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University of Sydney paper on IEC reactor net energy gain

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 7:05 pm
by Adrian Hindes
Hey folks,

So some guys at the University of Sydney in Australia just published a paper titled Fusion in a magnetically-shielded-grid inertial electrostatic confinement device. Seems very promising for IEC research!

http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.01788

Re: University of Sydney paper on IEC reactor net energy gai

Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 9:50 am
by Dennis P Brown
Glanced at the paper very fast - it is just a theory only paper (the authors do state this clearly) and isn't experimental at all. So, this isn't in any manner real proof of a fusion system that can achieve real net gain - just speculation (they point out they ignore all critical issues of plasma turbulence and some other major issues in their model) ... yes, the work may be top caliber and even advance the field, and who knows, might work in some distant future but it has as much to do with a real world fusion device as does any research paper - pretty much speculation based on extremely simplified models.

Aside: they do reference the "Polywell" design - that does make the paper of interest here, I'd think.

Re: University of Sydney paper on IEC reactor net energy gai

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 2:30 am
by Adrian Hindes
Dennis P Brown wrote:Glanced at the paper very fast - it is just a theory only paper (the authors do state this clearly) and isn't experimental at all. So, this isn't in any manner real proof of a fusion system that can achieve real net gain - just speculation (they point out they ignore all critical issues of plasma turbulence and some other major issues in their model) ...
Well obviously with theoretical papers including something like turbulence would result in far more complexity than is really needed. It concludes by saying that an experimental setup of the design outlined in the paper would be well within the realm of construction, which I take to mean that these guys will be pursuing experimental confirmation.

It's still definitely a step forward in IEC research.