Z-pinch induced fusion

[Sparky]

To illustrate a point.

The Oak Ridge Graphite Reactor, designed for this second purpose, was built in only 11 months. Its job was to show that plutonium could be extracted from irradiated uranium slugs, and its first major challenge was to produce a self-sustaining chain reaction.

Workers began loading uranium into the reactor during the afternoon of Nov. 3, 1943, and progress was swift. Before dawn on Nov. 4, Enrico Fermi was summoned from a nearby guest house. The reactor "went critical" at 5 a.m.; less than two months later, it was producing a third of a ton of irradiated uranium a day. Two months after that, Oak Ridge chemists produced the world's first few grams of plutonium.

During the 20 years the Graphite Reactor operated—from 1943 to 1963—it continued its pioneering role. It produced the first electricity from nuclear energy. It was the first reactor used to study the nature of matter and the health hazards of radioactivity. And for years after the war, it was the world's foremost source of radioisotopes for medicine, agriculture, industry, and other purposes.

This example is why i doubt that a Z pinch or any sustained fusion reactor will ever be put online. Hell, you make a barn fly with enough power, but do we really need flying barns?

All these fusion projects are okay for research, but at some time the delusion that a sustained fusion reaction is practical will overcome by more viable systems. But, let's give it another 60 years to just make sure...

[Phorce]

Aneutronic and Focus Fusion types appear to be aiming for something clean and responsible. Looking at Z-machine again it seems to come from much more out of a history of nuclear fission as well as the nuclear bomb which is of course an actual short lived FUSION reaction. Yes, in fact we have already created man made FUSION, but look at how much trouble that caused. I just sort of had a moment just now and had to hold my hat on . Here we are, barely moving out of gravity centered science, and I expect Fusion to quickly leap out the hat. We could probably create a safe fusion reaction. Things are changing fast. But a little caution might be in order. The Greek myth of stealing fire from the Gods ? After all who would want a run away Fusion reaction on their planet, on the wrong side of the electromagnetic shielding that protects us from such reactions out there ? Sounds like our ancestors are already telling us about the amount of trouble stray thunderbolts can cause .

[jjohnson]

Here is a pretty good example of instability-caused hot spots in a galactic jet relatively nearby in Centaurus A. They aren't evident in the really large scale images we usually see, but the closeup (note the scale difference!) shows them plainly.

Kronberg's paper, Measurement of the current in a Kpc-Scaled Jet, on arXiv, shows radio astronomical images of a much larger jet (if they get the distance to 3C273 correct) which shows very similar high intensity "spots" along the jet. NRAO also has videos on their site of time lapse photography of quasar ejections and similar jet phenomena which are interesting, and which may continue to occur over time scales that dwarf our time here on Earth as a species. The reason that I say that is that these jets are observed to extend out from thousands to hundreds of thousands of parsecs, and to travel that far from a standing start at a significant fraction of the speed of light simply takes a lot of time. That is, in the understatement of this post, a large distance.

Solar filaments and ejections can also show similar instabilities. So far, the Dense Plasma Focus experiment seems to result in consistently regular, symmetric current patters, fast little Z-pinches, and plasmoids that have polar jets (electrons one way for capture, and ions the other, for whatever, and a fair amount of X-ray radiation. Not sure if the addition of the boron will alleviate the X-rays or not, but they are at least not beset with the instability problem, at least at the current experimental scale.

Jim

[Michael V]

Jim,

The electron beam is not used, but all those x-rays are photo-electric converted into electricity to contribute 40% of the overall electricity generation.

Michael

[jjohnson]

Thanks, Michael, for that correction. I wasn't even aware that X-rays could efficiently be converted into electricity via photovoltaics, but why not - they carry a lot more energy than visible light, typically. Two questions, being a curious type:
How do you know this - is it explained on the DPF site, or do you work on the experiment. I haven't explored all the nooks and crannies there yet.
What are the X-ray photovoltaic receivers made of?

Thanks, m'man!

Jim

[Michael V]

Jim,

In this graphic you can clearly see the electrode arrangement is the centre. The electron beam fires straight into the central anode and is lost. The blue beam, alpha particles or helium ions, goes into the coil type device, which converts their kinetic energy into electricity. The shell enclosing the dense plasma device, i.e. electrodes, cut-open in the picture, contains many many photo-voltaic layers to progressively capture the x-ray energy as it penetrates outward. This part of the device is sometimes referred to as the x-ray onion.

The ion beam converter and the x-ray converter do not exist. The hope is that similar existing technologies can be tweaked to perform these functions. There is no doubt that these will work, although the hoped-for efficiency achievable does carry some doubt. The creation of these converters is to be part of the engineering effort once the basic operation of the device is demonstrated as feasible.

My personal worry is cooling the electrodes. It's a lot of heat in a small space. However, the 5MW output is predicated on 200 cycles per second. If output is compromised by either, the physics, the converted efficiencies or cooling limitations, there is still a great deal of hope. At the end of the day it is a question of the cost/output ratio. Even a 1MW device costing $1 million to build, still only works out to $1 billion per GW, which is half the price of building coal power stations, but there is effectively zero fuel cost and no operational pollution. Also, the huge improvement in deployability has huge benefits in reducing the emphasis and cost of infrastructure, particularly in countries with little, or expensive to implement, infrastructure.

Of course a 5MW device at $300,000 works out to $60 million per GW installed (an improvement of 33 times over coal). One would imagine that when combined with running costs, the overall cost improvement might be magnified even greater.

All this info is either on http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com or the companion Focus Fusion Society website at http://www.focusfusion.org.



Michael

[Sparky]

My personal worry is cooling the electrodes. It's a lot of heat in a small space. However, the 5MW output is predicated on 200 cycles per second.

If there were only a way to take the energy of that heat and energize a gaseous material, then maybe it could be used to power a turbine that could be connected to an electrical producing device.

5MW output is predicated on 200 cycles per second.

What's the charging cycle now, 30 min!?!


Meanwhile, fission reactors will be suppling the input energy to keep this boondoggle going.

[Michael V]

Sparky,

If there were only a way to take the energy of that heat and energize a gaseous material, then maybe it could be used to power a turbine that could be connected to an electrical producing device.

At least 50% of the cost of other methods of electrical generation are due to the the heat transfer to turbine cycle, so such a strategy would negate a huge amount of the advantages of the "straight to electricity" approach of FF. Some heat is needed because the intended fuel, Decaborane (B10H14) is a solid a room temperature. Also, there are on-going advancements is thermoelectric materials for the capture of waste heat. However, there are structural and cost implications to consider. One possibility is to capture the waste heat via liquid cooling and use that to heat water for localised use - think factories, hotels, large residential building/complexes.
However, even if the waste heat is wasted, the direct-to-electricity generation of this device puts in 50-100 times cheaper on a cost/MW basis.

What's the charging cycle now, 30 min!

Once started, the device is self sustaining, as a proportion of the electricity generated is cycled back internally to power the next cycle - only the excess goes to the grid. I don't believe the "charging time" is the issue. Presently they are testing with deuterium and are using an experimental device. If they cannot reach the temperatures and densities required for aneutronic fusion, then it's pretty much a dead duck. We must wait and see.

I admit, I am not completely convinced by the science and I retain some scepticism via the engineering issues. As you know I am also a big fan of LFTR, and I have zero reservations that LFTR is viable and, I suspect, could ultimately be 50% the cost of coal. Although, if they can develop FF into a commercially viable device as planned, then we must face the fact that LFTR would be relegated to be the second best invention of all time....in my opinion.

Michael

[Sparky]

output is predicated on 200 cycles per second.

what do you mean by cycles per second? cycles of what?

I thought a cycle was a charge discharge of capacitors...

[Michael V]

Sparky,

what do you mean by cycles per second? cycles of what?

I thought a cycle was a charge discharge of capacitors...

That's correct. 200, fusion inducing, plasmoid causing, capacitor charges and discharges, per second.

Michael

[Sparky]

That's correct. 200, fusion inducing, plasmoid causing, capacitor charges and discharges, per second.

Well, the math says it is needed, so it must be possible.

But at those voltage and amperage levels, it's going to be quite a trick to accomplish.

Let's say current and near current technology will allow 1 cycle per second. If we stack 200 of these arrays, which can charge and discharge is sequence, through a very elaborate system of switches, Presto! the magic fusion reactor that will save the world!

Do de term, Rube Goldberg, come to mind?

[Phorce]

From what I'm looking at here, you could be right. Plasma Fusion is not the magic energy solution. I wonder if this misconception has been encouraged by the powerful nuclear lobby ? In fact the more I think about fusion the less clean it seems. X-rays ?

To further confirm my suspicions I received an email today from Roger Green who is part of a network of technology developers - Breakthru Technologies. Here is a table that is part of a PDF (and another) about a new technology, E-Cat ... "The ECA generates energy by fusing Nickel with Hydrogen to produce Copper. This is an exothermic reaction (i.e. produces excess energy)".

(1) Fission reactors produce no pollution during operation, but uranium mining does, and the disposal of
radioactive waste (radwaste) and spent fuel are serious and expensive problems.
(2) According to a Los Alamos study, plasma fusion reactors would produce about the same amount of nuclear
waste that conventional, present-day fission reactors do, they would not be commercially competitive with
advanced fission reactors, and they would not have significant environmental, safety and health (ES&H)
advantages over advanced fission.
(3) Fission reactors are located far from cities because there is some risk they will fail catastrophically, and
plasma fusion reactors would probably produce large amounts of dangerous radwaste, so it would not be
prudent to locate them near population centers.
(4) “Works 24/7” means the energy source is available on demand, and it is available at night, unlike solar
energy. Solar or wind energy might converted to hydrogen and stored for times when they are not available, but
this would increase cost. Hydroelectric power has to be reduced during droughts. Any energy system must be
turned off periodically for maintenance.

I've only just received this information that I'm still checking out, but they come from a group of people that I trust. I think this technology is using some of the electrical implosion work that Dan Winter has done with the calculations of planck time and Hydrogen related to Golden Mean ratio. It's certainly making me challenge some of the assumptions I've made about large scale plasma fusion.

[Phorce]

(please note, the PDF's I linked above were not converted properly by Google Docs, for the full original PDF's see here)

Just to emphasise - this kind of cold fusion nuclear reaction is a form of z-pinch fusion happening at a micro level. The scientists involved may use terms like "mini black holes" (ha, ironically) or phase conjugate implosion but that is still related to Plasma Cosmology and Electric Universe. Just as we see some applications in the health field from understanding Plasma Cosmology Physics the same is true of the kind of reactions that happen at the micro (sub-atomic) level. So, z-pinch induced fusion at whatever size or heat level.

[Sparky]

Taylor Wilson would build a reactor that could hurl atoms together in a 500-million-degree plasma core—becoming, at 14, the youngest individual on Earth to achieve nuclear fusion.

Video!

[Stiennon]

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics published research results where they achieved 1.8 billion degree plasma pinch.
Getting there!

http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.c ... &Itemid=90