Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

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Paul_Schatzkin
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

Thanks for that post, Joe. That's pretty much how I see it, too.

Fusion can't get "funding" unless it's some large-scale, gazillion dollar undertaking.

I think that's exactly the opposite of what fusion "wants" to be, or, at least, should be. Which is why I find the fusor so appealing and all these other Rube Goldberg giants so... ridiculous.

That said, I have to confess I get a little confused with some of the nomenclature and metrics.
their 10 Million degree Celsius temperature is equivalent to a pathetic 861Volts in a fusor. Assuming that the ions in a fusor are accelerated across the full potential drop between the anode and cathode, and using the 11604 K/eV equivalence....Doug Coulter's 50kV fusor is hitting temperatures in the neighborhood of 580 million degrees kelvin.
I get lost between the temperature measurements and the K/eV equivalence. I'm not asking you to explain (not here, anyway), just trying to convey how confusing it gets for somebody not intrinsically well versed in the language and the acronyms.

And Richard Hull keeps insisting that the fusor is not "thermonuclear," at which point I have to wonder what that words even means. If 580MºK is not thermonuclear... then what is??

At least we know we're not dealing with "cold" fusion. Jeez, every time I talk to somebody (who knows even less than I do) about "fusion" and they say "you mean 'cold fusion'?" I wanna slap 'em upside the head...

But I get this much:
They simply aren't even close to the temperatures required for fusion.
... and just have to wonder, "so why all the excitement." At which point I might take a bit of umbrage at the dismissal of my crack about the "100 million dollar cartoon." If they're that far from producing actual fusion – let alone their stated intent of p+B11 fusion - then what ARE they doing besides building really shiny laboratory?

I mean, Paul Allen has supposedly sunk $100 MILLION into this thing... and fusors can't get a couple of million here and there? WTF??
Fusors today easily generate plasma that is 35 to 60 times hotter than Tri Alpha's plasma. And they cost a lot less too.
And yet, the fusor "gets no respect" in institutional scientific circles (except maybe at UofW, and a few other places that think of it strictly as a neutron generator), and there's no shortage of people right here on this site who insist that the fusor will never, ever be an actual, practical energy source.

The key phrase above is "...And they cost a lot less too." There is a mentality surrounding fusion that it is a giant problem that requires costly solutions.

Maybe it's must because I don't know any better that I can continue to believe... "...maybe not..."

--PS

(and don't even start me on the Wendelstat Stellarator... a million man-hours to construct? For all I know is may produce a bajillion joules of energy. But it's gonna be a mofo to make into a power plant... )

Update 151110: I'm doing some (long overdue) homework here, and I get now why we don't refer to the fusor as "thermonuclear." Now I will try to cope with the semantic inconsistencies of the nomenclature.
Paul Schatzkin, aka "The Perfesser" – Founder and Host of Fusor.net
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"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Richard Hull »

All who would know what temperature in degrees and kelvins mean as related to fusion hype must read and understand this old FAQ post by me. Temperature is thermodynamics

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10424

Who ever assembled the Fusion theory forum left out a FAQ location for that forum which is where the above would find a proper home. I was forced to place it in the construction forum FAQ bin. Needless to say, I was pissed, but I can't add FAQ bins to major forums.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Frank Sanns »

Richard Hull wrote:All who would know what temperature in degrees and kelvins mean as related to fusion hype must read and understand this old FAQ post by me. Temperature is thermodynamics

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=9223&p=62526#p62526

Who ever assembled the Fusion theory forum left out a FAQ location for that forum which is where the above would find a proper home. I was forced to place it in the construction forum FAQ bin. Needless to say, I was pissed, but I can't add FAQ bins to major forums.

Richard Hull
Richard,

Your moderator control panel will allow you do the same things to FAQs as it does for everybody else's posts. You can move, copy, lock, delete, and make sticky along with a few others. Whenever you want to move a FAQ just go to the thread and select move. It will give you the choice of the forum location that you want to move or copy to. Once there, make it a sticky and it will remain at the top of the list.

I copied the FAQ that you pointed to in your link over to the correct forum but left the original so you link was not bad. All along, you just needed to click your red slippers together and all was good. ;-)
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Richard Hull »

I appreciate the effort and knew how to do that. I was taking issue that there is no real FAQ area in the theory forum.
Amateurs are directed to the special FAQ areas in each forum. They have a special commanding place designed to teach. FAQs piling up in head end of the actual discussion forums will be a bit imbalanced. I realize it is just too late to alter the nature of a forum to add the separate FAQ area seen in other forums.

I have also edited my above post to send folks to the new location in the Theory forum. Thanks again frank.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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RE: Theory FAQ section

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

I thought Richard was saying that when we reconfigured the site, we neglected to create a "FAQ" section for the "Theory" section, i.e. something that would appear at the top of this page:

viewforum.php?f=14

...much as the FAQ section appears at the top of the Construction and Operation section:

viewforum.php?f=6

I was going to see if such a FAQ section could be created in the Theory section. Wouldn't Richard's post (linked above) be better in such a section? Shouldn't there BE such a section? Seems like it'd be easy enough to create (once I/we figure out how...)

--PS
Paul Schatzkin, aka "The Perfesser" – Founder and Host of Fusor.net
Author of The Boy Who Invented Television: 2023 Edition – https://amz.run/6ag1
"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Frank Sanns »

Just created a FAQ section. Will populate it and streamline things too.
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Richard Hull
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Richard Hull »

Great works guys!

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Dan Tibbets »

Perhaps exposing my ignorance again, but method and efficiency of heating is certainly important, but the dominate consideration is confinement. If particle and KE confinement is not adequate, even a tremendously efficient heating mechanism is useless. I've not been impressed with the temperatures they have been reporting, but I suspect this is low on their priorities list. Establishing adequate confinement against reasonable/ expected (?) input costs is the key. My impression is that they are advertising their confinement gains. Of course scaling these with other scaling considerations like injection capacity and efficiency make for an intricate dance that historically has proven to be fraught with unknowns.

EMC2 with the Polywell have accomplished similar results. They have demonstrated the principles of adequate confinement, and now need to implement input methods that are adequate. The Polywell is a Fusor and has demonstrated deep potential wells, as has other fusors . The problem with fusors has always been one of confinement , not temperature. The input issues may change catastrophically once confinement is achieved. This is a challenge for the Polywell, FRC, or any other approach. The necessary goals are often competing against each other.

Neutral beam injection, microwave heating are two heating mechanisms available. For fusor like machines, and others(?), electrostatic acceleration within the confined space is a third.

Now, if we only had a confinement method that did not interact so much with the dance of charged particles and magnetic fields. Does anyone have a pocket gravity generator?

Dan Tibbets
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Frank Sanns »

Dan,

Temperature loss due to radiative cooling scales to the fourth power. It takes huge energy inputs to get those last Kelvins for fusion to go at any appreciable rate. What seems to be 90% of the way there is really only 3% of the way there.

Confinement of a plasma at low temperatures is not so difficult. Doing it at fusion temperatures is something else entirely.
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Werner Engel »

A few days ago I attended a lecture of a former Nobel Prize winner – Carlo Rubbia. He was also a former director at CERN and a famous particle physicist. His story was about the next energy source of mankind.
To make it short he wants us to use methane-clathrates by separating CH4 to Carbon and Hydrogen. Hydrogen should be burnt as normal fuel where the Carbon should be used to "fuel" our oil based chemical industry.
The interesting statement followed after the lecture during Q&A:
From the audience: “Mr. Rubbia, what do you think about nuclear fusion?”
Mr. Rubbia – short version: “DT Fusion produces nuclear material – therefor there should be no further development like ITER. But B11/p+ fusion is aneutronic and therefore we should go for this reaction”.
He did not mention anything regarding cross section versus mass energy or maximum heat load on the plasma heat exchangers nor any other engineering issues we might expect.

But B11/p+ as the only future of fusion!!!!
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Richard Hull »

Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one. Some opinions bear more consideration than others due to the source. Still, a good mind that has studied the fusion issues and also knows not only the physics, but the engineering and funding end of things has a much clearer view of what is involved.

As noted earlier, if you can't win with D-T fusion, the easiest known to man, then you will never have even the slightest chance at P-B11 fusion. Why start that quest? An analogy would be: Why try and build an automobile when you haven't figured out how to do a wheel, yet. Even the meanest intellgence can gather this point to the fore in their brain.

Paul asked about thermo-nuclear definition much earlier. A thermo nuclear reaction is one that creates more energy than is used to create it and can be either self-sustaining or not. It always involes a heated plasma of fusion fuel.

The fusor fails as it is a non-net energy producer. Some of the dubious claims made for JET and other multi-million dollar efforts in thermal plasma systems related to their having produced more energy out than in, for a matter of secs to milliseconds also fails the definition. The H bomb is a superlative example of a good, solid thermo-nuclear reaction that is non-self sustaining.

The only self-sustaining thermo-nuclear reaction in the universe is found is stars. The only workable, over unity, thermonuclear reaction found on earth is the H bomb.

All other fusion reactors are not thermo-nuclear, but instead are fusion devices that take a bit more energy input than they give in output. The fusor is a Billion to one net loss fusion device and the very best multi-million dollar systems are most likely a 1.5 to 1 net loss or even worse if 100% of all things needed to make them go is considered. The rotteness of our efforts at thermo-nuclear fusion is a matter of scale only. If you only have $800 to spend on a cobbled up fusor you are at the bottom of the scale. However hundreds of millions to billions of the money scale perfectly. $800 is to one billionth return as 1billion dollars is to one tenth or better return. The 1/10th or better return is doing the same as the fusor in fusion, It just costs a lot more and still fails in the area of thermo-nuclear fusion.

Yes, true, the fusor makes no attempt at containment, but for all the multi-million dollar containment efforts....Still zip! Both systems do net loss fusion.

Yes, true, you only fuse well at collisional effective temperatures in the 100's of millions of kelvins (degree) range, beit in a fusor or a tokamak, but you aren't getting "net usable or positive destructive thermo-nuclear energy out of either device.

Defintion (net postive destructive energy)....An H bomb that is used to destroy an enemy becomes a net positive outcome of direct use of massive over-unity, thermo-nuclear energy for the nation using it...... wait for it...........(thermo-nuclear retaliation can be a bitch)....Still, both sides are well served, energy-wise, by the use of their H-bombs agaisnt their foes.
Result....
Energy in: a few millions of dollars per bomb.....
Energy out: Tens of trillions of dollars in damage to the other guy........What a bargain!

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: Tri-Alpha Energy just launched its website

Post by Werner Engel »

Does anyone have a personal contact to Mr. Michl Binderbauer (president and CTO of Tri-Alpha)? I tried to get in contact with him (as he is also Austrian) - but did not get any feedback.
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