Focus Fusion Society Forum

F.I.C.S. Fusion

2012-01-15T00:10:52+00:00

Hi Guys,

I just created a video for my friends at fusor.net, talking about the fusion concept I am working on.

It relates to a specific type of IEC, and might be of interest to some of you.

http://youtu.be/YKbbKNt7jq8

Steven Sesselmann

Super X Diverter

2011-12-27T15:13:47+00:00

Found this interesting article. A little dated, but figured it ought to get mentioned here, since i didn’t see anything on it already.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1366/

Lithium Coating Improves Plasma Stability

2011-11-14T13:44:57+00:00

News from the 53rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics

A team of scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has found that increasing the amount of lithium coating in the wall of an experimental fusion reactor greatly improves the ability of experimentalists to contain the hot, ionized gas known as plasma. Adding more lithium also enhances certain plasma properties aiding the reaction, the researchers found.

“The lesson here for confining plasma is surprising and simple: When you use more and more lithium, the plasma confinement gets better and better,” said Rajesh Maingi, a physicist from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) who is on long-term assignment to PPPL. “This is not what we expected to see. We thought the effect would taper off at some point. But it doesn’t. When it comes to fusion plasmas, it’s “the more, the merrier.’”

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/aps-wlm111011.php

Phase-shift Plasma Turbine

2011-10-03T18:00:07+00:00

Not sure if this is a serious “contender”; some of the content seems to be kind of hand-wavy, and the engineering looks pretty wild:
Phase-shift Plasma Turbine
CrossFire Fusion Reactor

Flexibility for confining and fusing charged particles, comprising positive and negative ions from neutronic and aneutronic fuels. The nuclear fusion fuel can be composed of several light atomic nuclei like hydrogen, deuterium, tritium, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, in particular boron hydrides and helium-3.
• Electrostatic Acceleration, having a convenient voltage setup, reach a very high kinetic energy of about 600keV (7 billion °C) with inexpensive energy consumption, and there is no inner grid to cause collisions and losses.
• Three-dimensional Injection and Confinement.
Increase of the probability and velocity of the fusion reactions and significant decrease of the scattering problem.
In a bi-dimensional injection, the electrostatic repulsion diverges the ion paths from the central point.
In a three-dimensional injection, the electrostatic repulsion converges the ion paths to the central point.
In the three-dimensional injection, the ion’s kinetic energy will exchange into potential energy as they approach the central point, which means the kinetic energy must be higher than 123keV, about 600keV for boron hydrides.
The three-dimensional injection increases the probability of fusion reactions at the beginning, and the quasi-isotropic confinement will provoke the remaining fusion reactions after that.

Etc.

Image attached.

The Draft of Poster of New Fusion Concept

2011-09-13T06:12:34+00:00

The Draft of Poster of New Fusion Concept that I am going to represent at 53rd Annual Meeting organized by Plasma Physics Division of American Physical Society (attached file)
Without drawings yet but I will complete drawings till mentioned event.

Edited 09/26/2011: I have uploaded the final edition of Poster with pics (only main body - left side, right side consisting of four pics and text about instabilities, has more than MB size and can not be uploaded here)

X-ray spectrometer needed for mystery Z-pinch project

2011-08-31T20:28:51+00:00

John Sokol posts this on our facebook page:

A friend of mine in Palo Alto, CA just got official confirmation that is Z-Pinch fusion machine is indeed creating fusion. We need access to an X-Ray spectrometer, anyone know where we can get access to one for a day? Or maybe a way to make a home brew one?

And he follows up with:

There is no web site, it’s privately funded, and hush hush for now. But we need the spectrometer to better understand the reaction taking place.

As of today, they are still in need of said device. Respond to the post on facebook (if this link works).

Workshop on Innovation in Fusion Science (ICC2011)

2011-08-17T11:19:03+00:00

Is anybody attending the “Workshop on Innovation in Fusion Science (ICC2011) and US-Japan Workshop on Compact Torus Plasma” in Seattle this week

The program is at: http://www.iccworkshops.org/icc2011/program.php

I noticed among the talks there are ones from General Fusion and Tri-Alpha:
Michel G Laberge, Progress at General Fusion
Hiroshi Gota, Tri-Alpha, A Well-Confined Field-Reversed Configuration Plasma Formed by Dynamic Merging of Two Colliding Compact Toroids in C-2

New Scientist article: "Star power: Small fusion start-ups aim for break-even"

2011-08-16T12:03:17+00:00

This week’s New Scientist has a write-up on some of the other current fusion projects.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128251.400-star-power-small-fusion-startups-aim-for-breakeven.html

No mention of DPF devices or Focus Fusion though. Are the other guys PR budgets that much bigger or is it simply a case, that LPP isn’t including magazines like New Scientist, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, Physics World, IEEE Spectrum etc on the press releases to raise their awareness of the project.

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Phase I Selections

2011-08-08T21:52:05+00:00

With the re-establishment of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program this year, NASA has announced the selection of thirty proposals for funding. Each proposal will receive about $100,000 for one year. Among the concepts selected for funding are:

Slough, John “Nuclear Propulsion through Direct Conversion of Fusion Energy” MSNW LLC, WA
...
Tarditi, Alfonso “Aneutronic Fusion Spacecraft Architecture” University of Houston at Clear Lake, TX

John Slough’s work was featured in a recent article in Popular Mechanics. I wonder about that “direct conversion” in the title of his proposal. Last I heard he was concentrated on achieving break-even with D+T fusion. Is he now expecting to achieve a breakthrough with advanced fusion fuels?

I’m glad to see he has received some amount of funding, if not the tens of millions he is looking for.

Star Scientific Ltd. and the return of muon-catalyzed fusion

2011-07-26T05:36:13+00:00

Is it just me, or does the fusion playing field seem to be getting a bit crowded lately?

The latest (?) contender making noise is Star Scientific Ltd., based in Sydney Australia. They’re claiming a breakthrough in the consistent and economical production of pions, which decay into muons. They have a 14+ minute introductory video here. (Skip ahead to 10:30 if you wish to avoid the introductory info on energy production and conventional fusion.) They also have a two-minute introduction to muon-catalyzed fusion here, and a mock-up of an electrical power plant (with the usual heat exchanger and steam turbines) here.

There is a FAQ here. Not much info on any sort of a timeline, or when the company expects to have a demonstration reactor ready. Also no mention of neutron activation in the containment vessel, although the FAQ does address the tritium issue, saying that no tritium remains or is emitted into the air as part of the process. However, there is this tidbit from a blog post by Executive Chairman Andrew Horvath:

...this is a technology which could be operational within years – not decades, not centuries.

In this blog post he says muon-catalyzed fusion could cost as little as 0.9c (Australian? Doesn’t really matter; the US and Australian dollar are roughly the same right now.) per kilowatt(-hour?).