Talk-Polywell.org

well we know basically 2 things:

1) they are extending the deadline, without increasing funding
2) they have used the time preceding to thoroughly test confinement, and have confirmed confinement.

in a way both of these are disappointing, the first because we're curious, and the second because many of us wanted to see neutron counts. though the second is encouraging on its own merits, and the first is certainly not the most disappointing outcome.

but you know, confirming confinement would be the logical first step if you wanted to be thorough and methodical about things. so in retrospect, we shouldn't be surprised that that's what they've focused on - at least that we know about. and since they appear to be for the most part finished with that step, it seems they'd now be moving on to whatever the next step is.

so what would be the next step? well, that depends on the results of the first: if confinement failed, well, scrapping the whole thing would, admittedly, be on the table, though figuring out _why_ it failed would be a reasonable alternative. if confinement succeeded, well then, scrapping the whole thing wouldn't be a very reasonable next step, nor would investigating why it failed, since it didn't. the logical next step would be to go on to whatever the next thing to confirm would be. and confinement did succeed, so it seems reasonable that, if they are at all reasonable, which they seem to be, they would be going on to whatever the next thing to confirm would be, or debating as to what that would be.

now seeing as they have:

a) extending the deadline, and
b) not asked for significantly more funding

it seems reasonable from this, and the above, that

a) they have determined what the next logical step would be, and are going forward with it - they are confirming the next thing.
b) they are not asking for any new budget items, meaning they have already purchased the equipment they need for the next step, minus possibly a few low-cost items.

so it seems to me that what they are doing now would be a matter of:

a) what would be the logical next step after confirming confinement, that
b) can be done with what they have already purchased, possibly excepting a few nuts and bolts, as it were.

it seems to me that these two conditions would narrow the options considerably.

and i'd speculate that they are swapping out a few of the things in the ports to measure other things. one thing that comes readily to mind is fusion counts. another thing is energy spread / thermalization.

The next step is to take what was learned on the Mini-B and re-apply it to a larger scale device like the WB8.
In addition, it would be to demonstrate a successfully deep enough well to support fusion.
One further step, could be to lengthen the test windows from the current regime to something longer to get a better view of sustained operation.

In the spare time, with good well depths, source some fuel and check on burn efficiencies as well as fuel presence and burn dynamic impacts on the fields and well.

The next step is the last step. That is, they were pinched financially and so could not pursue more powerful electron injection in WB8. Speculation could be that this is why Dr. Nebel left, he did not see any future in the effort as it existed under navel funding. Dr Parks persisted with scaled back and bastardized techniques to accomplish more with less. That he succeeded is a strong argument to go forward with what probably should have been done in the first place.

Note what appears to be a large E- gun hanging off the side of WB8 in the picture. Apparently with WB7 or after they decided to use high voltage electron injectors as opposed to high positively charged magrid to accelerate the electrons. I suppose there are advantages and disadvantages to both. I suspect a hybrid system using both high negatively biased electron guns and positive magrid surfaces may be the best compromise for injection efficiency, and recirculation. An example might be a well collimated e-gun (or several) at 5000 negative volts and a magrid at 95000 positive volts for a total accelerative voltage of 100000 volts. Assuming a resultant potential well of 80000 volts, recirculation should still work well, while time for the collimated electron beam to spread and possibly mirror outside the machine is sufficiently limited.

Dan Tibbets