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Re: dynamic fusor patent, Salvatore Pais

Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2019 7:54 pm
by Richard Hull
Fusion will not be like fission. Fission is the classic cocked gun. Just like wood, coal and gas, all we have to do is gather this ammo load it into the energy gun...(Furnace, boiler, car engine), and pull the trigger. To get fission going, we just move the pieces of U235 close together and it happens, energy galore! (Actually we load the stuff in the reactor to criticality, but with neutron absorbing rods to prevent a run away, then pull the rods out as needed to obtain just the right amount of energy we want. This is all the result of failing fusion many Billions of years ago when a massive super nova had the energy needed to form Uranium atoms and stored that last gasp of stellar energy in those atoms in the form of nuclear binding energy.

Currently, this is exactly what our fusion based, gravity powered sun does and has been doing for us albeit at the chemical level here on earth. Early man relied on solar fusion to grown trees and other vegetation so he could burn the stuff to keep warm, make his huts,etc. (Chemical energy) More recently man has used solar fusion energy stored in the the oil, coal and gas produced millions of years ago from decaying, compressed things that once lived and died back then. (Again, chemical energy) In the 20th century we learned about nuclear energy and again hunter-gathered Uranium with its bounty of stored dying star energy. This energy made chemical energy look feeble by comparison. Solar cells are another joke power source on a large scale without acres of land needed for megawatt battery systems.

The very best use of current solar energy with the greatest immediate and direct conversion return is hydro power. The sun lifts billions of tons of water into the atmosphere which ultimately falls upon the high ground and then we dam up this water and use gravity to generate gigawatts of hydro power. Hydro power would not be possible if gravity did not exist. For it is gravity and gravity alone that makes stars and thus fusion and causes water to seek its lowest potential energy. (Water falls off a man-made cliff slamming into turbine blades to turn the generator.) The universe is powered and kept active solely by potential energies acting on matter. There is no innate kinetic energy or light in the universe that the potential energies did not bring forth, from light to motion.

Finally back to fusion.....No matter what we do, fusion will require tremendous input energy to force whatever ions we choose to defeat the safety mechanism that nature has put in place to prevent stars from going off like firecrackers in the night sky. This is the electrostatic repulsion between protons (positive nuclei) and the potential energy found in the Quantum barrier in which probabilities rule. These probabilities typically mandate that the house always comes out the winner and you suffer the net losses.


So, it turns out we have been using fusion energy from the time we stole fire from the gods to burn stuff. We are trying to abandon our chemical energy bounty only of late as we feel it sullies our atmosphere. The fission bounty is shunned as it seems to make a lot of unacceptable waste. Fusion is the be all and end all now and, as I say, "it always will be"

Hope, as they say, springs eternal and there is always my lucky donkey concept...Some person like Becquerel who might trip over the solution while doing something else. Does this lucky donkey walk among us yet?

Richard Hull

Re: dynamic fusor patent, Salvatore Pais

Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2019 8:46 pm
by ian_krase
Before this kind of argument (which I don't quite agree with the conclusion of), it would seem like the hydrogen bomb, which we know all too well works reliably and tremendously effectively, is a kind of anomaly. It works reliably and quite effectively, though it requires a fission reaction to set it off -- something not yet rivaled by the likes of the NIF's lasers or the Z-machine's magnetic can crusher.

I can think clearly of one particular peaceful purpose for which that form of intensely inertial-confinement fusion is well-suited: The propulsion of high-thrust, high-specific-impulse spacecraft through space using the Project Orion principle.

Re: dynamic fusor patent, Salvatore Pais

Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2019 8:31 pm
by Dennis P Brown
A few more "words" on the various subjects mentioned here.

The start of the universe neither required fusion nor any energy input (that we understand in the slightest) but this certainly say's there is more to the universe than our current physics understanding - in fact, all energy currently or previously created by suns via fusion was created at the start of the universe via that event. So, don't give up on fusion - we know it can produce far more energy than required to ignite it (the hydrogen bomb is the nasty example) but magnetic might just work - if it does, it certainly will not be cheap no matter the method but it does look like it can work via the stellarator.

Solar power via solar cells certainly does work (at a competitive cost during a sunny day) and works very well (as does thermal storage, by the way) - of course, lack of low enough cost batteries prevent after hours use of that energy but that is also certainly changing (slowly but steadily on power density and cost.) Wind works very well currently and while it too needs better batteries, it isn't as limited as solar cells (wind does blow at night but regular power is the issue, of course.)

Nuclear fission is very costly but a large part of that is the terrible design of all American reactors - the Candu is an example of a possible lower cost reactor. Breeders (via fission) is both hideously expensive and extremely dangerous and simply not worth the effort; however, a poor tokamak like ITER could be a breeder in a more cost effective manner and is an area that shouldn't be dismissed out-of-hand.

Fusion for space propulsion isn't exactly easy even if magnetic fusion works - magnetic fusion would never provide enough thrust; rather, implosion via direct drive of pellets for mini-nuke's are the most likely method but the engineering for that makes magnetic fusion look easy.

There are no dark-horse nor easy methods for fusion and that is why everyone who knows very little always try's to leap frog these issues via extreme ideas - like the study of any complex subject, it takes a long time to master before one starts to understand the field. Magic would be far easier (or aliens ...lol) and why people want to believe. Fusion energy will take a lot of study before we understand it enough to make it viable. But it will become viable in the next twenty years but only after much more work, huge costs are paid for new research machines, and massive efforts by many people. Even with current lower budgets, cheap natural gas (for now) availability, fusion research is still progressing in a very real way.

Re: dynamic fusor patent, Salvatore Pais

Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2019 11:18 am
by Jason_Gorecki
@Paul_Schatzkin.
What would you say those human shortcomings are?

Re: dynamic fusor patent, Salvatore Pais

Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2019 1:13 pm
by Paul_Schatzkin
Oh, jeezus.

Just read a headline.

Where would you like me to start?

—PS

Re: dynamic fusor patent, Salvatore Pais

Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2019 1:55 pm
by John Futter
Paul
That was Jasons first post

another one who doesn't read the rules and acting troll like

Posting Perils?

Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2019 5:59 pm
by Paul_Schatzkin
Just when you think it's safe to wade back in... newbie trolls?

<*sigh*>

--PS