I've held back from you guys... I knew of a fusion machine that has worked since 1979. Couldn't tell
you about due to it's highly classified nature. But the project has turned from a "black" program into the next
contender in the fusion race. That machine's public face is the Z pinch machine. Ever wonder why they put so much money into NIF, the answer is that they wanted an alternative to releasing the Z machine to the public. This machine is a critical tool in designing
compact H-bombs. The predicessor Saturn machine
at Sandia Labs allowed the tesing of holhraum designs w/o an underground nuclear test. The result was a reduction in size of H weapons from 22 feet long ( as in Dr Strangelove) to the new H- weapons under ten feet ( fit in a B2 or B1 bombbay). That is what Ronald Reagan's Modernization was about in the 80's.
If you want to see pictures of this machine:
Look in Scientific American August 1998 Page 40-47
I will give you guys time to read about this machine before I comment further.
Larry Leins
Physics Teacher
The z pinch machine
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guest
Re: The z pinch machine
I really don't care if was used to design H-BOMBS.
I just want to know how close to break even they are.
Everybody wants money, nobody wants to give product!
I just want to know how close to break even they are.
Everybody wants money, nobody wants to give product!
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Richard Hull
- Moderator
- Posts: 15023
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
- Real name: Richard Hull
Re: The z pinch machine
Amen Ben!
If it was a real net energy producer it would be out there. What it may do is give continuous fusion at 50% or even 80 % efficiency which would just runs rings around the 1.6 sec slightly above unity claims of the rest of the main contenders. Those old giant touchy unity machines, Tokamaks, etc., could only be fired a few times a minute if that fast and often damaged themselves entailing a complete take-down for repair due to ablations and other nasties.
If the device Larry speaks of is functional, all it would have to do to make weaponeers do hand springs is hit 50% efficiency but let them operate continuously or for a few tens of seconds and not destroy itself.
Richard Hull
If it was a real net energy producer it would be out there. What it may do is give continuous fusion at 50% or even 80 % efficiency which would just runs rings around the 1.6 sec slightly above unity claims of the rest of the main contenders. Those old giant touchy unity machines, Tokamaks, etc., could only be fired a few times a minute if that fast and often damaged themselves entailing a complete take-down for repair due to ablations and other nasties.
If the device Larry speaks of is functional, all it would have to do to make weaponeers do hand springs is hit 50% efficiency but let them operate continuously or for a few tens of seconds and not destroy itself.
Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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guest
Re: The z pinch machine
The machine at Sandia was a lost child due to the twin evils of proliferation and ease of contruction.
If you look at the machine it is really a big swimming pool with a few bits of metal in it and some wires.
The ineffiecency involved is the fact that machine is a thousand times less effective than a fusor in large scale fusion . But with large size it does scale up unlike Tokamak Tech. X-rays have less push than a deuteron. But even so it is more effecient that stripper methods of neutron production. It does produce large numbers of neutrons (10^22) per pulse. Have they made inroads
in raising production... Yes. Have they done any useful
work with it ...No. But the day is young. NIF has Died
but son of NIF is coming... just thought you might want to know.
The weaponeers did do handsprings but quietly.
No parts are expended or destroyed when this machine fires. It is nothing but a stack of caps with
spark gaps. The wire x-ray generator is a proven tech with a long track record. The pellet is the only thing that blows. The technology is so disgustingly simple that any third world country with one trained person with many helpers could suceed very well. I'll bet you could teach the staff of Sonic Drive In to do it! The whole thing is based on x-ray fusion which is old as the hills (Teller-Ullam). Now why have they not done anything with it yet ... miles of Red Tape and Teller's massive ego. He's the last man standing on this antique technology... he demands apeasement.
When I was a student in Texas after the service I had a chance to be a step and fetchit for a professor at North Texas at Denton. During that time the professor was
was working on the dynamics of x-ray focusing mirrors for Teller's new toy the x-ray laser. I was the lab tech.
I never saw a man go through so many gut wrenching turns when dealing with Teller. The technology was nothing but babysitting Teller was the big thing!
The guy quit the field entirely.
It only gets worse when dealing with the Princeton fusion mafia.
The government has been sitting on this for fifteen years that I know of due to the fusion lobby at Princeton.
It is a classic case of Not Invented Here syndrome.
I think that this just makes the work you Guys are doing much more valuable, it is based on a much
newer technology without the nonsense you see in the government.
Larry Leins
Physics Teacher
If you look at the machine it is really a big swimming pool with a few bits of metal in it and some wires.
The ineffiecency involved is the fact that machine is a thousand times less effective than a fusor in large scale fusion . But with large size it does scale up unlike Tokamak Tech. X-rays have less push than a deuteron. But even so it is more effecient that stripper methods of neutron production. It does produce large numbers of neutrons (10^22) per pulse. Have they made inroads
in raising production... Yes. Have they done any useful
work with it ...No. But the day is young. NIF has Died
but son of NIF is coming... just thought you might want to know.
The weaponeers did do handsprings but quietly.
No parts are expended or destroyed when this machine fires. It is nothing but a stack of caps with
spark gaps. The wire x-ray generator is a proven tech with a long track record. The pellet is the only thing that blows. The technology is so disgustingly simple that any third world country with one trained person with many helpers could suceed very well. I'll bet you could teach the staff of Sonic Drive In to do it! The whole thing is based on x-ray fusion which is old as the hills (Teller-Ullam). Now why have they not done anything with it yet ... miles of Red Tape and Teller's massive ego. He's the last man standing on this antique technology... he demands apeasement.
When I was a student in Texas after the service I had a chance to be a step and fetchit for a professor at North Texas at Denton. During that time the professor was
was working on the dynamics of x-ray focusing mirrors for Teller's new toy the x-ray laser. I was the lab tech.
I never saw a man go through so many gut wrenching turns when dealing with Teller. The technology was nothing but babysitting Teller was the big thing!
The guy quit the field entirely.
It only gets worse when dealing with the Princeton fusion mafia.
The government has been sitting on this for fifteen years that I know of due to the fusion lobby at Princeton.
It is a classic case of Not Invented Here syndrome.
I think that this just makes the work you Guys are doing much more valuable, it is based on a much
newer technology without the nonsense you see in the government.
Larry Leins
Physics Teacher
Re: The z pinch machine
I don't think the Zeta Pinch machine is all that secret. Strangely enough, we were discussing it at lunch yesterday, before I read the posts.
The scary thing about such technology, is the sort of security breaches that occurred at Sandia in recent memory, in which "quite secret" data ended up on non secure hard drives, that were ultimately found behind a file cabinet!! The info they contained could be already out on the internet at some anarchist hangout.
As to the breakeven issue....we discuss this often, which is good. Given the energy of the neutrons, the present achievable fluxes fall about 6 or so orders of magnitude below the ONE WATT output level. So, in light of the fact we run fractional HP vacuum pumps and power supplies of a few hundred watts capability, we are on the order of 10-9 away from breakeven ourselves!!
But our experiments cost hundreds to thousands, not billions, so we are probably several orders of magnitude MORE effective in terms of research done per dollar, than the National Programs..... but...... I don't know how good our physics is here, and... we are using data and results of bygone eras and researchers... some of whom were also government supported.
Dave Cooper
The scary thing about such technology, is the sort of security breaches that occurred at Sandia in recent memory, in which "quite secret" data ended up on non secure hard drives, that were ultimately found behind a file cabinet!! The info they contained could be already out on the internet at some anarchist hangout.
As to the breakeven issue....we discuss this often, which is good. Given the energy of the neutrons, the present achievable fluxes fall about 6 or so orders of magnitude below the ONE WATT output level. So, in light of the fact we run fractional HP vacuum pumps and power supplies of a few hundred watts capability, we are on the order of 10-9 away from breakeven ourselves!!
But our experiments cost hundreds to thousands, not billions, so we are probably several orders of magnitude MORE effective in terms of research done per dollar, than the National Programs..... but...... I don't know how good our physics is here, and... we are using data and results of bygone eras and researchers... some of whom were also government supported.
Dave Cooper
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guest
Re: The z pinch machine
Hey Dave:
I just read your reply.
That's the point .
This machine has nothing new in it.
It is what could have been done in the forties.
This machine is a back door project.
It didn't even count as a research machine until the NIF
blowup.
It didn't have a real budget until the late eighties.
It started out life as an oversized electron pusher (REB).
The real breakthrough came at the Harry Diamond Labs in the late seventies under the grand daddy of Star Wars, the Armchair Heritage program for the Air Force. Someone was playing around with the Aurura
Accelerator seeing what else could be done with this
4 story behemoth of a machine. With research on electron beam research complete, the staff had a paid for machine but nothing for it to do. All kinds of ideas
circulated but few were workable. It was decided after
a couple of months the new avenue would be particle acceleration by collective acceleration. The team simply reversed the positive and negative feed cables in order to accelerate positive ions..but what to do about a ion source? Deuterated polypropylene plastic was in house collecting dust. They simply took a stick of the enriched plastic into the mouth of the accelerator head
..pump down...Marx gens fired... The rod turned into a bright star and fused.. They expected something totally different... Shot two was better equipped to read radiation and that is the neutron quote given to ya.
That picture in Sci Ami is the condesation of the Harry Diamond machine into a smaller package. (they used air insulation cheaper but huge!)
My chess buddy in high school was a tech there.
Could have worked there but my path was different.
As to small yield they are doing test runs with deuterium tritium balloons left over from the failed laser effort.
Do I think this fusor effort is worth it?
The data works... there is a permanent monument were eluge lab was.
I'm assembling gear to participate.
Tally Ho.
Larry Leins
Physics Teacher
I just read your reply.
That's the point .
This machine has nothing new in it.
It is what could have been done in the forties.
This machine is a back door project.
It didn't even count as a research machine until the NIF
blowup.
It didn't have a real budget until the late eighties.
It started out life as an oversized electron pusher (REB).
The real breakthrough came at the Harry Diamond Labs in the late seventies under the grand daddy of Star Wars, the Armchair Heritage program for the Air Force. Someone was playing around with the Aurura
Accelerator seeing what else could be done with this
4 story behemoth of a machine. With research on electron beam research complete, the staff had a paid for machine but nothing for it to do. All kinds of ideas
circulated but few were workable. It was decided after
a couple of months the new avenue would be particle acceleration by collective acceleration. The team simply reversed the positive and negative feed cables in order to accelerate positive ions..but what to do about a ion source? Deuterated polypropylene plastic was in house collecting dust. They simply took a stick of the enriched plastic into the mouth of the accelerator head
..pump down...Marx gens fired... The rod turned into a bright star and fused.. They expected something totally different... Shot two was better equipped to read radiation and that is the neutron quote given to ya.
That picture in Sci Ami is the condesation of the Harry Diamond machine into a smaller package. (they used air insulation cheaper but huge!)
My chess buddy in high school was a tech there.
Could have worked there but my path was different.
As to small yield they are doing test runs with deuterium tritium balloons left over from the failed laser effort.
Do I think this fusor effort is worth it?
The data works... there is a permanent monument were eluge lab was.
I'm assembling gear to participate.
Tally Ho.
Larry Leins
Physics Teacher