LPP and UNAM Prepare New Focus Experiments

Posted by Admin on May 04, 2003 at 04:44 PM
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Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is now preparing for a new set of focus fusion experiments, which will take place at a new facility in Mexico City that will be jointly run by LPP and the Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The work will be done through the collaboration of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics’ Eric J. Lerner, Executive Director of the Focus Fusion Society, and a team of experimental physicists at UNAM led by Dr. Julio Herrera, who have years of experience with the plasma focus device.

The collaboration emerged from discussions within the newly-formed Pan-American Dense Plasma Focus Network. The experiments will require initial funding of $100,000 and the Focus Fusion Society hopes to be able to contribute toward raising some of this money. Until this money is raised, the project will not be able to move forward.

These experiments, which will take about a year once the equipment is ready, are aimed at achieving a number of goals essential to moving toward a focus fusion reactor. First they are aimed at optimizing the efficiency of energy transfer into the tiny plasmoids. These are magnetically self-confined knots of dense, extremely hot plasma where the fusion reactions take place.

Second, the experiments will test the ability of the plasma focus to generate magnetic fields in excess of a billion gauss (over a billion times the magnetic field of the earth.) Such giga-gauss fields (mega-tesla) will reduce the amount of energy lost when hot electrons emit x-rays. This in turn will allow the plasma to stay hotter and produce more fusion energy.

Third, the experiments will produce significant amounts of fusion energy from hydrogen-boron fuel. These experiments should directly pave the way for a future set of experiments aimed at achieving break-even energy production—as much fusion energy out as is fed into the plasma.

The new plasma focus device that will be used for these experiments is physically small, and will, together with its power supply, fit in a small room. However it will be capable of producing 1.5 million amps of current in a short pulse, which will make it one of the most powerful plasma focus devices in the world, comparable with the other two large plasma focus devices in North America.

In addition, it will be designed for small electrode size and high magnetic fields beyond those that can be achieved at other facilities. The facility will be designed to produce data that can be used for a variety of purposes in addition to the priory one of fusion power. It will also be capable of simulating astrophysical phenomena, such as quasars and neutron stars, and of investigations aimed at near-term industrial applications of the plasma focus, such as the production of intense microwave radiation.

The facility will be equipped with the most sophisticated set of diagnostic instruments in the focus community. Data from the instruments will enable researchers to fully characterize the plasma’s size, temperature, and density and to test the theory of plasma focus operation.

August 2003 update:

We’re happy to announce that our next experiment will be less expensive than we thought. A magnetic effect reduces the amount of energy that can be transferred from ions to electrons thus keeping the ions hotter which is what we want. This means we will be able to achieve our experimental conditions with a smaller and less expensive apparatus.