But the last 2 months have partly been marking time as the switch reliability issues get sorted.

Other notes:
The current electrodes are copper, but the final ones will be beryllium.
An EE who holds 17 patents has joined the team part-time.
The FF reactor now holds the record for DPF fusion yields : http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/a ... on_yields/ using only 4 of 12 capacitors.

[tomclarke]

An interesting graph of the DPF Hopes & Dreams from the LPP latest post

Can they do this? Possibly.

Is an 80% overall conversion efficiency possible? Perhaps

What about those electrodes? Aaaaagggh!

One thing that does interest me is that they have a neat theoretical way round the Bremms problem, provided magnetic field is high enough. I think tehre is some wishful thinking in whether they can get such high magnetic fileds, but still it must be worth a try.

[Axil]

Other plasmoid experiments eventually reached an energy plateau where increasing input energy resulted in little or no increasing output energy. The physical basis for this energy ceiling was not determined. It will be important to find out what is the underlying reason for this peaking behavior when it is eventually encountered in this current experiment so that it can be somehow worked around.

[Brian H]

Other plasmoid experiments eventually reached an energy plateau where increasing input energy resulted in little or no increasing output energy. The physical basis for this energy ceiling was not determined. It will be important to find out what is the underlying reason for this peaking behavior when it is eventually encountered in this current experiment so that it can be somehow worked around.

One of LPP's hypotheses is that maintaining an axial magnetic field in the ionization chamber permits optimization of the helical filaments:
http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/a ... ic_fields/. So far, it seems to be working out even better than projected, and may be responsible for the excellent yields obtained.

[Giorgio]

It is almost time for their monthly update.
Hopefully we will know something more once (if) it will be released.