Tokamak Alternatives
Posted: 25 August 2010 12:39 PM   [ Ignore ]
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Here’s an An Overview of Tokamak Alternatives in the US Fusion Program with the Aim of Fostering Concept Innovation - http://focusfusion.org/assets/pdf/Woodruff_JFE.pdf

This is a great starting point for discussions on fusion.  If someone has time to pull out information from it and turn it into posts we can put on the website, that would be great.

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Posted: 25 August 2010 01:59 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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I’ve had a quick skim through the list of devices given, most are little more than historical curiosities now, on the road of how magnetic, and inertial confinement machines have developed over the years.

Most designs were build to investigate a particular regieme of plasma behaviour, and were never thought as serious energy producing canidates.

The only mention of Dense Plasma Focus devices is a one line entry in the table under the Z and theta pinch section with a date range of 1965-1970, with a reference to a book published in 1981.  Given this article was written in 2005 when there were plently of DPF research machines around the world highlights the fact that DPFs are not well known in the mainstream fusion community.

An interesting part of the overview is the graphs of funding, which increase steadily upto 1983, then as the oil price was so cheap then the funding level dropped off again.  We can now see over the past few years since the oil prices have gone up again a renewed interest in fusion.  If only the policy makers could have been a little more longsighted and realised it was a long term investment and that to make progress they should have kept up the funding levels for the past 30 years.

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Posted: 26 August 2010 01:29 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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jamesr - 25 August 2010 05:59 PM

I’ve had a quick skim through the list of devices given, most are little more than historical curiosities now, on the road of how magnetic, and inertial confinement machines have developed over the years.

Here’s where the “evolution” poster could draw from. 

The more up to date stuff is here -  http://www.iccworkshops.org/icc2010/ - are these contained in the JFE article?

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Posted: 27 August 2010 02:08 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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Rezwan - 26 August 2010 05:29 PM
jamesr - 25 August 2010 05:59 PM

I’ve had a quick skim through the list of devices given, most are little more than historical curiosities now, on the road of how magnetic, and inertial confinement machines have developed over the years.

Here’s where the “evolution” poster could draw from. 

The more up to date stuff is here -  http://www.iccworkshops.org/icc2010/ - are these contained in the JFE article?

Judging from the titles of the abstracts submitted, there’s nothing on DPF or even close.  A fair amount of FRC, Spheromak, and stellarator stuff, tho’.

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Posted: 24 November 2010 09:45 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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The Heavy Ion Fusion Sciences articles are good.  The fusion links on their home page are really good.

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Posted: 24 November 2010 11:16 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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Francisl - 25 November 2010 02:45 AM

The Heavy Ion Fusion Sciences articles are good.  The fusion links on their home page are really good.

The ones I looked at were last updated in 2002, and referred to 2007 as the speculative future (e.g., the IBX - Integrated Beam Experiment).

I think the site is a zombie.

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Posted: 25 November 2010 12:08 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 6 ]
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Some of the links are old but I followed the US Office of Fusion Energy link and that lead to the Fusion Energy Sciences tab and all kinds of good stuff.

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