This device won't work. The reaction parameter (mean sigma-v) for D-B fusion is far, far too low to achieve ignition at the kind of temperatures that can be reached in a discharge of the kind described (just look it up in any barn book; these data are all publicly available.) Moreover, even were a burning plasma obtainable, the device provides negligible containment time because there are no external fields (a plasma cannot contain itself via self fields by the virial theorem) so, even were a significant reaction rate available, the energy it would produce would be negligible as the burn would only proceed for a few microseconds. Even were that not the case, the kind of arcing discharge the device apparently creates is a very inefficient coupler of energy into the plasma, so a very, very high fusion reaction rate density would have to be obtainable to achieve energy breakeven in this device.
Incidentally, please, Slashdot, please stop posting stories on nonsense, obviously bogus topics in science and technologies for which no results are available; please have someone who knows actual science review your articles. This is part of the reason people "don't believe in science" anymore: the reportage of it, even outside of what Slashdot would call "the mainstream press," is absolute crap focusing on whatever outrageous and stupid claims someone's making about their "new" device today (by the way, this device isn't even novel, which was, it seems, the only thing it ostensibly had to recommend it.) The article referenced is needlessly convoluted, focuses on deployment for a device that doesn't exist (and never will,) cites no results for the technology in question, and does not contain any theoretical basis explaining why this device should work when every principle of plasma engineering states otherwise. In short, this article is a smokescreen designed to lure in the stupid. Congratulations, Slashdot; you took the bait.
The Plasma Engineer
The post and, apparently, article inaccurately imply that the table that we use today is substantially the same as that originally published by Mendeleev. Leaving to one side all the elements discovered subsequent to its original publication, Mendeleev's original table listed the elements in order of increasing mean atomic mass (of the natural form) and therefore, besides containing a number of discrepancies from today's tables, reflected a fundamental lack of the key understanding that it is electron structure (and, therefore, nuclear charge) that determines element chemistry and its periodicity. Since this last fact is fundamentally the most important thing the periodic table contains, it is inaccurate in a non-trivial way to say that we still use the same table that Mendeleev created. Most people use a somewhat similar table in a similar format, others a somewhat similar table in a different format.
Give me a chart of the nuclides anyway,
The Plasma Engineer
Slashdot Mirror
This device won't work. The reaction parameter (mean sigma-v) for D-B fusion is far, far too low to achieve ignition at the kind of temperatures that can be reached in a discharge of the kind described (just look it up in any barn book; these data are all publicly available.) Moreover, even were a burning plasma obtainable, the device provides negligible containment time because there are no external fields (a plasma cannot contain itself via self fields by the virial theorem) so, even were a significant reaction rate available, the energy it would produce would be negligible as the burn would only proceed for a few microseconds. Even were that not the case, the kind of arcing discharge the device apparently creates is a very inefficient coupler of energy into the plasma, so a very, very high fusion reaction rate density would have to be obtainable to achieve energy breakeven in this device. Incidentally, please, Slashdot, please stop posting stories on nonsense, obviously bogus topics in science and technologies for which no results are available; please have someone who knows actual science review your articles. This is part of the reason people "don't believe in science" anymore: the reportage of it, even outside of what Slashdot would call "the mainstream press," is absolute crap focusing on whatever outrageous and stupid claims someone's making about their "new" device today (by the way, this device isn't even novel, which was, it seems, the only thing it ostensibly had to recommend it.) The article referenced is needlessly convoluted, focuses on deployment for a device that doesn't exist (and never will,) cites no results for the technology in question, and does not contain any theoretical basis explaining why this device should work when every principle of plasma engineering states otherwise. In short, this article is a smokescreen designed to lure in the stupid. Congratulations, Slashdot; you took the bait. The Plasma Engineer
The post and, apparently, article inaccurately imply that the table that we use today is substantially the same as that originally published by Mendeleev. Leaving to one side all the elements discovered subsequent to its original publication, Mendeleev's original table listed the elements in order of increasing mean atomic mass (of the natural form) and therefore, besides containing a number of discrepancies from today's tables, reflected a fundamental lack of the key understanding that it is electron structure (and, therefore, nuclear charge) that determines element chemistry and its periodicity. Since this last fact is fundamentally the most important thing the periodic table contains, it is inaccurate in a non-trivial way to say that we still use the same table that Mendeleev created. Most people use a somewhat similar table in a similar format, others a somewhat similar table in a different format. Give me a chart of the nuclides anyway, The Plasma Engineer