General Fusion in the news

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

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Skipjack
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General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

From our friend Brian on Next Big Future:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/05/genera ... k-for.html

DeltaV
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by DeltaV »

"spinning molten lead and lithium"

That should make high-g turns dicey... still, I wish them success.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

We seem to see large variability in public information on fusion project status. Tri-Alpha seems to run a news black out philosophy, General Fusion gives us really good insight into their progress, "General Fusion on Track for Demonstration of Net Gain Equivalent Plasma Compression this year" May 23, 2013 Update, and we get Polywell updates by gnoming around and parsing obscure Navy budget reports.

I wonder if the General Fusion engine can be turned on its side and still be able to coordinate microsecond strike time for 200 pistons plus sustain vortex symmetry adequately for fusion yield? Polywell does seem to have a major scaling advantage over the competition.
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 »

From a much earlier June 2009 NBF article,June 2009 General Fusion
General Fusion is using the MTF (Magnetized Target Fusion) approach but with a new, patent pending and cost-effective compression system to collapse the plasma. They describe the injectors at the top and bottom of the above image in the new research paper. The goal is to build small fusion reactors that can produce around 100 megawatts of power. The company claims plants would cost around US$50 million, allowing them to generate electricity at about four cents per kilowatt hour.

If there are no funding delays, then in 2010-2011 for completion of the tests and work for an almost full scale version (2 meters instead of 3 meter diameter).

The third phase for General Fusion is to raise $50 million for a net energy gain device with a target date of 2013 if the second/third phase are roughly on schedule. [The canadian government funding and private funding could take General Fusion all the way through the third phase]

If they get $300-500 million for commercialization, the first commercial scale unit could be 2016-2018.
So, the schedule and project cost has become more realistic since 2009, and the $50M would only cover the "boiler / reactor" replacement as the feed water cycle (heaters and pumps), turbine, generator, condenser, cooling tower, land and cooling water consumption would be a bit extra, so to speak. If, if Polywell B-11 worked that would cut out the large thermal cycle overhead, which is considerable. A big "if?"
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 »

mvanwink5 wrote:We seem to see large variability in public information on fusion project status. Tri-Alpha seems to run a news black out philosophy, General Fusion gives us really good insight into their progress, "General Fusion on Track for Demonstration of Net Gain Equivalent Plasma Compression this year" May 23, 2013 Update, and we get Polywell updates by gnoming around and parsing obscure Navy budget reports.

I wonder if the General Fusion engine can be turned on its side and still be able to coordinate microsecond strike time for 200 pistons plus sustain vortex symmetry adequately for fusion yield? Polywell does seem to have a major scaling advantage over the competition.
There is information sharing within the physics community and within the general public. Tri Alpha Energy does seem to report currently to the physics community quite openly on their activities. If you go to the web page of the 55th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics to be held in November 11–15, 2013; Denver, Colorado and make an affiliation search for Tri Alpha Energy then you will find 28 contributions. The previous two years there has also been quite a few Tri Alpha Energy contributions. Unfortunately the web page only lists the abstracts, but not the talks or posters.
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP13/Content/2604

General Fusion has one contribution to this upcoming conference. I agree that aligning the vortex with the spheromak injection on a moving vessel would probably not work for the General Fusion device. Mounting the whole device in a frame that could keep its orientation on a moving vessel would probably not be very practical.

There is one Polywell related contribution to the conference which can be found by a word search.
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP13/Event/200547
Jeffrey Kollasch (University of Wisconsin - Madison), Carl Sovinec (University of Wisconsin - Madison), John Santarius (University of Wisconsin - Madison) Vlasov-Poisson calculations of electron confinement times in Polywell(TM) devices using a steady-state particle-in-cell method

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

crowberry, re: "There is information sharing within the physics community and within the general public. Tri Alpha Energy does seem to report currently to the physics community quite openly on their activities."
Thanks for those links. Any idea if there is status insight in the scientific papers to glean progress, milestones, and chance of success? For Polywell, there was that Phd thesis a year ago that gave a glimpse into what was being done at EMC2 in the area of plasma diagnostics. That was interesting. There is that presentation that talks about the number of alpha's produced by the fusion mode Tri-Alpha is pursuing, but that is 2012 news. If, when EMC2 pursues B-11, that should be of use. Are you saying that there are blogs that follow these fusion projects? If so, do you have any links? Thanks.
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 »

Michel Binderbauer (I guess he is German or maybe even a fellow Austrian with that name) from Tri Alpha also released a paper a year or so ago, regarding their approach to stabilizing the plasma with neutral beam injection.

crowberry
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by crowberry »

mvanwink5 wrote:crowberry, re: "There is information sharing within the physics community and within the general public. Tri Alpha Energy does seem to report currently to the physics community quite openly on their activities."
Thanks for those links. Any idea if there is status insight in the scientific papers to glean progress, milestones, and chance of success? For Polywell, there was that Phd thesis a year ago that gave a glimpse into what was being done at EMC2 in the area of plasma diagnostics. That was interesting. There is that presentation that talks about the number of alpha's produced by the fusion mode Tri-Alpha is pursuing, but that is 2012 news. If, when EMC2 pursues B-11, that should be of use. Are you saying that there are blogs that follow these fusion projects? If so, do you have any links? Thanks.
For the Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics there are no papers, talks nor posters available only the abstracts. Usually the abstracts are written much earlier thatn the presentations, so the actual content of the contributions can differ somewhat from the abstracts. I have not read all of those Tri Alpha Energy abstracts, I just found the link the day before yesterday. I'm not aware of any blogs that follow these fusion projects and I have shared all links that I have found so far.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

I'm not aware of any blogs that follow these fusion projects and I have shared all links that I have found so far.
Sill, thank you for posting what you have.
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 »

General Fusion will attend the upcoming conference Future of Nuclear 2013 and there is a post about them on the webpage which contains an animation about the General Fusion device.
http://futureofnuclear.com/michael-dela ... lear-2013/
The agenda of the conference looks pretty interesting
http://futureofnuclear.com/conference-agenda/

crowberry
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by crowberry »

I found two talks from General Fusion, one from 2012 and one from 2011 from the webpage of Fusion Power Associates
http://fire.pppl.gov/fpa_annual_meet.html

Update on Progress at General Fusion – Doug Richardson, GF
http://fire.pppl.gov/FPA12_Richardson_GF.pdf

Research Program at General Fusion – Michael Laberge, General Fusion
http://fire.pppl.gov/fpa11_laberge_GF.pdf

The next FPA meeting will be on December 10-11, 2013 but there is no agenda page for that meeting yet.

mattman
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mattman »

Guys,

In all this talk you might have missed this: Wisconsin is starting Polywell research.

http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP13/Event/200547

Jeffrey Kollasch is the lead on this, he is a graduate student under Dr. Carl Sovinec. Dr. John Santarius is probably also on his committee.

Title: "Vlasov-Poisson calculations of electron confinement times in Polywell(TM) devices using a steady-state particle-in-cell method"

Abstract: Collisionless electron confinement times in polyhedral magnetic cusp configurations are investigated numerically with a particle-in-cell technique designed for steady-state conditions of the Vlasov-Poisson system. This method is based on iteratively solving particle trajectories in the time-independent electrostatic field produced by trajectories from a previous iteration. A new code based on this technique, SSUBPIC (steady-state unstructured-boundary particle-in-cell), is presented. It is found to converge rapidly for the cases investigated. The implementation is verified on computations of space-charge limited current in 1D and 2D configurations. Here, it is applied to study the effects of an ejecting virtual cathode potential well on a single electron species injected by guns into a Polywell(TM). Adverse effects of non-magnetically shielded structural members on confinement time are also calculated.

This was funded through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Which means somewhere there is an application where they laid out their research plan. I hope they publish a paper.

paperburn1
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by paperburn1 »

I thought they already published but it was behind a paywall

here is something you might like
http://www.science.gov/scigov/result-li ... 7CDATE%7C0
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

mattman
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mattman »

Anyone have a link to a paper here?

Normally, they present, and the paper comes after.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

Looks like the navy is familiar with General Fusion's approach. From their website:
LINUS – The Original MTF Power Plant

LINUS was the first full power plant concept based on Magnetized Target Fusion. Developed in the 1970s at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory near Washington, DC, LINUS included many of the features General Fusion has leveraged in its own approach, such as thick liquid metal walls and a compressed gas driver. Due to the plasma and electronics technology available at the time, the LINUS design proved impossible to build.
I still wonder if the Navy might be able to shoe horn this General Fusion machine into their ship engine rooms. Maybe it could be tuned to work on its side, and its not like ships make quick turns so, maybe the gyro effect wouldn't be an issue, LOL.

Digging through the available information, according to the 2013 schedule they are supposed to be testing acoustic vortex collapse for the 14 full size piston machine with full size plasma injectors, driving the 1 meter diameter mini-sphere using a hot lead-lithium vortex. Their intent is to demonstrate "net" fusion this year. In the May 9, 2013 Next Big Future" it was said they were on schedule. If successful that should trigger the next round of funding for the full size prototype machine.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

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