.
... but what I found along the way).
This is about something I just found wandering around the webs this evening.
First, my daily Google Alert provided a link to this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4 ... rdian.com)
...which gets its header from this letter in The Guardian on Jan 22, 2025:
Nuclear fusion: it's time for a reality check
The thread appears to be on a forum hosted by the Silicon Valley startup incubator, Y Combinator. . As near as I can tell Y Combinator has taken a small stake in the high-profile startup Hellion Energy.
Somewhere on this page I found a link to a to a paper published in MIT Technology Review in October 1983
called The Trouble With Fusion by Lawrence M. Lidsky. There isn't really anything new for our purposes in this paper though it does cover a lot of ground that has been covered ad infinitum here. I'll attach the .pdf at the end of this post.
When I first found this paper from 1983, I had a momentary case of mistaken identity.
I can't find it in the transcript now, but I am recalling that when I spoke to Bob Hirsch in 2002 he said that somebody wrote a paper... I don't know when... that effectively spelled out the doom in Inertial Electrostatic Confinement. I am trying to find that paper.
When I found the Lidsky paper from 1983, I got excited for a moment that I'd found that paper, but once I got into it realized this is not that. This paper doesn't even mention IEC.
So the reason for this post: Can anybody help me figure out what paper Hirsch* was referring to, who might have written it or when?
Because I'd really like to find that paper.
Anybody? Bueller?
--PS
________
*I honestly can't recall if the reference was to something Hirsch said or something that Richard Hull said in the conversation I had with him two weeks ago. Regardless, apparently such a paper exists and I'd sure like to find it.
.
"The Trouble With Fusion" (not what I'm looking for...
- Paul_Schatzkin
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"The Trouble With Fusion" (not what I'm looking for...
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- The-Trouble-With-Fusion_MIT_Tech_Review_1983.pdf
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Paul Schatzkin, aka "The Perfesser" – Founder and Host of Fusor.net
Author of The Boy Who Invented Television
"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
Author of The Boy Who Invented Television
"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
- Richard Hull
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Re: "The Trouble With Fusion" (not what I'm looking for...
The link to this paper which paul seeks was given here in these forums, years ago. As I remember it was by a first name of Timothy and a last name like ridder ryder or like that. I think that paper was his well done doctoral thesis. Does this strike any memories here?
I did find the Guardian article quite on point. I truly believe there is no reason to be optimistic about fusion or to even be hopeful for electrical distribution over the next 50-60 years. Thus, when I see an internet piece about fusion in the 2020's or the 2030's, I rush to it looking for the lack of hard scientific fusion related information. I always find nothing of even the most vague value to someone who knows fusion physics. The key data regarding a physical embodiment or a running Q value should there be a physical embodiment is absent. We are treated to an artist conception of a device or at best, a photograph of kit like Helion showing a nice looking bit of big gear with a statement that this is a test bed reactor and reactor 2 is planned for operation in 2030 with no statement of its expected Q. The winning peanut is always pushed down the road.
Finally the Article in Guardian noted Q was the fusion energy produced in fusion versus the energy it takes to heat the plasma. WRONGO!
NIF used this fallacious definition to claim a Q>1!! They used the laser light output energy used to fuse the D-T pellet as their benchmark for Q>1. This was a lie, of course. The true Q would be the entire electrical input from the mains to make the lasers function versus the fusion energy generated during fusion. Their Q was, as in 100% of all fusion attempts to date, Q<1.
Richard Hull
I did find the Guardian article quite on point. I truly believe there is no reason to be optimistic about fusion or to even be hopeful for electrical distribution over the next 50-60 years. Thus, when I see an internet piece about fusion in the 2020's or the 2030's, I rush to it looking for the lack of hard scientific fusion related information. I always find nothing of even the most vague value to someone who knows fusion physics. The key data regarding a physical embodiment or a running Q value should there be a physical embodiment is absent. We are treated to an artist conception of a device or at best, a photograph of kit like Helion showing a nice looking bit of big gear with a statement that this is a test bed reactor and reactor 2 is planned for operation in 2030 with no statement of its expected Q. The winning peanut is always pushed down the road.
Finally the Article in Guardian noted Q was the fusion energy produced in fusion versus the energy it takes to heat the plasma. WRONGO!
NIF used this fallacious definition to claim a Q>1!! They used the laser light output energy used to fuse the D-T pellet as their benchmark for Q>1. This was a lie, of course. The true Q would be the entire electrical input from the mains to make the lasers function versus the fusion energy generated during fusion. Their Q was, as in 100% of all fusion attempts to date, Q<1.
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
- Richard Hull
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- Posts: 15459
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
- Real name: Richard Hull
Re: "The Trouble With Fusion" (not what I'm looking for...
I think I found them!
Try Todd Rider...Put on yer mathy pants.
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle ... sAllowed=y
https://www.w2agz.com/Library/Fusion/TH ... 872556.pdf
On page 46 of the first paper, the author notes that the test ion, due to collisions with other species will diffuse in velocity space.
This alone kills IECF for most, not to mention the electron losses mentioned earlier in his paper.
We absolutely rely on the rather densely populated velocity space to do rather easy but horribly lossy fusion in our fusors!
We rely on the tiny thermalized energetic ions produced in our fusors to collide with fast neutrals and deuterons. Our plasmas in velocity space are non-thermalized plasmas! (Not in thermodynamic equilibrium)
Richard Hull
Try Todd Rider...Put on yer mathy pants.
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle ... sAllowed=y
https://www.w2agz.com/Library/Fusion/TH ... 872556.pdf
On page 46 of the first paper, the author notes that the test ion, due to collisions with other species will diffuse in velocity space.
This alone kills IECF for most, not to mention the electron losses mentioned earlier in his paper.
We absolutely rely on the rather densely populated velocity space to do rather easy but horribly lossy fusion in our fusors!
We rely on the tiny thermalized energetic ions produced in our fusors to collide with fast neutrals and deuterons. Our plasmas in velocity space are non-thermalized plasmas! (Not in thermodynamic equilibrium)
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
- Paul_Schatzkin
- Site Admin
- Posts: 1156
- Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2001 12:49 pm
- Real name: aka The Perfesser
- Contact:
Re: "The Trouble With Fusion" (not what I'm looking for...
Richard, I think you're on to something here that goes way beyond reporting on fusion.Richard Hull wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2025 7:34 pm ...when I see an internet piece about fusion in the 2020's or the 2030's, I rush to it looking for the lack of hard scientific fusion related information. I always find nothing of even the most vague value to someone who knows fusion physics. The key data regarding a physical embodiment or a running Q value should there be a physical embodiment is absent. We
I think 'the media' have pretty well failed us over the past... oh, I dunno, 25 years just to pick a number (maybe going back to 1996, when Fox News first went live; maybe longer, like, forever?), and this fusion reporting is just one example.
The people who 'report' stuff like this... they're not reporting at all. They're editing and publishing press releases.
My daily Google Alert is frankly full of such lightweight 'reporting' - until something like that Guardian piece shows up (as it did when it was first published)
Oh boy... urgh... math, you say?I think I found them!
Try Todd Rider...Put on yer mathy pants.
Alas... but I shall try.
Thanks for digging those articles up. I hope others will find them useful, too.
- - - -
[added]
I did open the doc, and while reading the abstract the first thing I noticed was:
So there IS a connection with "The Trouble With Fusion" paper I did find / upload.Thesis Supervisor: Lawrence M. Lidsky
Title: Professor of Nuclear Engineering
If I was conspiracy minded, I might wonder if the Ryder felt compelled to comply with Lidsky's conclusions from the prior decade in order to get his thesis approved.
Nah. Couldn't possibly. Out still-medieval educational institutions are better than that!
--PS
Paul Schatzkin, aka "The Perfesser" – Founder and Host of Fusor.net
Author of The Boy Who Invented Television
"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
Author of The Boy Who Invented Television
"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
- Richard Hull
- Moderator
- Posts: 15459
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
- Real name: Richard Hull
Re: "The Trouble With Fusion" (not what I'm looking for...
Most of the smart folks can follow Rider's math which is the demon of reality in dealing with fusion physics. It is hard to follow at my level, but for others it is a death knell for IECF. A scientific paper done to virtually every significant fusion physics person's comprehension, militates against IECF as a viable path.
Doc Bussard fought against this paper with the polywell. Rider's paper actually covers both the Farnsworth and Bussard concepts.
I still hold a slight penchant towards LENR but that doesn't make this radical concept a piece of whole cloth for me or any thinking person. I, like Bacon suggests,"read not to accept or to take for granted, but to weigh and consider." He doesn't note it takes a learned background to be able to begin to intelligently, weigh and consider. (Taken from his essay "Of studies" found at URL below)
https://www.thoughtco.com/of-studies-by ... on-1688771
Richard Hull
Doc Bussard fought against this paper with the polywell. Rider's paper actually covers both the Farnsworth and Bussard concepts.
I still hold a slight penchant towards LENR but that doesn't make this radical concept a piece of whole cloth for me or any thinking person. I, like Bacon suggests,"read not to accept or to take for granted, but to weigh and consider." He doesn't note it takes a learned background to be able to begin to intelligently, weigh and consider. (Taken from his essay "Of studies" found at URL below)
https://www.thoughtco.com/of-studies-by ... on-1688771
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