How to make fusion economic

[Andrew Robinson]

Tristan,

This site welcomes discussion on a lot of the topics you have mentioned, but you really need to approach these discussions more appropriately. If you want anyone's serious consideration here, you need to do your research, apply the scientific method, and provide some foundation for your claims. It's easy to talk about how easy it is to build (for example) a car engine. It's just a block of metal with some pistons that move inside by the explosion of gasoline with energy = 100,000MJ WOW!!! It should be obvious that life and more specifically science and engineering are much more complex than these ambiguous statements about some devices function and design. People here on this site want to see your numbers. ALL you numbers. Show your work. Show your references. Show your references references. Show where others can reproduce your work if applicable. If you don't do the work to provide some foundation for your claims, no one will show any interest in posts here. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I want to give you a chance by helping steer you in the right direction so you can benefit from this community properly.

I wish you the best of luck
Andrew

[Tristan Beal]

I am not a fusion expert. I want to become a fusion expert but I am not one yet.

However I do think that I have a pretty good grasp on approximating EROI of different energy ideas. And its my opinion that a design such as Robert Steinhaus's mini mike has the highest EROI of any fusion design I have seen so far. And will therefore be the cheapest.

And ultimately the biggest problem with all the designs I have seen so far is that they have a low potential EROI. The higher the EROI of the design the more energy you have availible to solve technical problems.

[Andrew Robinson]

Clearly my advice has gone in one ear and out the other.

I wish you the best of luck.

Andrew

[Tristan Beal]

Okay I am going to give this one more try. I am not a mathamatician or a physicist so I can't do the maths on the design but I am a scientist and i do understand enough to explain in detail the logic of the design.

The design goes back to basic princples and the first is how do we get gain from fusion? The most logical way of doing this is to look at the hydrogen bomb, the gain on a hydrogen bomb is huge. And if your looking at EROI (Energy return on investment) one particular fusion experiment has the highest of them all and thats Ivy Mike, the reason is because this experiment got most of its energy from D-D fusion the cheapest kind.

So how do we make electricity from Ivy Mike? Well the simplest way is to just denotonate it in a large pool of water and drive turbines with the steam. However this way is the least efficient way and won't get you electricity competitive with mains electricity. (It will generate net electricity though).

So how do we make this cheaper?

Three ways :
Replace the fission primary with an electrical fusion driver and recycle the tritium
Make the Design smaller
Improve Energy recovery.

All of these things ultimately lead you to the Mini Mike design Robert Steinhaus (LLNL) suggests.

Okay so what are technical problems with a Mike-MIke Design?

Heat
An active heat recovery system that turns the heat into electrical energy.

Pressure
The blasts occur in a vaccum surronded by walls thick enough to withstand them.

Ignition
This is the biggest problem but the efficiency of the design means you could afford to use a significantly more powerful laser than the ones at NIF if you had to.

Neutron bombardment
The D-T blast chamber has a berylium shell

[Frank Sanns]

Tristan,

You say you are a scientist but you do not have the math skills to look at this equations. You need to read deeper or do the calculations. There are many big problems with what you are quoting.

I will keep it totally simple with the Mike blast. Why did it only use a small fraction of its fusion fuel? Why did the fireball stop after just a few grams of fuel was converted to energy? There were huge pressures and temperatures during the detonation yet the fusion fire very quickly went out. The conditions for fusion exceed all but the most extreme conditions that can be produced by man and even then it is for nanoseconds of time.

Even the sun is a slow and lumbering giant with far worse efficiency than in the simplest of amateur fusors.

You can listen to the hype or you can put together a fusor and just see what it takes to make any fusion at all. You cannot even pulse a fusor to high currents because of limited conductance of the plasma. All that you are proposing is no easy path. Read more detailed works and not papers written for funding or worse yet from propaganda internet sites or the media.

[Dennis P Brown]

You forget something far, far more important than the science: money! When you say we need lasers more powerful than NIF you are 100% correct. A Krypton Fluorine or Argon electron beam laser could do it (power and efficiency wise) if built in the NIF power range. So, why not just build it? Cost - NIF cost close to half a billion dollars (and has half its original proposed beam lines.) How do you think congress will pour yet far more money into a rat hole that has produced nothing but empty promises is beyond me. Fusion does not need any scientist or anyone saying this is now it can be done; so many have been there, done that, and still, no fusion energy to speak of - what a real fusion program really needs is either a multi-billionaire willing to waste all his money on a single, small proto-type ignition system using direct drive system using lasers (and the physics of ignition by direct drive is still unproven, anyway) or someone who can at least "ignite" the US public opinion in order to create public support (read a new tax on fuel) for a massive many tens of billions of dollars multi-system approach to achieve ignition (not a power plant, mind you.)

As for your ideas, they are not realistic - saying improve efficiency isn't an idea without providing a method. Provide an "electrical fusion driver? Huh? Make the design smaller (????) No idea at all what that means in any practical sense of the word.

Do you have the slightest idea how powerful a real nuclear detonation really is and how dirty? No way those problems can be solved to produce economic power generation.

[Werner Engel]

I'm sorry - but I have to support all others who try to convince you to start learning about fusion before you bring up such ideas. It took me months of learning before I decided to add some content to this forum!
Adding valuable comments to such a complex matter is extremely hard. As long as you are not understanding the real challenges regarding:
• Lawson criterion
• Cross Section, plasma density, ignition criteria, engineering-Q
• Kinetic and fluid description of plasma
• Classical transport in plasma
• MHD equilibrium, stability and waves
• Heating of plasma
• Plasma diagnostic
• Plasma wall interaction
• Physical-, chemical- and nuclear properties needed for materials in fusion reactors
• Building the right vacuum and particle density for fusion
.. you should definitely start to gain more knowledge!
In my daily business I see a lot of people like you with some new knowledge in a new area. And unfortunately some of them can convince others that their idea is the “right idea”. That might be quite dangerous.
My suggestion:
Start by working yourself 1-2 years through plasma physics 101 (viewtopic.php?f=21&t=9393) – work at least a few months at the NIF, another few months at a tokamak and during this time build your own fusor. This might bring you into the position to really compare these techniques.

Also wish you good luck!

[prestonbarrows]

We just need to make an indestructible box which we can detonate the nukes inside...