And a little bit of $ for ITER

[TallDave]

Polywell has already had 20 years and $25M. it ain't no spring-chicken-fresh idea any more, just one more to add to the (l)on(g)-going quest for fusion, seemingly futile to date.

When we're at a billion, then Polywell would be comparable to tokamaks at START -- which was 20 years ago, roughly the same time Polywell got started.

Polywell is just barely nosing into serious funding now. At this point it's probably more comparable to when tokamaks first got funding outside the USSR -- some interesting results, tantalizing poosibilities, a lot of unknowns...

[chrismb]

Polywell has already had 20 years and $25M. it ain't no spring-chicken-fresh idea any more, just one more to add to the (l)on(g)-going quest for fusion, seemingly futile to date.

When we're at a billion, then Polywell would be comparable to tokamaks at START -- which was 20 years ago, roughly the same time Polywell got started.

Polywell is just barely nosing into serious funding now. At this point it's probably more comparable to when tokamaks first got funding outside the USSR -- some interesting results, tantalizing poosibilities, a lot of unknowns...

The actual machine of JET was built for 36million ECUs (what is now the euro, in 1977). I am lead to believe the whole basic performance phase, site construction, buildings, torus build, plasma operations, staff, &c., &c., was 146million by the time they were 'doing' fusion.

But, hey, don't let something as inconvenient as facts get in the way of your vicarious inferiority complex on behalf of Polywell.

[D Tibbets]

Comparing Polywell with Tokamaks expectations and gains based on money spent and time spent is highy vunerable to misleading conclusions. Both, of course benifit, from other researh and understanding gained from other plasma and electromagnetic research. Tokamak specific research started in the 1950s, while IEC (Farnsworth)also started then, but only by a few individuals, not a crowd of university and government based labs. Fusor research after Hirsch was then comatose for a long time, untill Bussard started the Polywell approach ~ 20 years ago. The Polywell research has been conducted by a small private company that had to pay the rent, etc, which over twenty years would have consumed a large portion of their funds ( which would average out to only about a million dollers per year). Also, the limited number of minds involved due to the yearly expendatures and limited dispersal of information imposed by the Navy has starved the process. With an open multigroup approach (like the Tokamak) the claimed breakthroughs, confirmations and refinements could have occured much faster. Comparing the Polywell approach to FRC or DPF research may be more comparable, though still apples and oranges.
Also, keep in mind that many of the individuals and institutions involved with Tokamak research have been supported by funds not directly linked to Tokamak budgets- Universities, government labs, infostructure, etc.

Dan Tibbets

[TallDave]

Polywell has already had 20 years and $25M. it ain't no spring-chicken-fresh idea any more, just one more to add to the (l)on(g)-going quest for fusion, seemingly futile to date.

When we're at a billion, then Polywell would be comparable to tokamaks at START -- which was 20 years ago, roughly the same time Polywell got started.

Polywell is just barely nosing into serious funding now. At this point it's probably more comparable to when tokamaks first got funding outside the USSR -- some interesting results, tantalizing poosibilities, a lot of unknowns...

The actual machine of JET was built for 36million ECUs (what is now the euro, in 1977). I am lead to believe the whole basic performance phase, site construction, buildings, torus build, plasma operations, staff, &c., &c., was 146million by the time they were 'doing' fusion.

But, hey, don't let something as inconvenient as facts get in the way of your vicarious inferiority complex on behalf of Polywell.

That would be, what, about $250 million in today's dollars? And how many other tokamaks were built before 1991? Versus $25M for Polywell? Permit me to ROFL.

What you're telling me is JET is comparable to WB-100 (or WB-9 as it will apparently be called).

But don't let the inferiority of tokamaks slow you down. Just think, another couple decades and tens of billions and Polywell will have wasted almost as much resources! Except that it will probably either be making power or abandoned long before that.

[chrismb]

That would be, what, about $250 million in today's dollars? And how many other tokamaks were built before 1991? Versus $25M for Polywell? Permit me to ROFL.

I'm not sure I really understand your sentiments. I will defend tokamaks or Polywell, or any other projects, on their merits and attack tokamaks or polywell, or any other projects, on their deficits.

You are defending Polywell by attacking the deficits of another project?!

Your argument would equally hold for, example, investment in anti-gravity devices. If only there were to be several billion in anti-gravity devices then in a few years time maybe we'd really then know if they'll work or not!

Projects slowly accumulate increases in funding based on past performance. Early performance in tokamaks was good, and now at this stage there is a clear, well demonstrated empirical relation between size and confinement triple-product. Financially speaking, it is 'unfortunate' that that EXPERIMENTALLY DEMONSTRATED line extrapolates to some very big devices, but nonetheless experimental demonstration from past experiments has shown that there is potential here.

Polywell has got a lot of theory and little to show in neutron numbers. If it comes good on the neutron count, it too will get that kind of funding, but it hasn't yet [got good neutron counts] so hasn't yet [got funding]. Seems very very evidently simple to me that toakmaks and Polywell have, so far to date, received adequate funding according to the experimental progression. You can argue that political motivations have biased that one way or the other somewhat, but there have been, are, and will be plenty of other projects much more experimentally worthy of funding that don't get anywhere near as supportive funding as Polywell (and some still succeed, but some also unnecessarily fail because of that lack of funding).

There's nothing special about Polywell that makes it a cause celebre in the wide range of projects that are underfunded. It's done pretty well so far by most standards, arguably excessively well considering the paltry performance to date.

[KitemanSA]

Hey folks, rather than bitching at EMC2 about a lack of data, how bout pushing universities to provide a $M or two and make their own Polywell? That data would be freely available. After all, the basic patent has run out. Several universities could compete and try different things and the science would be great!

[chrismb]

Hey folks, rather than bitching at EMC2 about a lack of data, how bout pushing universities to provide a $M or two and make their own Polywell? That data would be freely available. After all, the basic patent has run out. Several universities could compete and try different things and the science would be great!

Exactly. Quite a few universities have taken up the challenge of magnetic confinement fusion and formed projects based on what they saw/see as potentially fruitful and interesting research areas. Just encourage similarly for Polywell and it'll gain the necessary critical mass/momentum as tokamaks have done.

[TallDave]

Your argument would equally hold for, example, investment in anti-gravity devices. If only there were to be several billion in anti-gravity devices then in a few years time maybe we'd really then know if they'll work or not!

And if we had had spent 40 years and ~$100B on any type of antigravity device, you might have have a point there.

Conversely, suppose we had spent the last 150 years devoting research to steam engines while ignoring internal combustion engines, such that ICEs were still unknown today. By your logic, you could scoff at the notion ICEs might work far better in mobile applications if only someone had researched them.

You are defending Polywell by attacking the deficits of another project?!

We were comparing their relative merits.

but nonetheless experimental demonstration from past experiments has shown that there is potential here.

But it took ~$100B to get there. And there's still no foreseeable commercial applications. Even the most advanced designs fall short of present fission technology.

Seems very very evidently simple to me that toakmaks and Polywell have, so far to date, received adequate funding according to the experimental progression.

Possibly they have; I wasn't arguing otherwise. I'm just making the point it's very hard to argue tokamaks have been more successful than Polywell, even employing the dubious metric of neutrons, given the relative level of funding to this point. Tokamaks are merely older and better funded.

I can't argue, obviously, that Polywell should have gotten more funding in the 1980s; it didn't even exist yet. I can't really even make that argument for the 1990s, because Bussard was under a gag order. It probably made sense to throw more money at tokamaks then.

WB-8 will tell us a lot about whether it makes sense to pour more resources into Polywells now. Maybe Polywell will be abandoned for good reason afterward. Or maybe it's the next internal combustion engine. The fact we'll probably know relatively soon and relatively cheaply is a benefit too.

[chrismb]

Conversely, suppose we had spent the last 150 years devoting research to steam engines while ignoring internal combustion engines, such that ICEs were still unknown today. By your logic, you could scoff at the notion ICEs might work far better in mobile applications if only someone had researched them.

But ICE engines were ignored, following Brown's patent of 1823. Barsanti (engineering teacher) and Matteucci (fuild engineer) filed a patent for what is argued the first working internal combustion engine in 1854 which benefitted from a cooling cycle to get it over the Q=1 condition (sound familar yet??). They tried to manufacture it, but one of them died and no-one followed it up.

Then Lenoir came up with a 2 stroke design so as to get over-unity energy and actually found a few million francs in capitalisation in 1859 to start making the things and produced a 3 wheeled carriage with that engine. (Sorry, remind me who invented the first ICE vehicle!).

It wasn't until otto's 4-stroke patent in 1877 that folks credit the 'invention' of the ICE to have occurred. Benz was granted a patent in 1879 for another 2-stroke engine. personally, I wouldn't credit the ICE to have been developed until Diesel's 1893 because at that point he understood the physics of the thing so could design an efficient one.

So 70 years for the development of ICE - and you think that this is 'devoted research'!!!!!

(One footnote - checking up on some of those facts, I came across the 'wikia' engineering pages which included the following paragraph; "The first internal combustion engine to be Applied industrially was patented by Samual Brown in 1823. It was based on what Hardenberg calls the "Leonardo cycle", which, as this name implies, was already out of date at that time. Just as today, early major funding, in an area where standards had not yet been established, went to the best showmen sooner than to the best workers. The Italians Eugenio Barsanti [[5]] and Felice Matteucci [[6]] patented the first working, efficient internal combustion engine in 1854 in London (pt. Num. 1072) but did not get into production with it. It was similar in concept to the successful Otto Langen indirect engine, but not so well worked out in detail.".

I think we know the truth of my emboldened text, the question is whether Polywell is a showman or a worker.)

[MSimon]

It is rather obvious that Polywell would not be where it is today if Bussard was not such a good showman.

I made a similar comment when some one was discussing my pBj concept suggesting that pBJ was more correct. I agreed and said that the pBj construct was showmanship (marketing).

And thanks for pointing out how much good marketing makes a difference when it comes to getting things done.

I know many engineers deride sales/marketing. I'm not one of them. At least not these days.

[Stoney3K]

Hey folks, rather than bitching at EMC2 about a lack of data, how bout pushing universities to provide a $M or two and make their own Polywell? That data would be freely available. After all, the basic patent has run out. Several universities could compete and try different things and the science would be great!

Exactly. Quite a few universities have taken up the challenge of magnetic confinement fusion and formed projects based on what they saw/see as potentially fruitful and interesting research areas. Just encourage similarly for Polywell and it'll gain the necessary critical mass/momentum as tokamaks have done.

The Eindhoven University of Technology wants to start some fusion projects in the near future (at the faculty of Applied Physics, Fusion subject group), and amongts other things, they're planning to build a fusor to start.

I've had a talk with the Fusion group leader there and he seems to know nothing about Polywell (his lecture was all about ITER). Maybe I'll drop him an e-mail with some papers...

[rcain]

Just to add more fly to the ointment, thought the doc linked here was quite an interesting read (and on-topic for a change, i think).

http://burningplasma.org/web/ReNeW/ReNe ... t.web2.pdf

though i'm totally with all the (hoary ole) criticisms of ITER i would also note its benefits:

1) one rare and successful(ish) example of international cooperation in pursuit of fusion.

2) a centre of production of knowldege and, possibly excellence in many things 'plasmoid'.

3) food on the tables of starving (though more likely fat) scientists.

4) ...well, weve started now, so we may as well carry on.... albeit the plan is now totally out of date.

I dont think anyone now expects productive fusion reactors to look anything/much like ITER, DEMO and all that follows on that thread. But the knowledge gained from it, very valuable comodity.

Current buzz-word programme is 'REnEw' now it seems, and about bludy time some might cry, most are just too cynical to believe anything, but a glance through the list of their 'Thrusts' is illuminating and positive, IMHO.

[KitemanSA]

The Eindhoven University of Technology wants to start some fusion projects in the near future (at the faculty of Applied Physics, Fusion subject group), and amongts other things, they're planning to build a fusor to start.

I've had a talk with the Fusion group leader there and he seems to know nothing about Polywell (his lecture was all about ITER). Maybe I'll drop him an e-mail with some papers...

Build a fusor? Seems a little low tech for a university. Heck, even Peninula College, a 2 year community college has built a fusor. Push Polywell. There are MANY MaGrid designs that need research!

[TallDave]

But ICE engines were ignored,

For the purposes of my analogy we are imagining if they were still ignored today, like antigravity devices.

[jmc]

But it took ~$100B to get there. And there's still no foreseeable commercial applications. Even the most advanced designs fall short of present fission technology.

Yes there are: transmuting long lived nuclear waste. If your happy with Q=0.5 you can actually produce quite an economic nuclear reactor for about 10 million. In terms of established technology the tokamak is just about the best most efficient way to produce an intense source of 14MeV neutrons. There's already a start up company looking into this application.



BTW Chrismb is right. Tokamaks are the best performing fusion devices to date. You want to argue that we should diversify and look into other approaches aswell, fine I'm all for that. You want to divert funding away from something that does work and spend it on something that doesn't work with no proof it will? Preposterous.


I also don't buy the idea Polywells will work sooner or be abandoned. That HEPS was the size of a large tokamak and it failed miserably and yet they built another and another and another. I guarantee if WB-8 doesn't work out quite as intended they'll find out some improvisation and then they will build another and another and another. There's nothing wrong with that but don't try to make out its any different or better than tokamaks.

In anycase 100B over 50 years to research a limitless source of infinite energy is not too bad. The world spends 5 trillion per year on energy, and that today's demand, as we move into the future we'll all probably be using much more energy even that this figure.