General Fusion in the news

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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Giorgio
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Giorgio »

Skipjack wrote:
Fri Aug 06, 2021 12:13 am
Sure looks fancy...
I am sort of wondering whether all that money wouldn't be better spent on the actual research and -you know- fusion...
Indeed is fancy but it seems also extremely practical for the use they need to make of it.
The reactor is cylindrical shape and you can see in the pictures that the building is also made of 2 cylinders. The inner cylinder will host the reactor, while the outer cylinder will host all the infrastructures/control/workshop rooms allowing a full 360 degree access to the machine.
A society of dogmas is a dead society.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

The artsy building is for selling to investors who are impressed with glass and chrome.

Helion's fusion device can easily be made silent, primary power out is DC.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

mvanwink5 wrote:
Fri Aug 06, 2021 7:23 pm
The artsy building is for selling to investors who are impressed with glass and chrome.
Yeah, that is what I am thinking. Wonder how much of the cost of that thing goes to the building and how much to the generator.
mvanwink5 wrote:
Fri Aug 06, 2021 7:23 pm
Helion's fusion device can easily be made silent, primary power out is DC.
That I am not so sure about. As I said, David said that they get 110 db arcing from the capacitors. That is quite loud (car horn, concert, sporting event).
They have actually spent quite a bit of effort into making it more quiet already. That will be important if they want their generators operating in urban neighborhoods. Maybe there will be a way to reduce the arcing in the future...
They would have to reduce the noise level by a factor of 60 or so...

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

Capacitors do not arc, but there must be contactors (called breakers) operating for switching large currents. Anyway, sound deadening is not a big deal. Don't worry about that.

Time is everything here and the big push is on. Best to start working on the utility regulators, institutional investors, and utility heads and board members. Right now they think solar and wind, and fission they think is too expensive and risky.

Flashy buildings can open their minds that there is money to be made. Get the experts with loads of credentials with some big name investors to put push the narrative through the always 30 years in the future brick wall.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

mvanwink5 wrote:
Fri Aug 06, 2021 11:39 pm

Capacitors do not arc, but there must be contactors (called breakers) operating for switching large currents. Anyway, sound deadening is not a big deal. Don't worry about that.
Of course capacitors do not arc. I presume it has to do with the switches.
mvanwink5 wrote:
Fri Aug 06, 2021 11:39 pm
Time is everything here and the big push is on. Best to start working on the utility regulators, institutional investors, and utility heads and board members. Right now they think solar and wind, and fission they think is too expensive and risky.

Flashy buildings can open their minds that there is money to be made. Get the experts with loads of credentials with some big name investors to put push the narrative through the always 30 years in the future brick wall.
I agree to some extent. Flash certainly sells.

ltgbrown
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by ltgbrown »

Having earned my submariner's pin as a midshipman and a naval aviator living under catapults, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty there is plenty of machinery/activities producing 110 db of noise. The trick is keeping the noise in the boat/ship, and that we are very good at. :wink:

So, I wouldn't worry about 110 db. If it were something really loud, like 130 db, that would be a bit more concerning, but still, just a matter of engineering to keep the noise in the boat!
Famous last words, "Hey, watch this!"

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

ltgbrown wrote:
Sat Aug 07, 2021 6:04 am
Having earned my submariner's pin as a midshipman and a naval aviator living under catapults, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty there is plenty of machinery/activities producing 110 db of noise. The trick is keeping the noise in the boat/ship, and that we are very good at. :wink:

So, I wouldn't worry about 110 db. If it were something really loud, like 130 db, that would be a bit more concerning, but still, just a matter of engineering to keep the noise in the boat!
Interesting. I did not know that there were things that loud on a modern submarine. 110 db is nothing to sneeze at. That will give you hearing problems if you are exposed to it for a prolonged period.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

110 db is nothing to sneeze at.
Sound reduction difficulty is frequency dependent.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

Bloomberg had an opinion article on fusion that mentioned GF
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... ow-organic

Sad that Bloomberg's opinion is so shallow. Although GF is mentioned, the opinion piece fails to do justice to what has been proven and why a demo plant is in progress with funds committed. + TAE, Helion and fully funded prototypes also go unmentioned.

Naysayers are always quick to push Greta Thurnberg solutions to a non problem. Temperature record (last double bump ups were el Nino's):

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/ ... 021_v6.jpg
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

Grrr, behind paywall...

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

The article touts the NIF effort and really goes no further, as if NIF is actually serious about commercialization. No time lines for demo plants (Bill Gates is mentioned of course), and as I ranted about earlier, no mention of TAE or Helion. It is really what I come to expect from todays rags, some empty words, place holders for what should be insight to the near term energy future.

So, I will give most of the article:

Get Ready for the Nuclear Fusion Revolution
It’s been hyped for decades. But scientific progress — and commercial competition — may soon produce a truly groundbreaking clean-energy technology. It sounds thoroughly implausible: a technology that could replicate the chemistry of the stars, unleash nearly unlimited clean energy and safely power the world for centuries.

Yet sustainable nuclear fusion, long hypothesized, took a step closer to reality this month. Scientists at the National Ignition Facility, part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, announced that they had produced about 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power after blasting a hydrogen capsule with an array of laser beams. The burst lasted only a fraction of a second. But it offered significant new evidence that harnessing fusion energy could one day be feasible.

Celebration isn’t in order just yet, of course. Hype has plagued the field for decades (fusion energy, the old joke goes, is just 20 years away and always will be). And the remaining challenges to a workable reactor are daunting. Even the yield produced at the NIF — about 70% of the experiment’s energy input — is still a long way from a viable energy source.

Yet there are reasons for optimism. One is that other innovations in recent years are likely to speed progress in fusion. Advances in high-speed computing, artificial intelligence, superconducting magnets, 3-D printing, materials science and more all should help overcome challenges to a workable fusion device. The breakthrough at NIF, in fact, came about in large part due to better computer modeling.
Surging private-sector enthusiasm should also help. About two dozen companies are now engaged in fusion projects, with investors committing some $300 million to them last year alone, according to BloombergNEF. Several have projects well underway. General Fusion, funded partly by Jeff Bezos, plans to break ground on a demonstration plant next year. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, backed by Bill Gates, expects to demonstrate net energy gain by 2025.
Even granting that such goals may prove optimistic, the benefits to this work could be profound. Harnessing fusion could one day mean an effectively limitless energy source. It would produce no long-term waste, emit no greenhouse gases and pose no risk of meltdowns. President Joe Biden’s goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 — implausible on current trends — looks much more realistic with such projects in the mix. It’s little wonder fusion is often called the “holy grail” of energy production.
Unlike the cup of Arthurian legend, however, this one is subject to some worldly constraints.

One is technological. It’s no exaggeration to say that building a workable fusion reactor is one of the most complex challenges ever undertaken. Immense technical problems still need solving. Yet federal funding for domestic fusion research has declined by 40% in real terms over the past four decades. An influx in last year’s spending bill should help, but a longer-term commitment is needed to overcome science and engineering hurdles, build a skilled workforce, and lure more talented researchers to U.S. labs.

Money presents a second challenge. Realistically, no company is going to build a fusion reactor without huge new investments. As two recent reports from advisory bodies have suggested, Congress could help by aiming to produce a pilot plant within two decades. With safeguards in place, public-private partnerships with fusion companies could help accelerate this process, control costs and mitigate risks. NASA’s successful collaboration with SpaceX — which hugely reduced the cost of spaceflight in less than a decade — offers a useful model.

A final impediment is regulation. Subjecting fusion projects to the same kinds of licensing requirements that apply to traditional fission reactors would impose serious delays, raise costs and impede investment in otherwise promising companies. Given that fusion is a far safer technology, such rules would make little sense — especially at a time when the government is otherwise making zero-emissions technology one of its highest priorities.
As the world has learned over the past few decades, there are no magic solutions to climate change. Fusion energy will be no exception. Amid the dreary headlines, though, advances like this one amount to real progress — and, if governments lend support where they should, real cause for hope.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

Ah geeze...

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

GF is starting to realize that Utility planning is now. They need to make the leap to radically change their thinking. They need to ask themselves, 'What would Elon Musk do?'
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb- ... ce=w_share
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

crowberry
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by crowberry »

Here are two General Fusion abstracts from the upcoming DPP21 conference about their large scale integrated demonstration device to be built in the UK:

http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP21/Session/TP11.87
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP21/Session/TP11.88

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

An array of pneumatic cylinders surrounding the rotating core will compress the fluid to reduce the dimension of the cavity by a volume factor of 1000 in 5 ms, compressing the plasma to a density of 5x10^22 m-3 and a temperature of 10 keV, achieving around 10% of the Lawson criteria.
Ugh, I was expecting a bit more than 10%...

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