Newsgroup sci.physics.fusion 26794

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For the historical beginning of discussion of FORM, turn to Greek philosopher Parmenides.  Then a good sci-fi style book by Hinton (19th century).  Geometry does play a key role in the creation of Universe, first with its spatio-temporal structure as pointed out by Einstein, then the latest argument of topological defects (The last phase transition was what caused today's galactic clusters---still a theory tho').  As for plasma fusion, we still need some engineering miracles, provided that MHD equations are set up correctly (Now how many times do I have to say this?).  Oh, and particle simulation alone isn't good enough...
Disclaimer: I am no scientist either.  Just curious about things.
 ------ From: fusion@ZORCH.SF-BAY.ORG, Tue, Nov 12, 1996 ------ 

help ...  Be it well known that I still do insist that form is the
fifth and fundamental unifying force.
  William C.Barclay

Please critique my understanding of this material:
Ok, first you have fast moving ions zipping around. To contain them,
you put them in a donut-shaped container using magnetic fields.
Unfortunately, however, some particles still manage to either find
weak spots in the magnetic field, and/or have sufficient energy to
overcome the field, wedging themselves into the reactor wall. A few
questions:
1) Is this loss of particles related to the energy confinement time,
ie the loss of particles IS the cause of the loss of energy over time?
2) Ok, if #1 is true, is the reason larger radius reactors have a
better ECT because they are bending the particles at a more gentle
curve than smaller reactors?
3) If #2 is true, then can't you design a reactor that minimizes the
curves and maximizes long, straight sections? I mean, you could have a
huge square, where 90% of the device are straight sections and only
10% are 90-degree curves.
- Hicks

Referring to the "tweak the knobs" discussion, it was noted that the
experimental progress works by predicting a value via simulator, and
then comparing that to the actual data obtained from a real reactor.
Obviously, this process refines the simulator until it matches the
real reactor pretty effectively. A couple questions:
1) How often are the predictions correct, say within 10% of the actual
value? 
2) Does each reactor have its own custom simulator program for its own
parameters, or are there only a handful of simulators that can import
the parameters of ANY reactor?
- Hicks

Pardon my ignorance, but could somebody explain how hot fusion will
never be a cost effective competitor for today's conventional fuels?
I'm aware that the reactors are expensive to build, but once a design
is frozen for a commercial reactor they should be more "shake-n-bake"
construction. 
Once running over the ignition point, all a DT reactor will consume is
H20, Li, and some of it's own power for the magnetic fields. What's so
expensive about that? Since the price of H20 will never increase due
to its excessively abundant supply, won't this be the most INexpensive
option in the long run?
- Hicks

> Hey Karim, these are "trolls", well known tactics on the usenet to incite
> and inflame -- they are of no scientific value and should not be read
> that way.  It's an ego thing ... best ignored.
Yeah, I know it's trolling... and usually I ignore it... but sometimes,
just sometimes, ya just have to remind people that s.p.f. isn't their
personal rant channel.  THIS medium talks back.  
Actually, I was more concerned that 500 years from now, some student would
be researching the dawn of the New Physics on the net, and find the only
replies to the historic CETI Usenet posts were idiot scoffers.  
-k.

In article <3289078f.10991697@news.internetmci.com> karim.alim@mci.com writes:
>arnief@wu.cse.tek.com (Arnie Frisch) wrote:
>>One born every minute!
>>Perhaps 10!
>You're right, there's a sucker born every minute.  You would think,
>though, that they wouldn't tend to congregate en masse at the American
>Nuclear Society.
>>But I need a kilowatt for MY water heater, and I don't think there's a way to
>>sucker me into believing that this will eventually be shown capable of doing
>>that.
>Fine, the Wright Brothers have just taken off at Kitty Hawk, and
>you're not going to believe a word of it until you personally can fly
>around the world non-stop.    It's a free country.
This group and its promoters have been at this for some time.  History
shows that all their claims related to heat and transmutation have been
pure bovine excrement.  Various of these individuals have abandoned
this news group in embarrassment and/or welshed (in my opinion) on
bets.
I don't think these activities - in any way - resemble heavier than air flight.
They much more closely resemble baloon flights of fancy made possible by hot air.
Arnold Frisch
Tektronix Laboratories
--------------------------------------------------------
Any ideas or opinions expressed here do not necessarily
reflect the ideas or opinions of my employer.
--------------------------------------------------------

If CETI is basing their claims for nuclear transmutation success
on evidence of the quality of that in the Miley-Patterson paper
in "Infinite Energy #9" I think we can make a case for saying the
data is being misrepresented in the CETI claims.  Instead of supporting
the CETI claims the data in the Miley-Patterson paper demonstrates that
no nuclear transmutations are occuring.
To get the data to lie the authors have omitted a few key bits
of information: (1)50Cr is clearly present but has been misidentified
as 50Ti.  (2)48Ti is clearly present but has been omitted from the
tabulated data.  (3)All isotopes of Ca are clearly present in the
proper abundance ratios but have been omitted from the tabulation.
(4)All isotopes of Si are clearly present and are actually tabulated
showing the proper adundance ratios.
These are facts that anyone having a copy of the Miley-Patterson
paper can check for themselves.  I find it truly remarkable that
Gene Mallove would continue to press the CETI claims without
checking these assertion for himself.  Have you no shame, Gene?
Dick Blue

Jeramie.Hicks@mail.utexas.edu (Jeramie Hicks) wrote:
>Once running over the ignition point, all a DT reactor will consume is
>H20, Li, and some of it's own power for the magnetic fields. What's so
>expensive about that? Since the price of H20 will never increase due
>to its excessively abundant supply, won't this be the most INexpensive
>option in the long run?
One problem is that the graphite that makes up the physical
containment of a fusion reactor gradually becomes radioactive over
time and needs to be replaced (after 2/3 years I've heard), thus
creating a disposal problem.  But since I don't know much about fusion
reactors, I don't know if this is a serious/expensive problem or
something that will be overcome.
-Kevin

I have recently become interested in Cold Fusion and the science behind
the furor a few years ago.  If anyone can please update me on the newest
research and ideas, I would greatly appreciate it, Thanks.

Jeramie.Hicks@mail.utexas.edu (Jeramie Hicks) writes:
> Pardon my ignorance, but could somebody explain how hot fusion will never
> be a cost effective competitor for today's conventional fuels?  I'm aware
> that the reactors are expensive to build, but once a design is frozen for
> a commercial reactor they should be more "shake-n-bake" construction.
That's certainly not true for silicon fabs.  If a leading-edge fab costs a
billion dollars, I doubt that a duplicate of last year's design (ie. frozen
design) would be all that much cheaper.  A huge concrete containment vessel
is not cheap, frozen design or not.
> Once running over the ignition point, all a DT reactor will consume is
> H20, Li, and some of it's own power for the magnetic fields. What's so
> expensive about that?
Fuel costs will be a minor component of total costs for a fusion reactor;
possibly even insignificant compared to the other costs.  A major cost will
be the financial costs of the initial construction.  Think of that as a
huge loan you're repaying over the life of the reactor.  Since you're
talking about a D-T reactor, you'll have fairly high neutron radiation to
deal with, which means expensive equipment, training, regulations, etc.
Personnel costs will also be large.  The costs of all the bureaucratic
paperwork probably won't be insignificant (probably higher than fuel
costs).
Don't leave out decommissioning costs and radioactive waste disposal;
that's definitely not insignificant.  It might even be comparable to the
construction cost.
Design costs and fuel costs aside, a D-T Tokomak type fusion reactor is
still going to be very expensive.
If the Spheromak or electrostatic confinement methods prove viable, the
situation would be quite different.  The former might be a small aneutronic
unit that produces electricity directly (from the plasma expanding against
the magnetic field).
--
Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca

In message <01bbd190$804dd1a0$e85020a6@karim.ns.mci.com> - "Karim Alim"
13 Nov 1996 18:30:41 GMT writes:
>
>
>Actually, I was more concerned that 500 years from now, some student would
>be researching the dawn of the New Physics on the net, and find the only
>replies to the historic CETI Usenet posts were idiot scoffers.  
>
>-k.
Maybe when those same students are researching the discovery of fire they will
also be astounded by the fact that the phenomenon was used to cook food and
raise steam when it  would have provided a  perfect opportunity for trading 
pairs  of sticks for  large quantities of bananas. 
David

Jeramie Hicks  wrote:
> 
> 3) If #2 is true, then can't you design a reactor that minimizes the
> curves and maximizes long, straight sections? I mean, you could have a
> huge square, where 90% of the device are straight sections and only
> 10% are 90-degree curves.
>
Mm, how are you going to get a charged particle to perform a 90 degree
turn? 
--
Mike Asher
masher@tusc.net
"Blessed are the young, for they will inherit the national debt." 
Herbert Hoover. 

"Mike Asher"  wrote:
>> 3) If #2 is true, then can't you design a reactor that minimizes the
>> curves and maximizes long, straight sections? 
>Mm, how are you going to get a charged particle to perform a 90 degree
>turn? 
Well, I didn't exactly mean 90 degree turns. I just meant to maximize
the straight sections and minimize the corners as much as possible.
- Hicks

Jeramie.Hicks@mail.utexas.edu (Jeramie Hicks) wrote:
>Pardon my ignorance, but could somebody explain how hot fusion will
>never be a cost effective competitor for today's conventional fuels?
>I'm aware that the reactors are expensive to build, but once a design
>is frozen for a commercial reactor they should be more "shake-n-bake"
>construction. 
Since when does freezing the design on something make it inexpensive?
Perhaps *less* expensive, but even ignoring development costs the
fusion reactor studies have not been able to come up with a
tokamak-based reactor design burning DT that is more than marginally
competitive.
	Paul
     Paul Dietz
     dietz@interaccess.com
     "If you think even briefly about what the Federal
      budget will look like in 20 years, you immediately
      realize that we are drifting inexorably toward a
      crisis"
        -- Paul Krugman, in the NY Times Book Review

jmtintner@aol.com wrote:
: I have recently become interested in Cold Fusion and the science behind
: the furor a few years ago.  If anyone can please update me on the newest
: research and ideas, I would greatly appreciate it, Thanks.
If I may immodestly point out a number of CF links on my web page, URL below.
--
 - John Logajan -- jlogajan@skypoint.com  --  612-699-9472 -
 - 4248 Hamline Ave; Arden Hills, Minnesota (MN) 55112 USA -
 -   WWW URL = http://www.skypoint.com/members/jlogajan    -

> This group and its promoters have been at this for some time.  History
> shows that all their claims related to heat and transmutation have been
> pure bovine excrement.  Various of these individuals have abandoned
> this news group in embarrassment and/or welshed (in my opinion) on
> bets.
Probably EVERYONE would agree that SOME of the claims have been bovine
excrement.  SOME of the claims have not been verified or repeated, which,
depending on your definition, might be bovine excrement.  SOME of the
claims have been verified by third parties and repeated.  You shouldn't
throw out ALL of the claims because SOME (or even MOST) are crap.  I think
Miley said something like if even half of what he's personally observing is
true, it's time to re-write the physics books.
> I don't think these activities - in any way - resemble heavier than air
flight.
> They much more closely resemble baloon flights of fancy made possible by
hot air.
Of course heavier-than-air flight is easy to believe in today, because
anyone can fork over $49 for a ValuJet ticket and experience it personally.
 That wasn't the case at the turn of the century.  There were all these
groups and inventors coming up with various wacky flying machines, very few
of which managed to fly, right?  And you had all these "experts" sitting on
the sidelines saying it would never work, right?  But you had this core of
zealous True Believers who had somehow KNEW it would work...
EVEN AFTER the Wright brothers flew, Simon Newcomb (after saying for years
that the feat was impossible) said that airplanes were insignificant
because they couldn't fly very far... which reminded me a little of you
saying you needed a KILOWATT for YOUR water heater.  
Hell, even Albert Einstein said "There is not the slightest indication that
nuclear energy will be obtainable."  (1932)  If it makes you feel better,
both Newcomb and Einstein were widely reputed to be really smart guys.
...just a thought...
-k.

Jeramie.Hicks@mail.utexas.edu (Jeramie Hicks) writes:
> 
> Referring to the "tweak the knobs" discussion, it was noted that the
> experimental progress works by predicting a value via simulator, and
> then comparing that to the actual data obtained from a real reactor.
> Obviously, this process refines the simulator until it matches the
> real reactor pretty effectively. A couple questions:
> 
> 1) How often are the predictions correct, say within 10% of the actual
> value? 
The question is not well posed. We are able to roughly understand most
things we see in an experiment by running simulations, but there are
still many free parameters and usually more than one way to reproduce
the observations. For many purposes, 10% is already considered good
accuracy in experimental plasma physics.
> 2) Does each reactor have its own custom simulator program for its own
> parameters, or are there only a handful of simulators that can import
> the parameters of ANY reactor?
The best simulation program in the world is known as B2-Eirene. It is
flexible enough to accommodate different geometries, so it is used to
interpret all major experiments and to design ITER.
-- 
To study, to finish, to publish. -- Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Arthur Carlson
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
Garching, Germany
carlson@ipp-garching.mpg.de
http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~awc/home.html

Jeramie.Hicks@mail.utexas.edu (Jeramie Hicks) writes:
> Pardon my ignorance, but could somebody explain how hot fusion will
> never be a cost effective competitor for today's conventional fuels?
It's really tough to beat fossil fuels on a cost basis. If we weren't
worried about the greenhouse effect or about cheap supplies running
out, there'd be no question of the way to go. What you want to ask is
whether fusion will be a cost effective competitor for *tomorrow's*
energy supplies. Which is hard to answer since we don't know what
either fusion or the alternatives will cost.
> I'm aware that the reactors are expensive to build, but once a design
> is frozen for a commercial reactor they should be more "shake-n-bake"
> construction. 
The first one will cost an arm and a leg, and the next ten will be
needed to shake down the system. After that the costs should more or
less stabilize. You can't build a car for $100 despite all the
industrial experience and mass production.
> Once running over the ignition point, all a DT reactor will consume is
> H20, Li, and some of it's own power for the magnetic fields. What's so
> expensive about that? Since the price of H20 will never increase due
> to its excessively abundant supply, won't this be the most Inexpensive
> option in the long run?
Fuels cost will be negligible. The recirculating power fraction may be
20%, but that won't kill you. The trouble is that you have to charge
enough for the power you sell to pay the interest on the loan you took
out to build the plant. For fusion, fission, and solar, the cost of
electricity is nearly proportional to the capital cost.
-- 
To study, to finish, to publish. -- Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Arthur Carlson
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
Garching, Germany
carlson@ipp-garching.mpg.de
http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~awc/home.html

Jeramie.Hicks@mail.utexas.edu (Jeramie Hicks) writes:
> Ok, first you have fast moving ions zipping around. To contain them,
> you put them in a donut-shaped container using magnetic fields.
> Unfortunately, however, some particles still manage to either find
> weak spots in the magnetic field, and/or have sufficient energy to
> overcome the field, wedging themselves into the reactor wall. A few
> questions:
> 
> 1) Is this loss of particles related to the energy confinement time,
> ie the loss of particles IS the cause of the loss of energy over time?
It's the difference between convection and conduction. If you lose
particles, they carry their thermal energy away with them. But you
may/will have additional energy losses when hot particles collide with
cold particles. The first process is like pouring out a tea cup: If you
dump the water, you dump the heat with it. The second process is like
putting a lid on the tea cup: No water gets out, but it will
eventually cool down anyway.
> 2) Ok, if #1 is true, is the reason larger radius reactors have a
> better ECT because they are bending the particles at a more gentle
> curve than smaller reactors?
Answer #1: Big things take longer to cool down, essentially because
they have a smaller surface to volume ratio. That suggests that you
want a large minor radius and don't care about the major radius.
Answer #2: A tokamak or stellarator is more complicated, and there it
should be better to have less curvature. That suggests you want a
large major radius as well.
Answer #3: In point of fact, for a given magnetic field strength,
safety factor (q), and power density, the confinement time of tokamaks
is observed to scale linearly with the minor radius (like Answer #1)
and not care about the major radius (unlike Answer #2). The reasons
for this behavior are not really understood. I talk about reactor size
scaling in some detail in http://www.ipp.mpg.de/~awc/size.html
> 3) If #2 is true, then can't you design a reactor that minimizes the
> curves and maximizes long, straight sections? I mean, you could have a
> huge square, where 90% of the device are straight sections and only
> 10% are 90-degree curves.
It was tried near the beginning of fusion research. The trouble is
that the plasma sees an average curvature, so four 90 degree bends is
about as bad as a circle.
-- 
To study, to finish, to publish. -- Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Arthur Carlson
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
Garching, Germany
carlson@ipp-garching.mpg.de
http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~awc/home.html

jmtintner@aol.com wrote:
>I have recently become interested in Cold Fusion and the science behind
>the furor a few years ago.  If anyone can please update me on the newest
>research and ideas, I would greatly appreciate it, Thanks.
The easiest way is to go to the Yahoo site and select Science then
Energy then Fusion.  You will get a number of cold fusion sites.
Another option is to go to HotBot and search for Jed Rothwell.
I am excited about the thought of cold fusion but disappointed when I
read information about technology that will be available within the
year dated 1995.  I'm still hoping there is a small nitch in the grand
scheme of things that allows something as simple and cheap as cold
fusion to work.
It don't matter what you call a dog with no legs.
He won't come.

Is CETI now providing the magic ingredients that Scott
Little et al. needed to complete their experiments?
    --bks