Commercial fusion race heats up

KitemanSA · Post by **KitemanSA** » Thu May 05, 2011 9:05 pm

Chris,
Tweeked your list. Hope you like it.

chrismb · Post by **chrismb** » Thu May 05, 2011 9:15 pm

KitemanSA wrote:Chris,
Tweeked your list. Hope you like it.

I don't like your 'new category' because no one has, actually, yet positively confirmed that confinement of ions with a central space-charge of electrons is possible. But I'm not that obsessed/attached over the detail to be concerned to change it, yet. If it sticks, then 'Penning fusion' will need to move into that category also.

Has POPS been an actual experiment performed? I thought it was still a theory/powerpoint bit of thought-experiment? Can you give me a link to the actual performance of real kit?

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Fri May 06, 2011 6:06 am

Nebel worked POPs at LANL before he went onbaord with Bussard. There are papers on it. I'll dig them out again as well.

quixote · Post by **quixote** » Fri May 06, 2011 6:42 am

I had these bookmarked. Not sure if they're what you're looking for.

http://www.lanl.gov/p/rh_pp_park.shtml

http://icc2006.ph.utexas.edu/uploads/86 ... 6_park.pdf

chrismb · Post by **chrismb** » Fri May 06, 2011 7:26 am

Yes, thanks, I have seen these before. I looked at them again and still cannot see if a POPS device has actually been run. It looks to me like pulsed power has been applied to a Farnsworth fusor and 'POPS oscillations' have been observed.

I am unconvinced the technique has actually had a practical test. Observing one feature of a future piece of planned kit would appear to be insufficient - folks had shown ions could be accelerated by an electric field in 1900s, but that doesn't mean that IEC (which relies on this observed behaviour) had been 'tested'!

But to delete it from the list might be mean, because there are other experiments there that got build but were shut down before they powered up. So POPS can stay, even though the existence of a practical manifestation is ambiguous.

KitemanSA · Post by **KitemanSA** » Fri May 06, 2011 11:28 am

Maybe the list can be augmented with a bold if tested, italix if theoretical... or the like.
I'd leave that to you since I don't know and don't much care.

chrismb · Post by **chrismb** » Fri May 06, 2011 12:07 pm

Well, I think someone should care to make a list (and it can't really include theoretical ideas, else we'd have elephants sitting on ballons of deuterium before long and people say 'ah, but why not!?').

As mentioned, it seems to me that people are either involved in a project, and consequently 'don't have time' to consider what others are doing, or they are spectators to the whole proceedings.

This doesn't seem like any way forward with fusion energy to me, at all.

Am I the only person on the planet attempting to comprehend the net good-and-bad of ALL fusion projects to see if, together, they show the way forward [and add to my own efforts]?

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Fri May 06, 2011 12:26 pm

To make a list like the one you are proposing it would need to set up a Wiki type of list. In this way anyone could add his knowledge/info to it.

Anyone can do that?

DeltaV · Post by **DeltaV** » Fri May 06, 2011 3:02 pm

I don't have any definite rules for the above list. Due to time and knowledge constraints, I guess I fall into the fusion spectator or interested observer group.

This list and chrismb's far more extensive one on Wikipedia serve to remind us of the multitude of fusion attempts and just might spark a fortuitous epiphany of synergism in some lucky researcher's mind, leading to a brighter energy future for all humanity.

Of course, my real motivation is to prod the worker bees into developing and revealing new fusion technology which I can then cherry-pick for use in my fusion-powered space hopper dream machine.
Muwahhahhhahahhhaha.

DeltaV · Post by **DeltaV** » Fri May 06, 2011 4:07 pm

Ivy Matt wrote:Are there any hard and fast standards on what can be thrown into the pot? I'm sure I could come up with quite a few. For now I'll just draw your attention to this variation on the standard fusor:

http://www.beeresearch.com.au/

The diagram here reminds me of my childhood thought experiments regarding what would happen if I jumped into a hole through the earth, although I didn't consider the possibility of someone jumping in after me.

That line drawing is below my threshold for information density required to place it in the list. Is there more detail available?

Oh wait, that's a definite rule, sorta. I guess I'm looking for a picture of reasonably advanced HW, or a theory pdf, or data plots, etc.

And it has to fit in my space hopper.

KitemanSA · Post by **KitemanSA** » Fri May 06, 2011 4:35 pm

Giorgio wrote:To make a list like the one you are proposing it would need to set up a Wiki type of list. In this way anyone could add his knowledge/info to it.

Anyone can do that?

chrismb wrote:DV, I think you are over-listing here. You're gonna end up with my 'List of Fusion Technologies' list if you keep going (from which I already deleted someone's addition of 'crossfire fusion' off of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fu ... chnologies).

It is that wiki list Chris and I have been chatting about.

Ivy Matt · Post by **Ivy Matt** » Fri May 06, 2011 5:38 pm

I have my own list of concepts and experiments that I compiled about a year ago, but haven't added to much lately. Apparently the founder of General Fusion did the same sort of thing (well, maybe more in-depth) back around 2001, although I don't know how much of his research was online and how much was in the library. Rezwan on the Focus Fusion forums has been prodding us to draw up a list of aneutronic fusion contenders compared according to various criteria, but so far we've all been too lazy to get to it yet.

I'm just an observer, but I suppose my talents, experience, and, uh, funding lend themselves more to gathering, organizing, and disseminating information than to doing actual scientific research. Now if I can just take care of that laziness part.

DeltaV wrote:That line drawing is below my threshold for information density required to place it in the list. Is there more detail available?

Oh wait, that's a definite rule, sorta. I guess I'm looking for a picture of reasonably advanced HW, or a theory pdf, or data plots, etc.

How about a patent application publication number?: US 2008/0226010 A1

DeltaV wrote:And it has to fit in my space hopper.

Well, that depends on the size of your space hopper.

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Fri May 06, 2011 6:10 pm

KitemanSA wrote:
Giorgio wrote:To make a list like the one you are proposing it would need to set up a Wiki type of list. In this way anyone could add his knowledge/info to it.

Anyone can do that?

chrismb wrote:DV, I think you are over-listing here. You're gonna end up with my 'List of Fusion Technologies' list if you keep going (from which I already deleted someone's addition of 'crossfire fusion' off of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fu ... chnologies).
It is that wiki list Chris and I have been chatting about.

Oh, nice.
I guess this is a good page from where to start.

DeltaV · Post by **DeltaV** » Fri May 06, 2011 6:59 pm

Ivy Matt wrote:How about a patent application publication number?: US 2008/0226010 A1

That's acceptable by my lax standards and gets us beyond the ominous 13 lines:

http://www.emc2fusion.org/
[ http://www.helionenergy.com/ http://www.msnwllc.com/index.html ]
http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/
http://www.fpgeneration.com/
http://www.generalfusion.com/
http://www.n-plasma.com/index.html
http://www.crossedfields.com/
http://electronpowersystems.com/
http://www.prometheus2.net/
http://www.hyperv.com/index.html
http://mifti.com/home
http://www.crossfirefusion.com
[ http://www.beeresearch.com.au/ http://www.google.com/patents/about?id= ... 0226010+A1 ]
http://investing.businessweek.com/resea ... Id=2113506

Ivy Matt · Post by **Ivy Matt** » Sat May 07, 2011 2:09 am

DeltaV wrote:That's acceptable by my lax standards

Excellent! The door is wide open now.