Starting A Fusion Program In Your Home Town

Consider specific people in the fusion research community, business, or politics who should be made aware of polywell research, and how we might reach them.

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MSimon
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Starting A Fusion Program In Your Home Town

Post by MSimon »

I have started a thread at:

http://www.fusor.net/board/view.php?bn= ... 1210367230

Here is what I had to say:

It is getting to the point that to make advances in the field, collaborative efforts will be required due to the range of knowledge required and the cost. A number of Jr. Colleges are interested so that is probably the place to go. Get your local Jr. College or College interested.

In that vein I have contacted Rock Valley College and Rockford College (in Rockford, Illinois) to see if I couldn't get something started. We shall see if anything comes of it.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

dch24
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Post by dch24 »

Will we get to hear more about the results here? Is this to find interested physics students and motivate them to specialize in plasma physics, or is it to get funding and run experiments?

If you start experiments, please post photos! :)

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Funding, experiments, training.

And yes. If I can get something going I will post pictures.

Here is a blog post I did on the subject. Pass the link far and wide:

http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/2008/ ... -home.html
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

drmike
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Post by drmike »

I happen to be exceptionally lucky - my home town already has a $15M/yr plasma research center with a lot of emphasis on IEC. Home of Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
:D

rnebel
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Post by rnebel »

One of the things we have been considering is selling a "turnkey" version of the WB-7. In this case we would design, build, license and deliver an operating Polywell, probably on the scale of the present machine. Operator training and tech support would also be part of the deal. The model is to use a plug and play concept where the user could substitute their own parts (electron sources, for instance) in an open architecture system. This is similar to what IBM did with the PC in the early 80s. It would give people who are interested in Polywells a chance to develop their own new patentable concepts and new companies without having to go through the entire learning curve that we have been on for the past several years. This struck us as a way to jumpstart the industry and get a lot of new ideas and people involved in Polywells. These devices could be funded through government grants (we have found a mechanism) or privately. I think we could do a turnkey machine for a ~ $500k-$1000k depending on how many people are interested. The idea would be for the government to make grants to institutions and then we would be able to competitively bid on providing the hardware. Ideally, I would like to see at least one Polywell in every Congressional district in the US. Since the cost is cheap, this is a tractable. Is this something you might be interested in?

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Sign me up.

I think it might also be useful to do a $10K to $100K fusor type device for those on a more limited budget. Jr. Colleges etc. There is a lot that can be learned from such a device that would help with more efficient (Pollywell) devices.

BTW in other places (fusor forum) I have made the evolution of the computer hobby argument.

Great minds etc.

Also a range of devices and power supplies. i.e. 25KV, 50KV and 100KV pulsed supplies. Then the same range of continuous operation supplies. Also standardized test equipment. Standardized control.

Same for the reactors. Pulsed and continuous operation.

The equipment should be standardized as much as possible - at least for the starter kits so we could get the efficiencies of mass production.

If we had 435 tests going on at once in each district that would cause the Congress critters to all get behind the fusion push. Very astute. That was sort of my idea.

Again - contact me and tell me how I can help. I'm rarin' to go.

Simon
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MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

I did a post based on rnebel's recent comment and my reply:

http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/2008/ ... ctors.html

Cross posted to the usual suspects.
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tonybarry
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Post by tonybarry »

Dr. Nebel, this is a great idea. Robert Bussard would be proud. Australia has some fusion people working on IEC. Hmmm. Maybe I shall contact them again.

Regards,
Tony Barry

laksindiaforfusion
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Post by laksindiaforfusion »

rnebel wrote:One of the things we have been considering is selling a "turnkey" version of the WB-7.
Dr. Nebel,

This is just awesome. Please keep me updated. There are so many universities/startups in India that will be totally interested in this one.

Thanks
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Jccarlton
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Post by Jccarlton »

If WB7 is much like WB6 the costs will be much less if vacuum manufacturers , AVS and AIP get involved. The vacuum companies might also want contribute surplus to something like this. 250k to 500k is about the right size to get grants from local companies for a little program which is likely to have big payouts in skills that much of the new technologies are going to need even if the fusion part turns out to be a bust.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

rnebel
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Post by rnebel »

to all:

The IEC contact in Australia is Joe Khachan at the University of Sydney. I know Joe reasonably well. My experience is that he is a very nice person to deal with.
Obviously, my suggestion for selling turnkey Polywells is not one of complete benevolence. We could use a revenue stream at EMC2, and this would do a lot to help us grow. We need to learn how to manufacture these things, as well as how to engineer safety systems and all of the rest of the peripherals.

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Post by MSimon »

rnebel wrote:to all:

The IEC contact in Australia is Joe Khachan at the University of Sydney. I know Joe reasonably well. My experience is that he is a very nice person to deal with.
Obviously, my suggestion for selling turnkey Polywells is not one of complete benevolence. We could use a revenue stream at EMC2, and this would do a lot to help us grow. We need to learn how to manufacture these things, as well as how to engineer safety systems and all of the rest of the peripherals.
I'm going to go through my list of VC contacts in the next day or so and see if any of them are interested in making something happen.

BTW don't forget to make your gross margins generous.

Also consider selling licenses to competitors. That has been my number one stumbling block in raising VC. Also it is sure profit vs having to create inventory and making sales.

You might also want to consider a total turnkey operation including a building with built in safety features: HV access and radiation protection in case some one gets something to work really well.

You might also want to give these amateurs some advice:

http://www.fusor.net/board/view.php?bn= ... 1210660610

They are thinking about implementing POPS on a fusor.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

kurt9
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Post by kurt9 »

rnebel wrote:One of the things we have been considering is selling a "turnkey" version of the WB-7. In this case we would design, build, license and deliver an operating Polywell, probably on the scale of the present machine. Operator training and tech support would also be part of the deal. The model is to use a plug and play concept where the user could substitute their own parts (electron sources, for instance) in an open architecture system. This is similar to what IBM did with the PC in the early 80s. It would give people who are interested in Polywells a chance to develop their own new patentable concepts and new companies without having to go through the entire learning curve that we have been on for the past several years. This struck us as a way to jumpstart the industry and get a lot of new ideas and people involved in Polywells. These devices could be funded through government grants (we have found a mechanism) or privately. I think we could do a turnkey machine for a ~ $500k-$1000k depending on how many people are interested. The idea would be for the government to make grants to institutions and then we would be able to competitively bid on providing the hardware. Ideally, I would like to see at least one Polywell in every Congressional district in the US. Since the cost is cheap, this is a tractable. Is this something you might be interested in?
This is a wonderful idea and the best time for the product launch would be in the fall, following the conclusion of the WB-7 experiments and the results of the review board.

800K-1000K USD sounds about right for the size of vacuum system the WB-7 is. We manufactured and sold PVD coating systems, with a 1 meter diameter chamber, for around 800K USD for both diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin film or nitride (TiN, TiCN) thin film coatings during the 90's.

Wittgenstein
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Every congressional district

Post by Wittgenstein »

I don't understand the point of this plan.

If you get to the point of an economical net power machine, I'm quite sure that finding a market for it will not be a problem.

As I understand it, the WB-7 is not even close to being useful as a power plant. So, having one would only be of interest to scientists and engineers qualified to work on developing it further. I have a hard time believing that there are 435 such groups, much less that they are distributed among all congressional districts.

Wouldn't it be more fruitful to get sufficient results from WB-7 to demonstrate a very high probability of success on WB-100? If you can do that, surely obtaining governmental or VC funding to do it would be no problem.

I don't mean to be unconstructively critical; this just doesn't make any sense to me.

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