In this space, visitors are invited to post any comments, questions, or skeptical observations about Philo T. Farnsworth's contributions to the field of Nuclear Fusion research.Subject: Lots of Interesting Problems Ahead
Date: Jun 12, 8:54 pm
Poster: Mark SloanOn Jun 12, 8:54 pm, Mark Sloan wrote:
Richard Hull, Scott Little, + other participants,
I've greatly enjoyed reading your discussions but had some trouble following where you were going.
From reading the entries here, it seems the neutrons you are making from deuterium/deuterium fusion are just a guiding measurement on your way to optimizing your fusor designs. Once you have a high efficiency design, you would then switch over to deuterium/tritium, Hydrogen-Boron 11 reaction, or some other reaction? And after this switch to new reactants you would have a chance, (with an optimized design), to reach the goal of net energy production?
It seems there will be many interesting problems ahead in this process.
I assume your present phase is to find ways to increase efficiency of producing fusion reactions (neutrons) per watt of input energy, addressing problems Richard mentioned in his note on Jun 10, 1:49 PM.
Then, I assume future work would:
Show high fusion efficiency (input watts required to produce fusion rate) with the "real" fuels and
Show high efficiency extraction of energy from the fusion products.
The main work will be the hardware work. But I expect there also will be a lot of analysis and the like needed to support the experimental work.
This is all fascinating. It sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun. Congratulations on the neutrons!