Talk-Polywell.org

Over at the New York Times there's an article about using proton radiation instead of X-Rays to treat cancer. They build $100 million particle accelerators and then put a cancer patient at the focal point. (Ok, I'm grossly oversimplifying, but anyway...)

So I'm not a NukeE but if alpha particles are what hospitals are wanting these days, why would they look any farther than the Polywell? Generating alphas using IEC, even well below break-even, should be fairly easy.

Thoughts?

Alphas are not protons.

Alphas do not have much penetrating power. Even very high energy alphas.

BTW the NYTs is totally ignorant about science and technology.

"Proliferation" will over time reduce costs.

MRIs will get cheaper as better superconductors are developed.

Why do we spend so much on medical care in the USA? - because we have he money. Our poor people are fat. They own cars. Microwaves. On the average two TVs. Half own their own homes. Why not put some of that $$ into medical advances?

I think these are naked protons (hydrogen nuclei) rather than alphas (which have a couple of neutrons as well as two protons). I don't know why they are so expensive to generate ...

tonybarry wrote:I think these are naked protons (hydrogen nuclei) rather than alphas (which have a couple of neutrons as well as two protons). I don't know why they are so expensive to generate ...

The energy level. A proton weighs 938 MeV. To get one to relativistic speeds you need at least that much energy. i.e a 1GeV accelerator.

Think v^2/c^2.

And that is not all. You need a current. mAs minimum. If you are using a circular accelerator (for efficiency and to minimize size) it has to be big to minimize synchrotron losses.

MSimon wrote:If you are using a circular accelerator (for efficiency and to minimize size) it has to be big to minimize synchrotron losses.

Not to mention buried because radiation leaks from the system would be pretty sizeable and in the x-ray spectrum.

The advantage of protons over x-rays is significant in terms of energy delivery to the tumor. X-rays have a continuous cross section so you need to have enough energy to penetrate the skin at all. That means it goes all the way thru the body. Protons cross section is a function of velocity. So as they slow down it makes it easier for them to slow down more. At a certain energy, they dump all their kinetic energy and just vaporize the place they stop at.

So you can program the energy of the protons for the depth of the tumor. Very little damage is done on the entrance path, and a lot of damage is done when the protons stop. There is no exit path. Compare that to x-rays that evenly destroy a tube all the way thru your body. It's a better treatment system. It also costs 10 times more.