Carbon nanotube assisted fusion?

[Chris Bradley]

Don Bowen wrote:
> I'm a little puzzled by the rules.

Y'mean, rules that say 'use a real name' and 'post and introduction about yourself' - reeeal puzzling for sure!!

Yup, they seem to out fox a fair few that wander into the forum....

Not sure what is more puzzling, though; the inability to read, or the assumption no-one will enforce the rules?

[Chris Bradley]

Don Bowen wrote:
> I'm a little puzzled by the rules.

Y'mean, rules that say 'use a real name' and 'post an introduction about yourself' - reeeal puzzling for sure!!

Yup, they seem to out fox a fair few that wander into the forum....

Not sure what is more puzzling, though; the inability to read, or the assumption no-one will enforce the rules?

[Doug Browning]

Oh, I see your point. I wasn't commenting about that specifically.

[Doug Browning]

One meter long, absolutely perfect carbon nanotubes getting closer:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 112855.htm

[Edward Miller]

Why do you need one meter long nanotubes? The history of fusion has shown us time and again that bigger does not equal better.

At the subatomic/quantum world things work differently. We need to stop devising clever techniques derived at the macroscale and instead learn to work within the nanoscale.

[Chris Bradley]

> ""This was all just talk; there was no quantitative analysis. And that's where this work makes an important contribution. It evaluates quantitatively, based on state-of-the-art computations, specifically how fast this annealing can take place, depending on location," he said."

I guess there are different degrees of 'just talk'.

[Doug Browning]

The more practical schemes so far mentioned do not require anything like a meter of length, but the induction-collider in a fiber approach could clearly benefit from improved synthesis of this order. Since there was considerable earlier scepticism about the quality of nanofiber production capability, I just thought it would be useful to point out some progress (in theory at least) in that area. Maybe this will free up some mental barriers to thinking about these types of nano structured approaches for fusion. In ten years, this stuff may be on Ebay for cheap, with greatly expanded nano capabilities available in the commercial realm.

The rapid defect "healing" rate noted in the paper, when in the proper environment, may also be of some interest regarding radiation damage recovery. In ten years there might even be catalytic annealing nano-sleeves that slide along the fiber for rapid repair or even alteration of properties.

As to working within the "nano scale", lets call that the femto scale for fusion relevancy, I would point out that the target accuracy at CERN is far better than the macro scale diameter of the beam pipes they use. One needs to integrate the available precision over macro beam lengths to arrive at the nano or femto target accuracy (as well as the beam's transverse temperature, which has similar links with the available beam length). Flawless nano-precision over a meter length should give phenomenal targeting results.

[Doug Browning]

More nano progress in the news.
This should bode well for any nano fusion schemes suffering slow radiation damage.

Apparently it's not hard at all to repair damage to carbon nano material with the right chemical environment:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.1487

Needs to be verified for nano tubes yet.