Toward Limitless Energy

This method was first proposed back in the sixties and was then not possible because laser technology was in its infancy. That is no longer true so we are now taking this idea as far as possible.

We are suddenly seeing many promising fusion technologies been funded and tested out. The shoe has dropped that tokomak is not the only game and it has so far failed to perform. This one is also a mega budget project that tests the limits of present laser methods.

It appears we are seeing more activity this year than has been seen the preceding decades, partly because of a fresh williness to carry a range of experiments and partly because modern simulation methods are giving both scientists and funders a new sense of control over the process. I mean they all look like they can work in simulation and the layman is not left mumbling to himself while he is asked to write a large check.

Of course, all these methods are promising, but will inevitably spawn details that also need to be overcome. This project is actually an oversized experiment and clearly a long way from a plausible commercial product.

Alternatives alike the polywell is naturally compact and if made to work, will look great in a large ship. And the focus fusion device looks ready to bolt into a starship right now. None if it will ever be that easy of course but we can certainly dream. At least the funders are now able to dream also.

Toward Limitless Energy

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Toward_Limitless_Energy_999.html


by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 24, 2009

Chemists are preparing to play an important but often unheralded role in determining the success of one of the largest and most important scientific experiments in history - next year's initial attempts at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to produce the world's first controlled

nuclear fusion reaction.

If successful in taming the energy source of the sun, stars, and of the hydrogen bomb, scientists could develop a limitless new source of producing electricity for homes, factories, and businesses.

The experiment could also lead to new insights into the origins of the universe. A special two-day symposium addressing this topic, "

Nuclear Diagnostics in Fusion Energy Research," will be presented Aug. 19 and 20 during the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Scientists have been trying to achieve controlled nuclear fusion for almost 50 years. In 2010, researchers at the NIF at Lawrence Livermore National

Laboratory in California will focus the energy of 192 giant laser beams onto a pea-sized target filled with hydrogen fuel.

These lasers represent the world's highest-energy laser system. The scientists hope that their effort will ignite, or fuse, the hydrogen atoms' nuclei to trigger the high energy reaction.

"Chemists will definitely play a role in determining whether nuclear fusion reactions have occurred during this NIF experiment, which is key to determining whether the experiment is a success," says Dawn Shaughnessy, Ph.D., a scientist with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

"The idea is that the lasers will fuse hydrogen particles together, producing neutrons," says Shaughnessy, one of many scientists who plan to analyze materials produced by the reaction. "We'll collect and measure the materials produced from the ignition and hopefully be able to determine how many neutrons were made. More neutrons mean that more fusion has occurred."

NIF Science Director Richard Boyd, Ph.D., says that the NIF facility will offer unprecedented opportunities to advance the field of nuclear chemistry, with a special focus on nuclear reaction studies and the nuclear reactions of astrochemistry, the chemistry of outer space.

"A facility like this has never before been available to do experiments in nuclear chemistry," says Boyd, who is also co-chair of the special ACS symposium. "We're going where people have never gone before, and that could lead to some exciting, and possibly unanticipated, discoveries."

The NIF building is ten stories tall and has the width of three football fields. The facility, which is 95 percent complete, has taken more than a decade to build at an estimated cost $3.5 billion. Next year, its 192 intense laser beams will deliver to its target more than 60 times the energy of any previous laser system.

Scientists in France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and China are also developing laser fusion facilities. The ones in France and China will be similar to NIF, but NIF will begin operating several years before the other two. The facilities in Japan and the U.K. will be less powerful than NIF; they will try to achieve fusion with a somewhat different technique than that used initially at NIF. None of these facilities could produce a dangerous condition, Boyd says. As soon as the target's fuel is expended - in just a few billionths of a second - the reaction stops, he points out.

Livermore Super Laser

This is obviously neat stuff and allows the energies to be ramped up on a lot of prospective experiments. Of course the pronouncements are sugar coated with a layer of green and a dollop of weapons application to slide it all past the congressional paymasters.

After all the dust settles, this is surely all about pure research mostly into the impact of focused energy on selected targets. This story is short on any technical details but the next one is more forthcoming.

This is an incredibly important tool for research. I imagine that it will be talked about quite a bit more in the coming months.


US lab debuts super laser

by Staff Writers
San Francisco (AFP) May 29, 2009

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/US_lab_debuts_super_laser_999.html

http://www.spacemart.com/images/laser-national-ignition-facility-potassium-dihydrogen-phosphate-kdp-crystal-bg.jpg


This potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystal, weighing almost 800 pounds, was produced through a newly developed rapid-growth process that takes only two months, as opposed to two years using conventional methods. Each crystal is sliced into 40-centimeter-square crystal plates. More than 600 of these plates are needed for NIF.

A US weapons lab on Friday pulled back the curtain on a super laser with the power to burn as hot as a star.

The National Ignition Facility's main purpose is to serve as a tool for gauging the reliability and safety of the US nuclear weapons arsenal but scientists say it could deliver breakthroughs in safe fusion power.

"We have invented the world's largest laser system," actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said during a dedication ceremony attended by thousands including state and national officials.

"We can create the stars right here on earth. And I can see already my friends in Hollywood being very upset that their stuff that they show on the big screen is obsolete. We have the real stuff right here."

NIF is touted as the world's highest-energy laser system. It is located inside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory about an hour's drive from San Francisco.

Equipment connected to a house-sized sphere can focus 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that exist at cores of stars or giant planets.

NIF will be able to create conditions and conduct experiments never before possible on Earth, according to the laboratory.

A fusion reaction triggered by the super laser hitting hydrogen atoms will produce more energy than was required to prompt "ignition," according to NIF director Edward Moses.

"This is the long-sought goal of 'energy gain' that has been the goal of fusion researchers for more than half a century," Moses said.

"NIF's success will be a scientific breakthrough of historic significance; the first demonstration of fusion ignition in a laboratory setting, duplicating on Earth the processes that power the stars."

Construction of the NIF began in 1997, funded by the US Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

"NIF, a cornerstone of the National Nuclear Security Administration's effort to maintain our nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing, will play a vital role in reshaping national security in the 21st century," said NNSA administrator Tom D'Agostino.

"This one-of-a-kind facility is the only place in the world that is capable of providing some of the most critical technical means to safely maintain the viability of the nation's nuclear stockpile."

Scientists say that NIF also promises groundbreaking discoveries in planetary science and astrophysics by recreating conditions that exist in supernovas, black holes, and in the cores of giant planets.

Electricity derived from fusion reactions similar to what takes place in the sun could help sate humanity's growing appetite for green energy, according to lab officials.

"Very shortly we will engage in what many believe to be this nation's greatest challenge thus far, one that confronts not only the nation but all of mankind -- energy independence," said lab director George Miller.

The lab was founded in 1952 and describes itself as a research institution for science and technology applied to national security.

"This laser system is an incredible success not just for California, but for our country and our world," Schwarzenegger said.

"NIF has the potential to revolutionize our energy system, teaching us a new way to harness the energy of the sun to power our cars and homes."uper-laser project poses challenges

Snags hold up effort to spark fusion in the lab

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7899918/

By H. Joseph Hebert

updated 9:23 a.m. PT, Mon., May 23, 2005

LIVERMORE, Calif. - Ed Moses talks of the “grand challenge” that has consumed him for the past five years, comparing it to trying to hit the strike zone with a baseball from 350 miles away or tossing a dime into a parking meter from 40 miles.

“That’s the precision we have to have,” says Moses, the director of a high-energy physics adventure to produce the world’s most powerful laser — one that scientists hope will create in a laboratory the energy found at the center of the sun.

In a building the size of a football stadium, engineers have assembled the framework for a network of 192 laser beams, each traveling 1,000 feet (300 meters) to converge simultaneously on a target the size of a pencil eraser.

The trip will take one-thousandth of a second, during which the light’s energy is amplified many billions of times to create a brief laser pulse 1,000 times the electric generating power of the United States.

The goal is to create unimaginable heat — 180 million degrees Fahrenheit (82 million degrees Celsius) — and intense pressure from all directions on a BB-size hydrogen fuel pellet, compressing it to one-thirtieth of its size.

The result, the scientists hope, will be a fusing of atoms so that more energy is released than is generated by the laser beams, something scientists call fusion ignition. It is what happens when a hydrogen bomb explodes.

The 'Hubble' of lasers

Four of the beams have been tested. When completed in 2008, the National Ignition Facility, or NIF as the laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories is called, will dwarf many times over any laser to date.

It will provide a platform for many experiments in high-energy and high-density physics, from learning more about the planets and stars to advancing the elusive hunt for fusion energy to generate electric power, Moses says.

“You have to think of this like the Hubble,” he says, referring to the space telescope. “It’s a place where you will see things and do things that you couldn’t do anywhere else.”

But the federal government is investing $3.5 billion, and possibly several billion dollars more, in NIF for another reason: national security.

If NIF achieves fusion ignition, it will for the first time in a laboratory simulate the pressures and heat of a nuclear explosion, allowing nuclear weapons scientists to study the performance and readiness of the country’s aging nuclear arsenal without actually detonating a nuclear device.

Underground nuclear testing in the Nevada desert ended in 1992.

The NIF laser “is essential to assessing the potential performance of nuclear weapons,” says Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. He says the experiments will help determine the effects of aging on warheads and help assure they will work as expected, should they be needed.

Fusion is fundamental

There have been other lasers, including a 10-beam Livermore project called Nova. NIF will produce 40 to 60 times more energy. “It’s the difference between a car and a jet engine,” Moses says.

For many supporters the “pass-fail” is whether the NIF lasers will achieve fusion ignition.

“We never intended to spend $5 billion to $6 billion to build a laser facility for ... civilian research,” Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate subcommittee that funds the NIF program, lectured an Energy Department scientist last year when he learned fusion ignition experiments might be postponed.

Energy Department officials now say the project remains on schedule with the first fusion ignition tests planned for 2010. Domenici remains skeptical.

“It’s a terrible expense and a drain” on other programs to maintain the nuclear arsenal, Domenici said in an interview. “They’re going to have to prove they can get the job done.”

Among some people, fusion ignition “has become the poster child for NIF being successful” and that shouldn’t be the case, counters George Miller, a former nuclear weapons designer and bomb tester who heads the project. He says there are many other experiments for which NIF will be valuable to nuclear weapons scientists.

“We are conscious of the importance of ignition” and “there’s no reason to think we’re not going to get it,” Linton Brooks, head of the federal National Nuclear Security Administration that oversees the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, said in an interview.

Dense Plasma Focus Device

After far too many years, the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics ‘Dense Plasma Focus Device’ is funded through a demonstration unit. I have included the recent news on funding and staffing, as well as the company’s description of the device.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention that a number of these devices are in labs around the world and knowledge and experience is been gained. This one will be the second largest.

It is remarkable that very important experiments in fusion control using multiple geometries have been starved for funding for decades while the Tokamak design has received massive funding while producing slim results for as many decades. A proof of concept experiment is not overly expensive and supports theoretical progress.

Realistically Tokamak as configured has failed. It is possible that superior modeling with present computers will improve the situation except that these other exotic systems were even more difficult to model forty years ago. It is fair to say that the aspect of Tokamak that recommended it forty years ago were the inherent symmetries that permitted successful calculation strategies.

Now we should even entertain atomic and molecular fields when we do this work. At least I have thought so, if only because attractive and repulsive forces exist at that scaling as well as shielding. If so called cold fusion has any reality at all, it is because of action at the molecular level. Today we have the computer power to experiment with such geometries.

The claim is made that their understanding of the protocol is now sufficient to generate net power and that is certainly suggested by their description below. Of course we also know just how fickle Mother Nature really is.

I would be much happier if this funding had another zero attached. Any way, no one is going to describe this as cold fusion.

December 18, 2008

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Initiates Two-Year Experiment to Test Hydrogen-Boron Fusion
$1.2 Million Project Funded by The Abell Foundation and Individual Investors

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc., a small research and development company based in West Orange, NJ, has announced the initiation of a two-year-long experimental project to test the scientific feasibility of Focus Fusion, controlled nuclear fusion using the dense plasma focus (DPF) device and hydrogen-boron fuel. Hydrogen-boron fuel produces almost no neutrons and allows the direct conversion of energy into electricity. The goals of the experiment are first, to confirm the achievement the high temperatures first observed in previous experiments at Texas A&M University; second, to greatly increase the efficiency of energy transfer into the tiny plasmoid where the fusion reactions take place; third, to achieve the high magnetic fields needed for the quantum magnetic field effect which will reduce cooling of the plasma by X-ray emission; and finally, to use hydrogen-boron fuel to demonstrate greater fusion energy production than energy fed into the plasma (positive net energy production).

The experiment will be carried out in an experimental facility in New Jersey using a newly-built dense plasma focus device capable of reaching peak currents of more than 2 MA. This will be the most powerful DPF in North America and the second most powerful in the world. For the millionth of the second that the DPF will be operating during each pulse, its capacitor bank will be supplying about one third as much electricity as all electric generators in the United States.

A small team of three plasma physicists will perform the experiments: Eric Lerner, President of LPP; Dr. XinPei Lu and Dr. Krupakar Murali Subramanian. Mr. Lerner has been involved in the development of Focus Fusion for over 20 years. Dr. Lu is currently Professor of Physics at HuaZhong Univ. of Sci. & Tech., Wuhan, China, where he received his PhD in 2001. He has been working in the field of pulsed plasmas for over 14 years and is the inventor of an atmospheric-pressure cold plasma jet. Dr. Subramanian is currently Senior Research Scientist, AtmoPla Dept., and BTU International Inc., in N. Billerica, Massachusetts. He worked for five years on the advanced-fuel Inertial Electrostatic Confinement device at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he received his PhD in 2004 and where he invented new plasma diagnostic instruments.

To help in the design of the capacitor bank, LPP has hired a leading expert in DPF design and experiment, Dr. John Thompson. Dr. Thompson has worked for over twenty years with Maxwell Laboratories and Alameda Applied Sciences Corporation to develop pulsed power devices, including DPFs and diamond switches.

The $1.2 million for the project has been provided by a $500,000 investment from The Abell Foundation, Inc, of Baltimore, Maryland, and by additional investments from a small number of individuals.

The basic technology of LPP’s approach is covered by a patent application, which was allowed in full by the US Patent Office in November. LPP expects the patent to be issued shortly.

The Dense Plasma Focus (DPF): What it is and How it Works

The dense plasma focus device consists of two cylindrical copper or beryllium electrodes nested inside each other. The outer electrode is generally no more than 6-7 inches in diameter and a foot long. The electrodes are enclosed in a vacuum chamber with a low pressure gas filling the space between them. The plasma focus device is shown in the figure below.

http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/images/dpf.gif



A pulse of electricity from a capacitor bank (an energy storage device) is discharged across the electrodes. For a few millionths of a second, an intense current flows from the outer to the inner electrode through the gas. This current starts to heat the gas and creates an intense magnetic field. Guided by its own magnetic field, the current forms itself into a thin sheath of tiny filaments; little whirlwinds of hot, electrically-conducting gas called plasma. A picture of these plasma filaments is shown below along with a schematic drawing.


http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/images/vortex.jpg

This sheath travels to the end of the inner electrode where the magnetic fields produced by the currents pinch and twist the plasma into a tiny, dense ball only a few thousandths of an inch across called a plasmoid. All of this happens without being guided by external magnets.

The magnetic fields very quickly collapse, and these changing magnetic fields induce an electric field which causes a beam of electrons to flow in one direction and a beam of ions (atoms that have lost electrons) in the other. The electron beam heats the plasmoid to extremely high temperatures, the equivalent of billions of degrees C (particles energies of 100 keV or more).

The collisions of the electrons with the ions generate a short pulse of highly-intense X-rays. If the device is being used to generate X-rays for our X-ray source project, conditions such as electrode sizes and shapes and gas fill pressure can be used to maximize X-ray output.

If the device is being used to produce fusion energy, other conditions can minimize X-ray production, which cools the plasma. Instead, energy can be transferred from the electrons to the ions using the magnetic field effect. Collisions of the ions with each other cause fusion reactions, which add more energy to the plasmoid. So in the end, the ion beam contain more energy than was input by the original electric current. (The energy of the electron beam is dissipated inside the plasmoid to heat it.) This happens even though the plasmoid only lasts 10 ns (billionths of a second) or so, because of the very high density in the plasmoid, which is close to solid density, makes collisions very likely and they occur extremely rapidly.

The ion beam of charged particles is directed into a decelerator which acts like a particle accelerator in reverse. Instead of using electricity to accelerate charged particles, they decelerate charged particles and generate electricity. Some of this electricity is recycled to power the next fusion pulse while the excess (net) energy is the electricity produced by the fusion power plant. Some of the X-ray energy produced by the plasmoid can also be directly converted to electricity through the photoelectric effect (like solar panels).

The DPF has been in existence since 1964, and many experimental groups around the world have worked with it. LPP’s unique theoretical approach, however, is the only one that has been able to fully explain how the DPF works, and thus exploit its full capabilities.

Lukewarm Fusion

It is worthwhile reading Jed's comments on the status of so called cold fusion in Monday's post. He particularly reports on recent experimental work on 'lukewarm' fusion and cold fusion that has very successfully replicated the original results plus some. The experimental results are hugely ahead of any theory and it is perhaps time I waded in.

It is my contention that we are observing phenomena induced by the peculiarities of short range fields at molecular distances. They are obviously difficult to model and impossible to model using current particle theory derived from back engineering from observation. The Heisenberg uncertainty principal makes sure of that.

Having said that, my own efforts over the past forty years have yielded a core metric that allows the fabrication of particle system models and is actually the long dreamed of theory of everything, or at least that is my speculation. The metric also establishes solution protocols for third and higher ordered differential equations.

My current limitation is that to progress further, I really need access to an army of scientific programmers who know how to work around the limitations of our hardware. I personally was able to take the equations only so far until they blew up. Convergence is a bitch. And it is a long march to construct a neutron model let alone an atom.

In any event, from my perspective, it makes sense that electron bombardment of these structures and their complex fields could trigger anomalous events however induced. We are actually witnessing the birth of a major new area of experimental physics as confusing as the original research on radiation without nuclear theory.

Having said that, I would like to see my audience expanded before introducing any of this work so that we can have a lot of folks working on the modeling problem itself. I am not kidding when I say that the modeling will quickly balloon the need for manpower and some sort of web based community to keep everyone together and sharing information. The good news is that anyone capable of getting into college level first year mathematics will be able to work with the problem.

The first step is to expand the audience, and that means you telling friends who have an interest in maths and science and challenging them. And once I am satisfied the audience is big enough, I can publish a page at a time and open the door for comment and discussion.

In the meantime, I welcome fresh topics to talk about on the issue of Global Warming. I am only one person, and surely I have missed something. In fact the launching of this blog led me to discover terra preta and from there to figuring out how the Indians actually did it. Because of this, I am now very confident that an agricultural revolution is on the way that will eliminate the CO2 problem and restore global fertility. The rest of the world will just require several years to catch up to us. Can we do more?