ITER lives!

[3l]

Hi folks:

I used to watch the Comedy Central Channel to get Laughs and amusements.
But Lately CSPAM has the best stand up stick ever.
I was watching Herr Abramson our dirrector of department of energy entrall the press club with tales of future science.
Fusion is number 1 . (oh...Really?)
It seems a "team" of "experts" in the Bush adminstration have "reviewed" Fusion efforts in the US, they are GOOD!
I liked to lost my coke (cola) out my nose when the Senate chair said in all solumn dignity " I don't understand the chemistry of fusion but "our" science committee has concluded that it is vital to the security of the "Homeland". NO DUH? I will Never watch this stuff with a straight face again!
ITER now has a piggy bank of 100 billion to draw on now.
No more slumbing in Canada for these boys.....caviar and limos all around....the fusion experts have finally reached rock star status. Party on Dude!

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Adam Szendrey]

No comment...The "experts" huh? Why is it so that the "official experts" know the least in any field? I wonder who makes them official...

Adam

[3l]

Hi Adam:

In our country it is not what you know but who ya know.
I worked in the government for 25 years and that statement is as true today as it was back then.
It is the perfect setup really ...politically selected panels to judge the work of marginal science being done in a marginal way.
It is unpatriotically correct to tell a Senator's Progeny he or she is a dumb ass. But that is who is in charge lately. In the old days
we would create a stage of offices for poiticos complete with empty file cabinets and buxom secretary staff. They hardly were there anyway...golfing....fundraising....hell raising.
Holliday Inn was one of our "Major" contractors in the Enron style book keeping that the military has done since FDR.
You really didn't think Enron had come up with this by themselves do ya?
It only cost a few 100 thousand besides it was worth it to keep the complete moron away from techs,engineers and scientists who might embarrase him.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Richard Hull]

Same naked emporer singing the same song, but with a brand new purse stuffed with our cash. Still talking plasmas. Still thinkng they are going to contain, focus and concentrate them. Burning small volumes gas at one millionth of one atmosphere just won't cut it.

Richard Hull

[Adam Szendrey]

Do you know what is really frightening? I've been to the Budapest University of Technology and Agriculture lately (number one in the country). This was a day when folks can look around "inside". I've been there last year and i saw the same lame stuff on some desks, which behind some students (?) stood with a really dull expression on their faces, it was funny really. Well the main thing was that when i saw the "Nuclear stand" i thought to myself: "Oh i might as well ask where i can get a GM tube from, or maybe even D2, maybe these folks know something"....WRONG! Nobody knew (one of them held a counter in his hand), a guy said that heavy water (maybe he did not understand the word GAS) is extremely expensive, and when i told him that in the US a decent amount of D2 can be purchased for a couple hundred dollars he told me that that is impossible....I was really getting annoyed. But the best was yet to come! I told him that i am really interested in fusion, and i am collecting things needed to build my own little reactor. You can imagine his expression:"Poor lost crazy soul" I could read it...Now the next thing was that he told me :THAT IS NOT THE WAY TO DO FUSION! Holy cow!! No i was pissed off! Then he started talking about the ITER project, the stellarator and some laser experiments in the US. When i mentioned that the ITER is very much like the Tokamak, he looked at me and told me that that is NOT true..then he admitted that to some volume it is.....When i told him that the Fusor works and there are measureable neutron counts he started talking about cold fusion and that those folks measured something that was not there...WOW, that was the moment when i decided to leave.
Oh and their attitude...The guy i was talking to offered me that i can send an email to him for further information, and he never gave me his address, and at a point of our conversation (after talking about cold fusion and why the Fusor is just a bad measurement) he simply turned to some other folks and asked them if they want to fill the quizz....I was sitting there for a while thinking about what the hell am i doing in this world ,then i stood up and left. I had really bad feelings about humans for a couple of hours after this. Oh well...

Adam

[3l]

Hey Adam:

I got the same reaction from a college professor from Los Alamos. ... small size fusion impossible!
Fortunately for me ,I had experience with this kind of thing...
so I blew off his advice.
Only after the set in concrete professor retired did I get a small
chance to explain and demostrate a fusor for them. The young staff took it in stride. Truth takes time to sink in. Only seven years. Patience is a virtue at the ragged edge of science.

PS Tell them that the fusor has suceeded in acitvating materials.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Richard Hester]

I basically have stopped talking to academics about what I'm doing, even the ones that are doing fusor work. They don't seem to have that much to offer, anyway.

[Richard Hull]

Remember, Even if you prove you are doing fusion on a desk top. You will get the "Carl Willis blow off".

His teachers and staff at college said it was impossible. When he did run a fusor in front of them, they saved their "intellectual bacon" and preserved their pomposity by saying "Oh, I see!! You are just making a neutron generator!"

In spite of all their ministrations, hand wavings, objections and sophistries, the largest tokomak, stellarator, mirror machine or whatever, attended by hundreds of pontificating, dispeptic and flatulent would-be fusioneers is just a neutron generator!!!

NO.......They tell you.........

Ask them where the wall outlet is that puts out the usable power of this fusion reactor. Tell them they are just operating a very expensive neutron generator.

Richard Hull

[Brian McDermott]

What are the neutron numbers achieved by the most advanced Tokamak? Can it be considered a flux? How long do they actually run the thing for and how is the plasma generated? What pressure do they operate at?

As far as fusions per dollar go, I think we've won (not counting stars and bombs). We can do better with less than $700 than the "Tokamaksters" can do with more than $700 million.

[Adam Szendrey]

I just wonder how advanced fusion device would be the result of a multi billion dollar FUSOR project. One thing is for sure, much more advanced than a couple hundred billion Tokamak type project. A hundred (or more) times smaller in size and who knows how many thousand times more efficient. A fusor research would probably head towards a very compact high efficiency (relatively) and reliable fusion device producing lots of neutrons. Just taking a look at a 1000 $ fusor and anyone can realize that the possibilities are vast to say the least. For that money that fusor will fuse deuterium, and produce neutrons. It's a wonderfull feeling to see it work. And i always smile when i hear about "advanced fusion research" in the media, and they talk about the Tokamak and other huge devices, and then mention the astronomical expenses. I just can't help laughing, seeing a who knows how many hundred tonns monster and then looking at the image of a fusor with a weight of a hundred kilograms including the pump, power source and chamber.
Simply unbelievable!

Adam

[3l]

Hi Adam:

Yes it is totally unbelievable but like all things scientific ...it only matters that an inovation requires a break to make it happen.
I think we are on the right path.
We are finding the way now.

To quote Chuck Yeager before the first supersonic flight.

"People talk of the barrier of sound out there in the sky.
Some say it's a brick wall that will tear your ears off.
An Engineer will tell you it is a constant like the firmness of the Earth.
Most engineers have never been off the ground tho.
The sound barrier is a farm you can buy in the sky.
But personally I don't think the darned thing even exists"

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Richard Hull]

Answering Brian's questions.

Tokomaks do achieve interesting fluxes approximating fission systems 10e6 - 10e12 neuts per sq. cm per second, but they do it for 1 second runs and then it is three minutes, three hours or three days before the next shot. They suck the power lines dry of electricity and are blamed for local power problems constantly. Continuous running is just not possible at the power levels they need to run at. Stuff Ablates off the walls of the device and often a complete shutdown is required for repairs after a really big shot.


Time of run is very short unless they are just dinking with the thing at warmup levels. (glow mode).

Plasmas are generated in most devices with ion guns or speical injectors, but can also work similar to the fusor with bulk ionization.

The main pressure in a tokamak is in the micron to sub micron range. Remember, the lower the pressure the less fusion fuel there is in the system.

It would do well to remember that fusion is a function of plasma temperature, confinement time and volume of fuel available to be burned within the confinement. In a tokomak you are talking tens of thousands of amps of plasma current, confinement times of fractions of a second, and fuel volumes in that plamsa approaching the atmospheric pressure at an alitude of 70 miles where the aurorae occur. (about one millionth of an atmosphere)

Regarding stars:

Actually, stars, as I have mentioned, are volumetrically very lousy fusion systems. Any man made system will run rings around the sun in doing fusion. Stars are probably one of the worst fusion systems in the universe. With the same breath of condemnation it must be added that they are also the only know example of self-sustaining fusion. What a dichotomy!

Again, watt for watt, dollar for dollar and pound for pound, the fusor might be one of the finest examples of well done fusion in all of creation!

Again, another wilted laurel or faint praise because for compact easy to do fusion power on earth the fusor is certainly several billion light years away from homeplate.

H-bombs, of course take, top prize! Unfortunately and unlike fission, they are forced to be runaway reactions. volumetrically very efficient and near the ideal. Too bad.

Fission can be let run away or be kept at high idle or run at so soft a murmur that it barely happens. We are doing this now every day and pumping out billions of watts into the grid.

Controlled fusion is as big a mystery today as when Lyman Spitzer and his crowd kludged together the first stellarator in the potting shed in the early 50s. All we have learned in the interim is how not to do it and how not to do it on a very grand scale. We have also spent a gang o' bucks on this superlative failure. Yes Virginia, disappointment can be costly. Massive disappointment costs much, much, more.

Richard Hull

[Brian McDermott]

And they use D-T mixtures in a chamber the size of a large room? That's (relatively) a lot of tritium! Are they trying to breed more by using a Li-6 blanket? Do they expect to use the hot Lithium to boil water and drive turbines? This is money better spent on exploring and testing the viability of every type of fusion scheme ever conceived of, rather than a monstrosity that hasn't delivered anything in the 30 years it's been around.

With IECF, what voltages and currents are required for P-B11 fusion? Would there be a third grid to decelerate the alphas onto? What's the voltage placed on that grid? Has anyone ever tried P-B11 or is everything mere speculation at this point?

[Richard Hester]

There are two problems. The first is that it will take extremely high voltage (read massive X-ray shielding) and low pressures to get P-B11 to work,. The reaction starts to cook at 50-60kev, while you can get detectable D-D rates at 10kev. D-He3 is hard enough ( and expensive enough) to get working such that only one location in the world has done it so far. This reaction is between D-D and p-B11 in difficulty (mean energy required).
The second difficulty is getting the boron into the reaction chamber. All the boron-hydrogen compounds that might be useful are horribly poisonous, unstable, and pyrophoric in some cases. Nobody in their right mind would sell them to an amateur. I read the safety requirements for using diborane for boronization in the Alcator reactor at MIT, and they require having self-contained breathing apparatus available, even though the diborane cylinder is placed in a special ventilated cabinet. The lines need to be purged, or they will go boom if the diborane contacts air. You don't want to mess with the stuff, or you could very easily wind up dead in a hurry. Vaporizing solid boron is another approach, but it is not easily done. You need to introduce hydrogen and boron into the reaction chamber with no impurities, so all the other volatile boron compounds are out, they're poisonous and corrosive anyway...

[3l]

Hi Brian:

First off the Tokamaks have Only run D-D just like us.
They haven't reached even the ignition temps for tritium and deuterium.

The sweet spot for boron - hydrogen is 96 kv.
The reactant of choice is boron triflouride gas.
Why?
It is loads safer than Diborane.
Only fumes in wet air.
Easily detected it is a strong smell.
Has been used by the semiconductor factories for years therefore guidelines exist and most importantly handling gear is availible
Look at this post for details.

fusor forum - Ion Gun Design and Construction
2003-24-08 12:14 A great site for Boron fusion afficianados (larry leins) [Latest: ] (0)

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Richard Hull]

That big "direct conversion" sugar tit of P-B11 still hangs from the elusive sky-hook. It'll continue to suck in the faithful for years to come. Lotsa' wear and tear on the covers and binding from handling and ogling, but the bulk of the book has never been touched.

It is like the much vaulted, impressive tome that just 'must be' in every informed man's library, but which no one has ever read. Nonetheless, folks talk about its value and meaningfulness incessantly.

Richard Hull

[3l]

Hi Richard:

I posted that data on the boron implanter as a warning.
Many an armchair warrior has lost blood on that post.
People who are really happy with boron stay that way till the reality hits you that the required gear is in excess of 50k!
Surplus!
Until I get my lab equipped, house paid off, out buildings finished,
boron will remain in the land of dreams.
The most practical use of boron is the borated water jacket on a working D-D fusor.
A no brainer. :>)

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Richard Hester]

The reactant of choice is not boron trifluoride, unless you like rotting your chamber inner walls and etching your viewport. I also cannot vouch for what the fluorine will do to the reactivity. It will also gum up conduction somewhat due to it high electron attachment coefficient. You want to build a fusor, not a reactive etcher. The only thing in the chamber should be B11 and hydrogen.

[Richard Hull]

Yes, Fluorine is nasty and not allowed in a practical scheme. It will certainly evolve if BF3 is used. That is why diborane is the chemical of choice in the big boys arena. Lethal stuff is OK as long as the valuable chamber is protected.

Imagine a real 100 megawatt P-B11 fusion power reactor where the nuclear spector is a non-issue but the community for miles around has to worry about a Bopal like disaster if the diborane tank goes up or springs a leak.

Richard Hull

[3l]

Hi Guys:

Ha!
So much for clean power huh?

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Richard Hester]

Nobody in their right mind would keep a huge amout of diborane around, as it is unstable. Maybe keeping the tank at dry ice or LN2 temperatures would help. Pure diborane (if you can get anyone to ship it at all) is apparently shipped in a crock filled with dry ice. Mosly it is shipped mixed with a dilutant such as hydrogen or nitrogen or helium. Even the mixtures are unstable if the diborane content is over about 5%. If all the hype is true, you would probably need diborane container the size of a large residential propane tank.