Any advice for exploding wire fusion?

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RobertMendelsohn
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Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2020 4:58 pm
Real name: Robert Mendelsohn

Any advice for exploding wire fusion?

Post by RobertMendelsohn »

Does anyone have any advice regarding building a zeta-pinch/exploding wire type fusion device? This is strictly for curiosity/research purposes and I am under no impression of a breakeven device etc.
I know there are veteran members here with experience with such devices (cough cough Richard), and there's a kind of knowledge you can't get except by experience.

I have a source of truly massive Maxwell/General Atomics capacitors at an exceedingly reasonable price...
I'm looking at a Marx generator charging a peaking capacitor topology. I have experience with pulsed power and I think this might be fun and an interesting way to study neutron behavior.
12 stage Marx generator, each stage ~170uF at 22kV, ESL of 70nH, charging an ultra low inductance DI water insulated peaking capacitor. Serious stuff, might be many many months before I have an update because of a different large project. I need to find a place to store/run the thing in the DFW area, let me know if you have any ideas.

Would be happy to collaborate with anyone who has any interesting ideas for fibers/targets to implode. Most papers have 10um diameter fibers, but I am curious to try 40nm PE fibers. Natural isotope ratio fibers produce way better results than expected, but dueterated targets are way better as you might imagine. Horrible source of continuous neutron flux, but amazing peak neutron output - any neat ideas what to do with that?
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Richard Hull
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Real name: Richard Hull

Re: Any advice for exploding wire fusion?

Post by Richard Hull »

Rapid discharge fusion has been discussed here before. No one did anything, of course. Mostly just wind over the decks. We have had one example that was a heroic effort, but the mixed data output was not definitive or impressive beyond the damage and savaging of the discharge device. I did water arc explosions in the 1990's and the device was constantly in need of replacement and repairs. Peter Graneau and his Northwestern Univ. team fired 1 cc of heavy water using 1000 joules and could not detect any fusion. However, I am not privy to the methodology of detection they used.

The issue is proving you have done fusion. electronic methods can't be used without a tirade of arguments that it is EMI pulses due to the megawatt instantaneous impulse. This leaves only bubble or activation detection. If one studies the activation angle, you will need something like Rhodium with a high cross section and short half life as you will have microseconds of high flux conditions relying on that flux alone to activate to a level which, post blast, will be provable to a critical audience via decay curves taken immediately afterwards. Finally, x-rays will be in the kiloamp range even if only of microseconds duration.

Good luck if you proceed. If you do let us know how it works out.

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
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