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Goshin
GriftKingXX
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1 - 01-31-2009, 19:14
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The late great Dr. Bussard's project of 15 years has got a new grant from the [COLOR="DarkOrange"]Navy!

what the hell am i talking about?
Power and Control: Mr. Fusion
Mr. Fusion

Instapundit says that we will need coal, oil, and natural gas for some time even if some one invents Mr. Fusion tomorrow. Which is true.

However, Mr. Fusion was invented yesterday (several years ago actually).

It was invented by Dr Robert Bussard formerly of the AEC fusion office. He did the work under a Naval contract.

The Bussard Fusion Reactor will lower electrical costs at the busbar by at least 10X over coal or fission nuke power plants. Capital cost for electical plants using the Bussard Fusion design will decline by at least 5X mainly because no turbines, condensers, steam generators or electrical generators are required. With such a lowering of costs and simplicity of required equipment, roll out will be very fast.

The reactor is just a big sphere surrounded by electro-magnets. The main cost of the plant is converting the 2 million volts DC output to AC for local use. The direct 2 million volt output would be great for long distance transmission. Although the plants could be sited in just about any reasonably sized electrical yard since any required cooling would not requre a water supply. Air cooling would work fine.

The power generator is about 10 to 12 ft across for an output between 100 MW and 1,000 MW. Power output scales as the 7th power of size. Double the size and you get 128X as much power.

No thermal plant is required. Thermal plants - steam generators, turbines etc. - are long lead time items. They can take from 3 to 5 years from start of production to delivery. The Bussard Fusion Reactor output is direct 2 million volts DC. (a very large battery).

Unlike fission plants there is no fuel stored in the reactor core = no Three Mile Island kind of problems. Turn off the electricity or turn off the fuel and the reaction stops.

It would make a good rocket engine for fast interplanetary travel.

Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion - video plus technical details.

Dr Bussard needs $2 million in start up funds to verify reaction constants. He will need $200 million for a test reactor.

The fuel is Boron 11 which is very abundant. We have 200,000+ years of reserves on the planet if it is used exclusively for power. Most borax is used now for borosilicate glass.

further: THIS IS A VIDEO

Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really)

Text version, more or less:

Here's a letter Bussard wrote that is basically a condensed version of his google speech, without all the cool photos and history.

Appearantly it's not a Farnsworth derivative, from the final P:
"One final word: Actually our device is really not a variant of Farnwworth/Hirsch, but of Elmore/Tuck/Watson who propeosed the inversion of Farnsworth/Hirsch long ago (ca. 1967). Their problem was the interception of circulating electrons by grids - we removed the grids and replaced them by B field insulated coils - thus our "grids" are the coils themselves."



Dear SirPhilip!:

I have read the threads on the Randi forum, and they are all intent and I am sure well-menaing. However, I have not been able to "log in" on this forum so am writing to you instead. Perhaps you can post this note as a reply and commentary to some of the issues raised by your forum correspondents.

First, what we have achieved in our rather unexpectedly good tests of last November 9 and 10th was an output of DD fusion at about 10 kV, at B fields of 1300 G, in a 30 cm diam device (WB-6) run in a pulsed mode from big capacitors, with a fusion rate of about 1E9 /sec. This works our to be about 100,000 x higher than the data of Hirsch/Farnsworth at similar well depth and drive conditions. The test duration was only about 0.4 masec, but since the electron lifetime is ca 0.1 microsec this is steady-state to the plasma particles. We had neither the money, nor the cooling, nor the power supplies, nor the controls to run this small device steady-state, which is what we need to do, and what requires us to build the full-scale device.

This was a direct result of discovering something during late Spring/ early summer tests of WB-5, which was a closed boc machine, like the early HEPS of 1989. What we discovered was -- in hindsight -- elementary; it was that indeed God is in the details, and the detail of particular importance is that no metal surface penetrated by B fields must occupy more than about 1E-4 to 1E-5 of the total surface available to the recirculating electrons. If this dead fraction is larger, there is NO hope of net power from any such machine. AND, it is essential that the device be recirculating, i.e. that the electrons can circulate out and back through the cusps all over the machine. Of course, this is obvious; but in 15 years no one saw it, not Hirsch, not our consultants not our opponents, not our staff, and not me.

It is consistent with the need for electrons to recirculate about 100,000 times before being lost to collisions with structure, to yield net power.

Please remember that our device has the property that the electron flow and losses are decoupled from the ion flow and fusion generation. Power balance depends on suppresssion of the electron losses, which are derived from the energetic electron injection that forms the gridless negative potential well that traps the ions.

When we figured this thing out, in summer 2005, we quickly designed and quickly built WB-6, using only conformal (with the B fields produced) coil cans, so that no B field uniquely penetrated the cans, and then placed the coils in a special array so that no corners touched (this latter is a long topic having to do with local B fields, and loss of WiffleBall trapping due to line cusp effects at the corners, etc, etc, and is the baisis of our final patents on this thing). It IS the details that make or break the device. And this particular set of details absolutely dominates the performance.

Anyway, we ran the device in October, for beta=one tests, to confirm transport scaling laws, and then in early November to test for fusion output. And, happiness, indeed, three tests on 9 November and one on 10 Novem,ber gave the results mentioned above. The next day, 11 November, we tried it again, but magnet coil motions induced by repeated testing had moved the coils enough that an insulation spot had worn away inside the cans, and the device shorted and blew up one leg, with the full cap discharge. Having no further funding, we had to start shutting doen the lab the following Monday!!! Irony?

As to our funding -- our USN contract still exists, and still has about $ 2M authorized in it. However, year-by-year funding was NOT provide for FY 2006, so that we knew we had to close down early in 2006.. What saved us was Adm Cohen (CNR) who put another 900 K into the program to try to get us down the road to where we DID go, and then we had to quit. It was not a cutoff of OUR funding, but the entire Navy Energy Program was cut to zero in FY 2006, and we were a part of this cut. The funds were clearly needed for the more important War in Iraq.

So, as we cut down, we managed to save the lab equipment, by transfer to SpaceDev, which hired our three best lab people as well, and we are still trying to get the missing $ 2M restored and put into our existing but unfunded contract. IF this happens - which is improhable, given the politics of this election year, and the non-visionary people in Congress - we will redo WB-6 with an improved and better version (WB-7) which should give 5x more output, and run about 50 tests to quiet dissent. AND we will convene a review panel of very high-level and internationally distinguished people to spend about 6 weeks going over this to recommend for or against proceeding sith a full scale demo.

This may or may not happen. If it does, I have little doubt as to the panel recommendation, as the data and insight from WB-5/6 is just too clear. We really have solved the last engineering physics problem that has plagued our work for 12 year s or so. Yes, there is much left to do, iespecially in controls and diagnostics, but these are predictable things not dependent on beating the Paschen curve.

And we still have to develop some reliable e-guns and i-sources, again predictable enginering that costs both time and money, but not new physics.

Why a full-scale demo? Because the system scales oddly: Fusion output goes as the 7th power of the size and Gain goes as the 5th power. Thus there is very little to be gained by building a half-size model; it is too weak to give anything definitive about power production or gain. And our tests were always at about 1/8 to 1/10 scale of the full scale demo. We told the DoD from the beginning that the real program would cost about 150-200 M, since 1987, and they all knew this. However, since the DoD has no charter to do such work, and the political realities were that a big DoD program would attract the ire and power of the DoE to kill it, it was never funded beyond about 1/8 the level required.

So we did what we could and finally DID prove the physics and associated engineering physics constraints, scaling laws, etc, albeit at 1/8-1/10 scale. So what? Doubling the size will not tell us anything we don't already know. The next intelligent and logical step is to build a machine big enough to make net power. And THAT is the same 200 M we have quoted to the DoD since the beginning.

As for energy companies "stampeding" to support us -- It is clear that a view like this is ignorant of the reality of energy companies. There is only one thing the oil cvompanies want, and that is to sell oil, and more oil. So long as the fields pump, the oil companies will squeeze. They have NO, absolutely NO interest in anything new, ins spite of all their foolish ads in magazines for wind mills and solar-PV roofs. It is all just show and tell. I know these guys, and there is no way they would support anything that might get in the way of oil. The only way to stop oil, from their view, is when it does run out. And then they''ll go for deeper drilling, new fields, Gulf geopressure gas, LNG, etc, etc, and keep raising the price, until finally foolish solar and windmills become competitive.

And we are paying the equivalent of $ 500/bbl oil costs. But Exxon and Halliburton are getting richer all the time.

Yes, we would like to build the demo plant, and yes, it will cost about 150 (DD) to 200 M (pB11), and who knows if any investor singly or a group can or will come up with the money. One of the biggest obstacle is the world-wide tokamak lobby, which perpetuates the fraud that Hirsch, Trivelpiece and I foisted on the country in the 1970's when we started the big tokamak ball rolling.

Magnetic confinement fusion is a misnomer, as magnetic fields can NOT confine a plasma, only constrain its motion towards walls. The entire history of the MagConf program has been to reduce transport to neo-classical (not turbulent or instability-driven) losses. And THEN the machines are all inherently and inevitably huge and cost too much and make too much power to ever be economically useful --- as the utilities have been telling the AEC/DoE for 30 years. No matter, the global tokamak program provides jobs for hudreds of thousands of people in many countries, and is a safe place to put political pork funding, simply because it IS NO THREAT TO OIL - it won't ever work, but it sounds good to the untutored public..

As for us; our company still exists, but we will not likely run any demo program - that will be up to others to carry it on, if we all get the chance. Meanwhile, my objective is very simple. I detest the energy stranglehold of our companies on our people, and am going to try to give our idea away at the soonest possible moment. To anyone, anywhere, who might want to undertake its development. And we'll be happy to help in any way we can, if a serious interest develops anywhere in the world.

I think the US, UK, France, et al are lost causes, because of theri commitment to the failed tokamak effort, as is probably Germany, and maybe others, too. China may be a possibility, as it is quite independent even though part of the ITER mess, Russia may be considererd, and countries like Spain, Brazil, Italy, Argentina, and others may logically have an interest.

I believe that the survival of our high-tech civilizations depends on getting off of fossile fuels ASAP, and - if we do not - we will descend into a growing series of "oil wars" and energy confrontations that can lead only to a huge cataclysim. Which CAN be circumvented if only we build the clean fuison machines in time. Our patents are in final form, and I am giving a paper in the Fall, and trying to get a large technical description together for a major paper by summer. We shall see.

One final word: Actually our device is really not a variant of Farnwworth/Hirsch, but of Elmore/Tuck/Watson who propeosed the inversion of Farnsworth/Hirsch long ago (ca. 1967). Their problem was the interception of circulating electrons by grids - we removed the grids and replaced them by B field insulated coils - thus our "grids" are the coils themselves.. And we do know how these work, at last.

Good luck to all of us.

Cheers, RW Bussard

applications?

for some ideas: Talk-Polywell.org :: View Forum - Implications


finally, a very very smart look at the project:


by Tom Ligon, who worked on WB-3 or 4

Bussard's approach is essentially a "perfect Hirsch/Farnsworth Fusor". It is a spherical convergent focus electrodynamic particle accelerator. It doesn't work on maxwellianized heat, it works by raising ions to fusion velocity and focussing them on a central convergence point. Ions not making fusion collisions recirculate, and those making elastic non-fusion collisions have their energy re-equalized by a collisional phenomenon that occurs near the outside of the potential well. The result is long ion lifetime at high kinetic energy.

I have a little Hirsch/Farnsworth fusor that puts out 3000 fusions per second at 18 kV on DD. At 12.5 kV, the highest drive voltage WB-6 was run at, most fusors put out so little you have to beat the counting statistics to death to even detect the output, but WB-6 actually put out (for about a quarter of a millisecond at a time) a screaming load of neutrons. Yesterday I read a report that noted that one of the tests was actually run at 5 kV and produced a neutron count (26000 fusions per count) in the 1/4 millisecond or so that the deep potential well existed. Realizing that the statistical significance of one count is +/- 100%, it still floored me. NOBODY does DD fusion at detectable levels at 5 keV. The reason it could happen is that the machine naturally produces head-on collisions at fusion energies in the region around the central convergence point.

I'm not at all worried by the fact WB-6 was a pulsed machine. I built and ran the smaller WB-3, which was perfectly capable of running essentially continuously at about 1/2 of the WB-6 parameters. Correctly built, larger machines should be able to run continuously.

The scaling formulas for output tend to go up as B^4R^3, and gain goes up at B^4R. Bussard expects B to scale with R, which is probably a gross under-estimate once you get into the superconductingmagnets he intends to use. WB-6 ran most of its successful tests below 0.1 T. The scaleup he wants to do for p-B11 is from R of 0.15 meters (WB-6) to R of 2 meters. ITER recently tested one of their magnets at 13 T, and I think 25-30 T is achievable. If his output scaling is correct, even scaling up WB-6 to the larger sizes and fields suggests the thing is going to run, and WB-6 was almost certainly not running in an optimal fashion.

Unless he is missing something really important, the thing should work. Most technical criticisms people have mounted of this thing wind up referencing a master's thesis by Todd Rider, and to the best of my knowledge, the points Rider raised have all been addressed. Some were were wrong or not applicable to this machine, one important one the machine itself corrects via a collision mechanism of the ions near the MaGrid, one is insignificant with proper design. The electron loss problem in cusps was essentially correct, but applies only to the HEPS-style machines. The MaGrids (which WB-6 is) are immune to it because they recirculate electrons lost to the cusps. And Rider never said it wouldn't work, he just hoped a way could be found to overcome the problems he felt he had detected.


Long ****ing post

Cliffs:

Funding was cut in 2006 by the govt from finding new energy sources as researched by the Navy. This guy had built a IEC machine that broke the mold for cheap, actual application fusion energy, then his machine exploded and he was out of funding. After a year he received the 2 million needed to recreate the experiment
The navy now is asking for a 100mW demo machine to go online arond 2012. If it works, we will now have Fusion power at a very very low cost (3 cents/kw)
It was written off in the 90's. He made a breakthrough. No grids, magnets. No lines, spherical. It works

Watch out!

BETTER CLIFFS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmp1cg3-WDY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBfsq80EgOs
 
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Last edited by Goshin; 02-01-2009 at 17:02..
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assfrags
VeteranX
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2 - 01-31-2009, 19:16
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Copy paste.
 
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Goshin
GriftKingXX
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3 - 01-31-2009, 19:18
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most people dont click links, and I'm not a physicist with my own theories on the subject, so yes.
 
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TheGhost
VeteranXV
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4 - 01-31-2009, 19:21
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eat my dick
 
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Phydeaux
VeteranXX
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5 - 01-31-2009, 19:22
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Goshin
GriftKingXX
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6 - 01-31-2009, 19:24
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Since you didn't see them, i'll BOLD the cliffs, fag
 
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Phydeaux
VeteranXX
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7 - 01-31-2009, 19:25
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i need cliffs for the cliffs
 
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CarpeIppon
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8 - 01-31-2009, 19:30
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I have heard of this guy.

So why is it back in the news? Recent funding?
 
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Urshilikai
VeteranX
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9 - 01-31-2009, 19:36
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Correct me if I'm wrong, I know little to nothing about fusion/fission. Stars being powered by fusion, create the heavier elements, including such things as uranium (ultimately) and creates energy in the process. Fission then breaks down uranium or other heavy radioactive elements resulting in yet another net output of energy.

where the **** is the energy coming from?
 
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Scuzzle
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10 - 01-31-2009, 19:36
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Very interesting. Considering the "green" movement, I don't think this guy would have a hard time finding funding if he can do what he promises. Some energy company will either find out what his price is and buy his patents and research and shelf it, or a massive propaganda campaign will be waged against him.

That's if he can actually do these things, though.
 
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Evil Engineer
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11 - 01-31-2009, 19:41
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its fake

If it was real he'd already be dead and noone would ever hear about it
 
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CarpeIppon
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12 - 01-31-2009, 19:42
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Urshilikai View Post
Correct me if I'm wrong, I know little to nothing about fusion/fission. Stars being powered by fusion, create the heavier elements, including such things as uranium (ultimately) and creates energy in the process. Fission then breaks down uranium or other heavy radioactive elements resulting in yet another net output of energy.

where the **** is the energy coming from?
The energy you are talking about is latent energy from the beginning of the universe. In a closed system, you can't fuse up to uranium and then split that uranium for net energy.
 
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Urshilikai
VeteranX
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13 - 01-31-2009, 19:43
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What form is that energy being stored in, and how is it imparted on the formation of uranium then?
 
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Oddiz
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14 - 01-31-2009, 19:44
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but are there 1.21 gigawatts?
 
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FngrBANG
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15 - 01-31-2009, 19:48
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YAYYYYY!
 
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Goshin
GriftKingXX
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16 - 01-31-2009, 19:53
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CarpeIppon View Post
I have heard of this guy.

So why is it back in the news? Recent funding?
yes, funding dropped in 06, he was able to speak publicly (it was funded by navy) and now Navy has stepped back in to relaunch the first one and build a 100MW demo. for testing

10-12 spherical, using boron. By products are water and oxygen i think? or just oxygen? Boron is very plentiful, 200,000+ years on earth of material

It is stored like a big battery from what i read. No materials in the reactor? Pull the plug and the reaction stops. Doesn't use uranium.

@ EE, he has been developing it with loads of criticism. Concept was around since the 30s. They couldn't get past limitations inherent in the design (more energy used than created). He figured it out by removing the grid problem. Subsequently, this guy died in 2007 at 79. He's a genius though. He began the fusion movement in the 70's and was on the Atomic Energy Council as VP. The ITER in france was a spawn of his creation in the 70s, which he created to get funding to fund the actual research that has led to this design. Of course, now ITER is in the plans and noone wants to listen to his better solution.

We'll see what happens i guess.

Energy is coming from the particles moving 100,00 times over a specific area and causing collisions. Those collisions generate energy and, in IEC machines currently used around the world, spawn neurons that are completely lethal to human bodies. This new machine spawns none of those due to the spherical shape and boron as the element. Further, it requires far less power than other machines to achieve the collisions (if i'm understanding it right)

The links i provided have all sorts of good info if you have a few hours and would like to learn more
 
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PotatoBoatCaptain
VeteranX
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17 - 01-31-2009, 20:13
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Good thread, it will be interesting to watch this develop.
 
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CarpeIppon
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18 - 01-31-2009, 20:17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Urshilikai View Post
What form is that energy being stored in, and how is it imparted on the formation of uranium then?
The sun didn't make the uranium on earth. That has existed since the earth's formation. The sun was created when hot swirling mass of hydrogen compressed together to a point where it auto-ignited into fusion. Everything else swirled around and orbited the sun until it made the planets, moons, asteroids, etc.
 
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Fling
VeteranXX
Old
19 - 01-31-2009, 20:21
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neat... hope it will work.
Fling
 
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Urshilikai
VeteranX
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20 - 01-31-2009, 20:26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CarpeIppon View Post
The sun didn't make the uranium on earth. That has existed since the earth's formation. The sun was created when hot swirling mass of hydrogen compressed together to a point where it auto-ignited into fusion. Everything else swirled around and orbited the sun until it made the planets, moons, asteroids, etc.
I never said it was made from our Sun, i'm just saying that stars are the conduit by which hydrogen is fused together to become heavier elements. It came from a star, not necessarily our own.

way to totally twist my words around ******

and you didnt answer the ****ing question either
 
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