POPS again?

[Richard Hull]

Can't remember if this is old news but we have discussed POPS in the past.

Apparently LANL and U of W are working this method of phase locking plasma and looking to reduce space charge issues. Lotsa' thought, theory and calcs that show what ought to happen. But, as usual, no devices.

http://www.lanl.gov/p/rh_pp_park.shtml

Some of this was news to me. Thanks to my friend and fellow HEAS member, Ron Beck, for throwing this into my lap.

Richard Hull

[Richard Hester]

It's interesting to see POPS pop up again (hee, hee) after so long. This project was Richard Nebel's baby back in the day before he got sucked into the Polywell work. My undestanding at the time was that it would take specially shaped electrodes and small spacing to get the device to function, a drawback if you want a really deep potential well. As per the picture shown, the practical reactor is envisiaged as a string of many small reactors. This concept hasn't changed since this idea was first presented.

[Dan Tibbets]

I saw this article several years ago, but it is new for anyone who has not seen it before

I haven't quite digested it and I don't have a good handle with what is going on with POPS. Is it similar to (or an extension of) what Bussard described for what allowed Hirsch's fusor to reach relatively high fusion rates?

What I find mildly intriguing, is that this work was ~ 1998, and in 1999, 2000 Nebel, etel were apparently upgrading their experimental set up. I have not seen mention of any papers since then. Did the research fizzle out, did they run out of money, was it abandoned, did it go black? What did Nebel do for ~ 7-8 years before he was recruited by EMC2?


Link to paper by Bussard- pertinent discussion starts ~ page 15

http://www.askmar.com/Fusion_files/EMC2 ... plants.pdf

D Tibbets

[Chris Bradley]

2005: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6663#p42346

2007: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6753#p46366

2008: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6802#p46870

....an overdue time for an airing....

[Richard Hull]

As I thought, it was talked to death then and little has changed which has surfaced. Sorry for dredging up old news and old talking points. I guess this kinda thing gets easier to forget as time clouds the memory or as one tires of the ongoing struggle to claw fusion into something useful.

Thanks Chris for the URL pointers to the past discussions.

Richard Hull

[Chris Bradley]

Always worth a visit on an annual basis to see if it triggers some new information from someone, I suppose. As Dan says, with these kinds of projects the most interesting bit is to understand the 'anatomy/time-line' of the project's demise. There was a similar one I tried to get further understanding on, the 'Penning fusion experiment', which I think was significant as it is the easiest way to ensure the longest confinement of central electron charge yet it still appeared to fail to get far enough to justify the further spend. Negative results are, unfortunately, not often reported but if it could be known whether that [and other such] experiment[s] actually 'failed' for understood reasons then it would likely put other confinement-by-electron-charge types into a better context for further development - or avoidance.