New Large DPF in Las Vegas Unveiled

Chris Hagen of National Security Technologies announced for the first time at a November conference in Warsaw, Poland work that has been ongoing for a few years in Las Vegas, Nevada to use large DPFs as neutron sources for testing purposes.

In 2008, NSTec had built a 500 kJ DPF called Tallboy that produced 3 MA of peak current.  NSTec is now testing a 1 MJ DPF that is expected to generate over 4 MA of peak current, which will make it the most powerful in North America, and possibly in the world. 

The work, while unclassified, was funded by a Department of Energy National Strategic Security program that had previously limited public disclosures. 

Tallboy achieved a maximum neutron yield of 6x10¹¹ with deuterium, when charged with 250 kJ.  Currently the new 1 MJ Gemini machine uses electrodes with the following dimensions: anode radius 7.5 cm, cathode radius 10 cm, insulator length 7.5 cm and electrode length 50 cm, which makes it intermediate in size between the larger PF-1000 in Warsaw and Focus-Fusion-1 in New Jersey. 

This picture is from the NTS Sitelines article dated Nov. 2008 “NTS Turns Fusion into Detection Asset”.  Their caption reads “A Dense Plasma Focus Machine”, so it’s not clear if this is Tallboy or some other machine.  Thanks Brian for the link.

Dr. Hagen has been very friendly and open to LPP since we contacted him last month, and his experience with another large DPF will be extremely useful to us.  We are continuing our collaboration with the Focus Fusion Society to set up closer collaboration among all the DPF groups in the world.  The technical section of our Focus Fusion Newsletter, upcoming on Jan. 18 will be another step in this direction.

Update:  The new Dense Plasma Focus website is a further attempt to coordinate the efforts of DPF groups worldwide.