My wording in the earlier post was a bit strong, I suppose. I compared a mature technology and approach to fusion to one that hasn't really been verified. There just hasn't been much stock put into the plasma focus approach in some time. US and international attention has been focused on magnetic confinement and laser or x-ray inertial confinement.
It's been about four years since I've looked at the dense plasma focus as a fusion device, but as I recall the problem is that it takes a beam-cold target approach. It is difficult to reach the temperatures necessary to achieve a significant fusion burn in this way. The plasma cannot be considered thermonuclear, as the neutron distribution is not isotropic - this was one of the bones we had with Mr. Lerner's conclusions, as I recall. There are still a lot of questions about confinement as well. The plasma constrained by its own magnetic fields, so it fits in this sort of odd category between inertial and magnetic confinement. In terms of pulsed fusion, to me the Z-pinch method holds a bit more promise, as we understand a great deal more about how x-rays contribute to confinement and burn.
This isn't to say the plasma focus can't achieve fusion - because it certainly is capable of that, and it can be done cheaply, it's just that the work to show that it can scale up has never been completed.
What is Slashdot's fascination with this guy? Seems like an article pops up every 3 months.
As an undergraduate, I had the pleasure *cough* of working with Mr. Lerner when he came to use our plasma focus to do a p-B11 study for JPL. To get the required diborane gas, a nasty toxin, we had to evaporate decaborane, another nasty toxin. In the end, we had a mess to clean up in our chamber and an academic mess when Mr. Lerner embellished (or flatly misrepresented) the results of the experiment in publication. We had to lobby to get our names off the paper, but there's still a few copies of it floating around out there.
Plasma focus technology has been around since the 60s (see the works of Mather and Filipov). They make cute neutron and x-ray sources, but not much more practical for fusion power production than these "bubble fusion" designs. I believe there's still a lot to be learned from the plasma focus, and I'm glad that someone is willing to pay for further research. And if we get p-B11 fusion working, that would be a great step forward too. But I wouldn't give this guy a nickel if his head were on fire, let alone $600,000.
Sadly, no. The dense plasma focus is an excellent neutron and x-ray source, but an inadequate fusion reactor. Despite what the theorist that runs that site would have you believe, the focus does not produce a true thermonuclear plasma. It's more beam-like. There's simply no more funding to go to focus work RE: it's potential as a full scale fusion device.
If we see practical fusion demonstrated in the next 15 years, it will be at one of these three places:
NIF at Lawrence Livermore, the Z-Machine (soon to be Z-R) at Sandia, or at ITER in Cadarache.
Good call. Electrostatic confinement is cute, but is not the way to get there on any reasonable scale. Especially not for the p-B11 reaction. Bussard should be praised for his past contributions to science, and I admire him for calling BS on the tokamak program, but he needs to tone down the rhetoric on this one. Making absurd claims about free energy is what's given fusion researchers a bad name. My concern is that the Navy will divert funding from real fusion programs like HAPL to pay for this toy.
Also, I was part of some research on p-B11 fusion a few years ago, and we had to use some pretty toxic chemicals to get there. I mean, aneutronic fusion great if it works, but who wants to deal with decaborane/diborane?
Slashdot Mirror
My wording in the earlier post was a bit strong, I suppose. I compared a mature technology and approach to fusion to one that hasn't really been verified. There just hasn't been much stock put into the plasma focus approach in some time. US and international attention has been focused on magnetic confinement and laser or x-ray inertial confinement. It's been about four years since I've looked at the dense plasma focus as a fusion device, but as I recall the problem is that it takes a beam-cold target approach. It is difficult to reach the temperatures necessary to achieve a significant fusion burn in this way. The plasma cannot be considered thermonuclear, as the neutron distribution is not isotropic - this was one of the bones we had with Mr. Lerner's conclusions, as I recall. There are still a lot of questions about confinement as well. The plasma constrained by its own magnetic fields, so it fits in this sort of odd category between inertial and magnetic confinement. In terms of pulsed fusion, to me the Z-pinch method holds a bit more promise, as we understand a great deal more about how x-rays contribute to confinement and burn. This isn't to say the plasma focus can't achieve fusion - because it certainly is capable of that, and it can be done cheaply, it's just that the work to show that it can scale up has never been completed.
What is Slashdot's fascination with this guy? Seems like an article pops up every 3 months. As an undergraduate, I had the pleasure *cough* of working with Mr. Lerner when he came to use our plasma focus to do a p-B11 study for JPL. To get the required diborane gas, a nasty toxin, we had to evaporate decaborane, another nasty toxin. In the end, we had a mess to clean up in our chamber and an academic mess when Mr. Lerner embellished (or flatly misrepresented) the results of the experiment in publication. We had to lobby to get our names off the paper, but there's still a few copies of it floating around out there. Plasma focus technology has been around since the 60s (see the works of Mather and Filipov). They make cute neutron and x-ray sources, but not much more practical for fusion power production than these "bubble fusion" designs. I believe there's still a lot to be learned from the plasma focus, and I'm glad that someone is willing to pay for further research. And if we get p-B11 fusion working, that would be a great step forward too. But I wouldn't give this guy a nickel if his head were on fire, let alone $600,000.
Sadly, no. The dense plasma focus is an excellent neutron and x-ray source, but an inadequate fusion reactor. Despite what the theorist that runs that site would have you believe, the focus does not produce a true thermonuclear plasma. It's more beam-like. There's simply no more funding to go to focus work RE: it's potential as a full scale fusion device. If we see practical fusion demonstrated in the next 15 years, it will be at one of these three places: NIF at Lawrence Livermore, the Z-Machine (soon to be Z-R) at Sandia, or at ITER in Cadarache.
Good call. Electrostatic confinement is cute, but is not the way to get there on any reasonable scale. Especially not for the p-B11 reaction. Bussard should be praised for his past contributions to science, and I admire him for calling BS on the tokamak program, but he needs to tone down the rhetoric on this one. Making absurd claims about free energy is what's given fusion researchers a bad name. My concern is that the Navy will divert funding from real fusion programs like HAPL to pay for this toy. Also, I was part of some research on p-B11 fusion a few years ago, and we had to use some pretty toxic chemicals to get there. I mean, aneutronic fusion great if it works, but who wants to deal with decaborane/diborane?
1. Super Bomberman 2. Final Fantasy IV 3. SimCity 4. Escape Velocity 5. Burnout 3