Talk-Polywell.org

happyjack27 wrote:

jcoady wrote:

This is multiplied by the cusp confinement to get the "thousands of passes" confinement of charged particles (electrons)- ie: the Wiffleball trapping factor.

What would the electron charge density look like inside the Wiffleball. Is it expected to be evenly distributed inside the Wiffleball or would it be expected to be higher near the outer wiffleball radius.

my sims suggested the electrons form a sort of hollow sphere in the center (which spikes at the cusps). this makes sense, given gauss' law; a "hollow sphere of charge", as it were, represents a minimum-energy state. i believe this would suggest that the electric potential well is squarish at the bottom. some of the electrons would be part of this hollow sphere, some would cancel out the protons' charge density.

Which means IMO that WB is proven.

However, the wiffleball mode is essential and the ion convergence simply makes things better. If we can’t get the wiffleball, then we can kiss our behinds goodbye. That’s why we are focused on achieving the wiffleball and we aren’t paying any attention to Rider and Nevins. They’re just a distraction. Does this kind of make sense?

RESULTS AND FINAL CONCLUSIONS

Results of the experimental and analytical work conducted during the program now ending have shown all of the conclusions necessary to support and define the next step to full-scale net fusion power demonstration. These include:

1. No closed box machine can ever yield net fusion power; open recirculating MG machines and systems are required. This is an immutable result of the determination of losses of electrons in experiments, that show that losses to surfaces that are NOT magnetically shielded must be kept to less than 1E-5 or so of the cusp axis flow of electrons in the WB effect at beta = one.
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2. The inescapable conclusion is that all polyhedral Polywell® machines must operate as open recirculating devices, and that all such systems must have essentially no B-fieldunshielded surface area available to electrons in the machine, itself
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3. Because of this, it is also evident that – no matter their individual plan form shape (i.e. circles, squares, triangles, polygons etc.) – magnet coils must not touch at their adjacent corners, but must be spaced sufficiently far apart to ensure that no B fields intersect their containers.
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4. Operating as recirculating (MaGrid) machines means that there will be an external region between the machine and its containing exterior wall, in which Paschen arc breakdown can occur, unless both external electron and neutral gas density can be kept below some critical level.
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5. This requires that the ionization (of neutral gas) density within the machine be very large relative to that outside; and this can be attained only by neutral gas injection directly into the machine, followed by subsequent very rapid ionization of this gas, before it can escape into the exterior region.
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6. Thus, in small systems there is a big incentive to attempt to fuel the machine with ions injected from ion guns placed on cusp axes
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7. Finally, in terms of practical limitations it was noted that the basic physics concept presumes magnet coils of near-zero physical cross-section, which touch at acute to right angles at the corners of the polyhedral-vertex boundaries on which they are supposed to lie
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8. The only way to avoid this, with coils of realistic finite size, using realistic conductors (e.g. superconductors) is to space the coils a distance from each other, as described in (3),above, so that NO B fields intersect the coil container metal surfaces, but rather the field lines flow in parallel between the spacing at these corners.
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9. These line cusp flow increases will operate in parallel with the cusp-confinement Gwb of the basic coil geometry, and will thus reduce the overall trapping factor to something less than Gwb
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10. This has the consequence that the maximum electron density ratio that can be sustained between inside and outside will be equally reduced, and the outside density must be that much larger for a given interior density (as required for useful fusion output).
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11. Once again, large machines will not suffer from these problems to any significant degree, but they will cost a great deal more. Costs tend to scale as the cube of the system size and the square of the B field. Thus, full-scale machines and their development will cost in the range of ca $ 180 – 200 M, depending on the fuel combination selected. These cost estimates closely reproduce those made throughout the USN program life, from its earliest work (1991) to its conclusion (mid-2006) including those made at interim reviews (1995, 1999). USNavy costs expended to date in this program have been approximately $ 18 M over about 10 years (2/3 in last 6 years).

Stubby wrote:maybe now they can get their website back up