IEC fusion

Gwahir

<div class="IPBDescription">pulled out of the computer thread</div>I figured this was an interesting topic in and of itself and I didn't want to derail the other thread so I'm moving it here:
you want more power?

Here's something that seems to show some promise:

IEC fusion, Bussard's basic design, one was activated recently, early January. From what I can see, it seems a very solid design with minimal radiation, intrinsic safety (failure mode just stops fusion, nothing else), and a predicted increase in energy output as a power of 7 to the size of the reactor

<a href="http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2006/11/easy-low-cost-no-radiation-fusion.html" target="_blank">http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2006/1...ion-fusion.html</a>

<a href="http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/03/polywell-adding-details.html" target="_blank">http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/0...ng-details.html</a>

<a href="http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/05/polywell-making-well.html" target="_blank">http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/0...aking-well.html</a>

<a href="http://isdc2.xisp.net/~kmiller/isdc_archive/fileDownload.php/?link=fileSelect&file_id=422" target="_blank">Power Point Presentation</a>

<a href="http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/01/bussards-inertial-electrostatic.html" target="_blank">Most recent article I came across</a>

<a href="http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/09/566532.aspx" target="_blank">msnbc article including IEC</a>

Caboose

You may want to fix those links.

Gwahir

sorry about that, fixed

Skyrage

So...being a total physics newbie and all - this isn't like the "traditional" fusion right, which is self-sustained once it kicks into gear? This version, if I understand it correctly seems to be much easier to pull off albeit much less effective (if "effective" now really has a meaning here considering the output is still pretty insane).

Gwahir

I'm not sure what you mean by less effective.

One part of the PPT mentioned that they might get up to 95% energy recovery from particles decelerating against the magnetic field. So keeping it running wouldn't cost much power, after that, thermal energy can be converted to electrical energy and that's where the net gain comes in.

edit: also, self sustaining might be a bad thing when you consider fail states.

lolfighter

Well, the more "conventional" fusion reactor designs are nowhere near self-sustaining. They would work with very small amounts of fuel at a time, meaning that they would need a constant supply of fuel to sustain the reaction which would halt almost immediately if fuel were cut off.

The word that people are probably thinking of but haven't spoken yet is "meltdown" or "explosion." A "conventional" fusion reactor wouldn't be anywhere near as dangerous as a fission reactor because the reactor doesn't contain enough fuel to sustain a runaway reaction. A runaway fission reaction can potentially sustain itself for a very long time without any outside assistance due to the large amount of fuel in the fuel rods of a fission reactor. By comparison, a fusion reactor would only fuse tiny amounts of matter at a time, and there is no need to have fuel intended for later use anywhere near the reactor.

Gwahir

quite true, and I over reached with that term in my edit.

I think he meant that the further fusion is primarily enabled by the heat of the fusion itself. Although a lot of that is maintained by the containment device. In the case of the IEC it is the speed of collision in a far less hot environment at work.

locallyunscene

I hadn't heard about EMC picking up this project but I'm glad I did. It may not work, but it's definately worth the cost of trying. It's amazing that they'll have a second larger prototype working in the spring(if I read that correctly) that they will use to determine if they want to continue.

Gwahir

As I read it, they already had the basic idea working with WB-6 back in 05 or 06 and they just activated WB-7 and it shows energy that is consistent with predictions.

locallyunscene

AFAIK Bussard had working prototypes funded by the DoD/Navy but they lost the funding and then tried to go private. I hadn't heard much about it since the google video proposal so I didn't know EMC had picked it up.

Both the earlier prototypes had been destroyed during testing so the results were not repeatable immediately and it would take someone to pony up the dough to make a new one if they wanted to verify the results. So they said it was consistent with their predictions but there was no way for an outside investor to verify the results without making a new prototype.

I'm glad someone ponied up the dough and verified the predictions on a smaller prototype at least. This leads me to believe the next(fourth) one will work as well since is the same size as the second working prototype.

Gwahir

basically what that power point presentation was trying to do, get some funding. It mentioned that WB-6 fried after 4 runs and that they were getting expected values from it. They are saying the same thing about energy levels in the new one as well, expected.