While a tenfold reduction in impurities—to about one impurity ion for 500 deuterium ions—is a good start, it is not what Lerner calculated would be needed to preserve the filaments, nor what theory and previous experiments indicate can be achieved. For that, a 50-100 fold reduction in impurities is required, or 5-10 times less impurity than that has been achieved so far.
An alternative source might be a very thin layer of tungsten oxide—too thin to be seen or removed during the electrodes’ cleaning. Tungsten oxide dissociates at 1970 C, far below tungsten’s vaporization point of 5500 C, so an oxide layer will be far more fragile. The oxide layer might well give rise to the tungsten in the plasma as well. If this is the case, repeated firing will burn the oxide layer off and impurities will fall.
Seems a plausible explanation. Eager to see next report now.
While a tenfold reduction in impurities—to about one impurity ion for 500 deuterium ions—is a good start, it is not what Lerner calculated would be needed to preserve the filaments, nor what theory and previous experiments indicate can be achieved. For that, a 50-100 fold reduction in impurities is required, or 5-10 times less impurity than that has been achieved so far.
An alternative source might be a very thin layer of tungsten oxide—too thin to be seen or removed during the electrodes’ cleaning. Tungsten oxide dissociates at 1970 C, far below tungsten’s vaporization point of 5500 C, so an oxide layer will be far more fragile. The oxide layer might well give rise to the tungsten in the plasma as well. If this is the case, repeated firing will burn the oxide layer off and impurities will fall.
Seems a plausible explanation. Eager to see next report now.
Yeah, lets hope the solution is as simple as they predict it to be... unfortunately things never go as smoothly as predicted. Looking forward to their next report as well!
Interesting, I love this type of investigative Engineering.
The next shots should finally give us some valuable data to check if Lerner's theory of scaling holds up. If it does i guess they will not have many problems to get the extra funds they have been looking for.
Yes, hopefully the plasma contamination problem has now been solved. It will be very interesting to see the performance of their device over the coming weeks and months.
I wondered if Lawrence Plasma Physics had any updates, but when I Googled I could not reach their site. Google had a label that the site may have been hacked and the link delivers only a blank page.
I almost posted about the site a week or two ago. At that point, I had got the Google warning and then I landed on some spam site. But then I went back to re-read the exact message about the hack and (though I still got the warning) the page ended up loading fine the second time. Don't know why it was able to load fine on retry, but I'm guessing they've now taken down the page while they restore from the hack.
Thanks for the update. Hopefully we will see new shot data soon!
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)
I am not a big believer in their concept, but I still gave them 75 dollars of my hard earned money to fund their next shot.
I did that because they are still doing valid and open science that deserves support (more than the NIF and the absolutely ridiculous and stupid solar roadways) and to show that I put my money where my mouth is when it comes to supporting nuclear fusion. I hope that it will cause others among my friends to donate a few bucks as well.