On to every parade a little rain must fall.

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Richard Hull
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On to every parade a little rain must fall.

Post by Richard Hull »

After a lifetime of observing, many years of study and a few years at the task, I am losing faith in the ability for man to ever do useful fusion.... Period!

Before you hang me in effigy listen, reason, weigh and consider. (as Francis Bacon suggested)

1. I am not jumping ship
2. I am still interested in and shall continue my fusion work.
3. Nothing has changed save a gut feeling getting stronger and stronger.
4. I have always stated, openly, over many posts, that I am here to simply do fusion, not save the world, not to create a useful power source, not to make the fusor overunity or self sustain.

So why am I here? The same reason most of us are really here......

5. I will never stop investigating and cogitating on the nature of things interesting and scientific.

The above being said........

I FEEL THAT THERE IS CLOSE TO A ZERO PERCENT CHANCE OF MAN PRODUCING "POWER READY" FUSION IN PLASMAS OR ANY RARIFIED MEDIUM BY ANY ARTIFICE!

Further, if heat and real energy producing fusion is done in the solid state (cold fusion, sonofusion, as yet unknown process, etc.), I predict the carnot efficiency will be such that it will most likely not displace whatever electrical generating method which is in use at the time of discovery.

Some general thoughts on my reasoning...

In spite of our jokes and sophestries regarding hot plasma fusion's efforts, it appears that all the kings horses and all the kings men over a 50 year span have failed at doing more than enlarging the rarified atmosphere fusion effort to a billion dollar boon doggle and elevating the general lack of understanding from a mere art to a codified science.

The so called cold fusion processes actually look more impressive and believably doable, but its promise seems to point at little more than proton exchange pocket warmers under the year 2050 Chrismas tree.

I am not a forecaster, but a realist. I am also naturally suspicious and pessimistic. I am blessed with an engineering brain that wants to take a process or methodolgy and make it useful, turning it into realizable wheelwork. As an engineer, I see a vast wasteland spread out in a confused panorama before me. I see a lot of folks fiddling and taking breaks only to start fires so that they may return to fiddling as the band plays on.

To be sure, any whacko can have a breakthrough. Processes that look weak might be enhanced far beyond our current limited understanding. One day pigs might fly. We'll see which happens first.

Nature has a brilliant dichotomy to it. On the one hand fusion is done by her at the most wasteful and abysmally shabby level using the only force in the universe which has been seen to produce a steady fusion energy exceeding 1 joule. (Gravity). On the other hand, locally, at our livable temps, fusion is resisted by nature with all her might and laws of phsyics.

Gravity is the one natural force we do not have at our behest. It is a force that is ATTRACTIVE ONLY!! We are smart enough to seek out and employ its apparent mime, Inertia, to do more modern fusion tricks, but alas, it is just a mime and not the real thing. (For those interested, I look at inertia as an electrodynamic reaction force to the translation of neutral matter against its own fixed electrostatic binding forces.)

I believe inertia can't work because it is electrodynamic in origin. Inertia was once thought to be the universe's gavitational response to any force seeking to alter the position of motion of neutralized matter systems, their magnetic and charged components, being at peace with all other neutral matter. (mach's principle)

Inertia, I feel, is strictly a lenz's law type reaction force due to the motion attempting to accelerate the very light or low mass electron clouds more rapidly than the heavy nucleus. Electrical bonds associated with the electron clouds to the nucleus must produce the obligatory opposite lenz law response to the bulk motion. Too high an impulse and molecular electrical bonds are broken. Higher still, and electrons in the outer regions of the atoms are sheared off. Inertia is the resistive internal electrical reactions in bulk neutral matter to change of translatory state. As this force is an electrodynamic reaction force between all electrons and all protons which are linked electrically or through the strong force, (take your pick), to nuclear neutrons, we note that Inertia is a fuction of mass and thus the naive link to gravity which is truly linked to mass and mass alone, (whatever that is), and is attractive only. Inertia is just resistive.... a reaction force.

In general, gravity works very gently but irresistably and inertia is very weak until very near a large gravitation field which can tear all molecular, electronic and even atomic bonds loose via the electrodynamically resistant inertial forces as the acceleration of matter becomes extreme. Gravity can re-kineticizse matter and break up neutralized matter systems.

Universally, nature seems to deliberately self limit fusion. Fusion, in nature, is used to do only one thing.......KEEP MATTER KINETICIZED!

I have come to the following conclusions.

There are only two real forces in nature Gravitational and Coulombic. There are only matter particles and all measureable, viewable, non-Heisenberg matter is charged by its very nature. Gravity can and will never be linked by even the most tenuous of bridges to electrodynamics for it must forever remain a totally unrelated and isolated force by natural decree.

Charged matter (basically protons and electrons) interact kinetically through coluombic forces only. Gravitationally, they see nothing.

Coulombically, they seek to lock up and neutralize their charges while also re-keniticizing complacent neighboring particles. To keep things hopin' nature makes the colombic force both ATTRACTIVE AND REPULSIVE in nature.

From this interaction of charged particles light is created. Light is not a primary entity but a secondary one, for only charges in motion can create light. Light can carry energy of sorts to kineticize more particles or even break up electrically neutral systems, but this is a wind down, energy forfeiting process too. (radiation losses)

Light is the artifice by which the universe slowly bleeds to death! It is the antithesis of a primary entity. It is the final entity.

Magnetism is also a secondary force, being the result of currents produced during electrical exchange between charges. Dynamic magnetism in motion never created a single charge, it just moves already extant charged particles about. Magnetism, just as light, is not a primary universal entity. All are secondary EFFECTS of charged matter in motion which are the result of the pandemic, universal, coulombic force.

Ultimately, all of this would lead to the doom of all kinetic action throughout the universe as, slowly, all charge is neutralized, all light absorbed or radiated away and the last bit of magnetism bound forever in neutral systems.

But nature realizes that the great engine must somehow be kept running and introduced gravity. Gravity doesn't give a tinkers damn about charge, magnetism or light. Gravity only works on large neutralized aggregates of now impotent and dead matter. This matter can no longer command its own destiny through columbic action. It is inexorably drawn rather gently, at first, into ever larger dead aggregates impowering gravity all the more. GRAVITY IS AN ATTRACTIVE FORCE ONLY!

This irreversable assembly process continues until the mass heats a bit. Electrons are re-keniticized first. As more mass accumulates and temperatures rise, the matter gets pretty damned kinetic, but it is too late, for gravity now has the upper hand and all are trapped in a proton-electron soup.

The first real particle created in this seething hot mix is blessedly neutral as neutrons are made at the core of the system. These readily fuse with protons to become deuterons sharing the common electron in a stable system even against the ever increasing pressure an heat. The nuclear forces are born here and are not pandemic to creation, but a secondary force formed only by the crushing pressures of gravity. These forces are needed to form more massive atoms as nature makes big stuff for the first time.

At some point, particles can start to escape the new sun. Mass is occasionally ejected... both charged and neutral, but always extremely kinetic. As part of this process energy in the form of light and heat stream out much farther and faster than the kinetic matter particles. Some of the light is so potent that it can re-kineticize matter light years away.

The process continues........on and on.....

What have we to force fusion to our will?..........

The answer is either nothing or nothing yet.

We will see.

Nature, locally, at human safe temps, seeks only one thing........to neutralize all charge...end of statement. She will resist any and all attempts at fusion with matter free to fly about even if constrained by opposite charges or magnetic bottling. The very act of fusing easily overcomes inertia deliberately setup to aid the process. The best we might hope for is a putt-putt boat type of fusion with all the attendant radioactive nasties flying off, contaminating all they touch. P + B11 included.

I suppose that for a lot of you, I have fallen on my sword, but deep thought might be better utilized here than knee jerk reactions or rose tinted glasses. My comments above will not alter the path of the ever hopeful or the truly faithful. Nor will it make or break fusion. It is offered as a commentary on the possibility of a non-fusion powered future.

I leave you to your thoughts and to weigh and consider.

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: On to every parade a little rain must fall.

Post by guest »

I celibrate your clear eyed vision of how hard fusion is.
I've been in the experimental fusion biz for about twenty years now.
I started in the homemade fusion biz back in 1982!
At that time I was slamming together deuterium ions in a cyclotron. At that time head to head collisional fusion with high speed neutral atoms was in. All the debates like you see on the fusor board occured but face to face instead of being on the internet. I personnaly believe what Richard is saying. I've put thousands of hours into fusion kiddos. It was part time then. It's almost full time now. I like the fact that youngsters are attracted to one of nature's hardest connundrum's. I know people look at my posts and wonder is this guy for real? I been at this stuff ever since that damn little AEC pamplet on Fusion. All total I've been at this stuff nearly all of 37 years. I Have the bloody knuckles to show for it too. But fusion is like a virus.... once caught it's hard to put down. Don't think you can skip by with just a few hours work either.
But I'm probably wasting my breathe here.
Fusion is like mankind's El Dorado.
The promise of fusion is like a glistening gold bar.
It will cause you to sit in cold stream beds and sift
gravel for hours looking for glints of gold particles.
At times of deep despair You will actively curse the day you started in fusion. I've done it many times.

Just remember it's the journey not the destination that
counts so much.

Larry Leins
Physics Teacher
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Re: On to every parade a little rain must fall. Pt 2

Post by guest »

The people I really worry about are the young married folks (no longer a stag outfit).
I just hope that they don't get hooked on this stuff at the expense of their family and health.
This fusion quest has already cost me a king's ransom.
It has cost me a wife too.
She was an engineer's daughter.
She endured the research for twenty years.
The stress of doing fusion and working full time caused me to stroke out.
The fall just brought the stress to a head.
I had a stroke a month later.
My wife divorced me the next day.
I tell you what if you have doubts don't start.
It's not a scarlet letter to let others carry the banner into battle.
As General Patton used to say " Let the other poor bastard die for his country"
I used to let this stuff eat away at me instead of sleeping.
I have sacrificed desire.
I practice Tantric Meditation and Yoga.
I too like Richard have distanced my personal worth from success or failure of this fusion quest.
I have known this stuff to drive people mad.
I had close personal friendships with two guys who worked on the breeder program go totally pschotic
when Clinch River was canceled. They have been institutionalized. They determined their whole self worth on a thing. Not good.
Am I a romantic? You bet!
If I wasn't a realist though you would have never gotten a post like this one Huh?

For those who couldn't follow Richard's Posting I'll
spell it out for you. This is a gamble. Don't get mad if you sink in 4 or 5 grand and not get anything for it.
Consider this fusor stuff just like going to the Casino.
If you can't lose 5 grand at the Casino. PUNT!

PS. **** more ranting*******
To hedge my bets I have a battery set ,a windmill and coming soon a solar panel.
I have plans for a passive solar preheater for my house water heater.
Fusion needs cash.
Cutting the electric costs is a nobrainer.
And Yes ...Mr Hightech Pulsed Fusor guy uses fans instead of AC in Mississippi heat.
Wash goes outside in summer.
My electric is only 31.00 a month. (Mostly hot water heating) ( it's on a timer... only runs two hours)
My neighbor paid 151.00 for his all electric house last month.
My house can be totally off the grid for a month without missing a beat..
Good thing too.... had about twenty power outages.
Remember we don't charge dues.
This is on our own hook.
Galk all you want.
Heck of a recruiting drive for fusion huh?!

Larry Leins
Physics Teacher
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Richard Hull
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Re: On to every parade a little rain must fall. Pt 2

Post by Richard Hull »

Larry's right. Do not define yourself by or place your self worth in any project. If it fails, depending on your mental state and fagility of personna you may wind up in Bellvue.

I'm pretty mentally tough and extremely resilient emotionally so stuff that would crush most folks I just walk away from.... whistlin' all the way and looking for something else to get into.

When I'm in, I'm in for serious action and like Larry said, you gotta' be able to drop the coins and not cry in your beer if it all comes to naught. I have done some calculating and figure with the tools and equipment I have thus far purchased since the 1997 Teslathon where Tom Ligon demo'd his little dessicator fusor, I am out about $11,400. Mind you, I have a lot of nice tools and equipment still here in near mint condition which I would never have let myself have unless I was doing fusor work. I suppose if you look at the consumables that have gone away or are locked up in finished, welded up parts that are not recoverable, it would be more like $5,000 gone with no hope of recovery. What's more, I am still spending on fusion and plan to be for some time.

I have a wife who doesn't mind the dedication to my numerous tasks at hand. We agreed there would be no kids back in 73 when we married and she is used to me disappearing in the lab from 6pm to dinner at 7 and then from 8 til 1 or 2 am each night.

I have found most dweebs like us are timid at the moment of marriage and never fully explain that the wife will be a widow constantly to projects and so the marriages bust up.

I have seen more than 10 divorces I know of just in the Tesla coil builders arena. I consider it a duty of any guy to "upfront" this form of dementia to a prospective bride in a long sit down. You can't discover a life's work after 5 years of marriage and expect her to adapt to a new, seemingly deranged form of existance.

She needs to see the derangement and lost time periods before the knot is tied.

A lot of folks break up over money, too. This issue must also be taken care of prior to the nuptuals. Kit & I agreed we would both work until retirement (no excuses excepted save health issues). We worked out a plan where there is 'our money' (joint account out of which all bills are paid) to which we each MUST contribute a fixed amount of our salary each payday. All left over belongs to that person and that person alone. We have never once in the nearly 30 years since been involved in any form of money discussion.

Love can rule the heart, but economics rules the world and all people in it.

Thanks Larry for the wisdom which I concure with regarding vision questing and survival techniques required to smooth the road before you.

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: On to every parade a little rain must fall.

Post by TBenson »

Yeah but....

On the other hand guys, there are people like myself who have spent a good part of our career working on bullshit that we don't really care about. In my case it was software. OK, it made good money and I'm not complaining, but when do I get to play with things that feed my soul?

Well, that's what fusion does. My wife said "DO IT" because she doesn't want me to be bitching and moaning, 20 years from now, about how I never got to chase my dreams.

I consider fusion to be a fun hobby, which maybe someday 1 chance in a 100 might turn into a new career (no, I won't be the guy who invents the breakthough gadget, but maybe I can get a job with the guy who does invent the breakthrough, right?)

I consider this group to be exactly equivalent to the Homebrew Computing Club back in the 70s. That was a group that included a bunch of broke, worthless geeks like...well, guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. People laughed at them..."HOME computers? That's STUPID!" Yeah, well look who's laughing now.

I have said this before and I'll say it again. The hobby fusion people, like you, have a BETTER chance of providing the key breakthrough that will make fusion economic. If anybody does it, it will be a hobbyist, not a governement sponsored lab. That is because science is not advanced by MONEY it is advanced by cleverness. And amateurs working in their garages are MUCH more clever than government scientists working in expensive labs.

By the way, I'm not just blowing hot air here. I've spent a good 10 years doing careful study of the fusion field (I was originally a science history major in college, before getting distracted by software). History shows, very clearly, that most conceptual breakthroughs are made by small numbers of people (one or two people) working privately. Money is USUALLY not the controlling factor.

There are many reasons to think that this rule applies to Fusion.

Or, to put it another way, "The Manhatten Project approach really doesn't work that well!" Go back to the days of Edison, Wright Bros, and Farnsworth. That is where you find your conceptual breakthroughs, which is what we need for Fusion.

No, the "little guy" won't build a commercial reactor. That will take 20 years and a billion dollars. But the "little guy" will show us HOW to build it.

That's my opinon. I'm sure some don't agree, and I may be completely wrong. Who the heck knows? But I've made by bet and I'm riding it out to the end.

TB.
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Re: On to every parade a little rain must fall. Pt 2

Post by guest »

Don't worry Tom ,Richard and I have to do this every once in a while. You seem to have your head together.
What we are trying to discourage is the guy who comes to the site thinking this is like surfing or model airplanes. This is a hobby but it is real research too.
You can't get a demo fusor in a box.... Humm.
ALL the sexy stuff can be a bitch to build and operate.

I was part of the homemade computer club movement in the seventies.
My first computer was a swtp 6800 All hand soldered
with a teletype for I/O. It used punched tape for storage.
Video didn't even exist until Don Lancaster's TV typewriter in about 1974!
Back to fusion.
What I think we want to encourage is
thinking and building not just lock step followers.
As with all groups there will be about three guys supporting a hundred guys stuff. We want time to actually DO something, rather than hold hands all
the live long day. Call me selfish. We don't mind it every once in a while tho.

Larry Leins
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Richard Hull
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Re: On to every parade a little rain must fall. Pt 2

Post by Richard Hull »

It is not only cleverness by the amateur experimenter, but something that dwells within that spurs one on. As a lone wolf experimenter there is little beyond cash flow problems or family problems that can dampen the enthusiasm. This can actually happen to the young, Phd. hot fusion researcher IN THE BEGINNING!

Once he arrives on his first big project, however, he sees his peers jockeying for position, money and playing in-house politics. All the while they are carefully applying the brakes to his enthusiasm, for if the job is really finished, they are outta' work and have to start from square one.

Most of us here are old hands at grabbing onto challenging projects. I often wonder whether it is just the challenge itself or the specific goal that drives us to do this stuff.

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
Brett
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Re: On to every parade a little rain must fall.

Post by Brett »

Richard, you're too pessimistic.

Fusors might not work.

Tokamaks might not work.

This, that, and the other thing might not work.

But workable fusion IS possible! That was proven on Enewetak Atoll decades ago. All the struggle since then has been to make the "fuel pellets" smaller. However, if worst came to worst, there's no fundamental obstacle to using small fusion warheads as fuel pellets in a godawful big reactor.
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Mark Rowley
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Re: On to every parade a little rain must fall.

Post by Mark Rowley »

My God !!!!!! Imagine the containment system for such a thing !

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Re: On to every parade a little rain must fall.

Post by Brett »

I'm aware of two schemes which have been proposed: The first was to use underground blasts to fracture and heat rock, in order to create artificial geothermal pockets into which water could be injected. The other was a proposal to build a fairly large underground chamber, large enough that the blast pressure and temperature would be survivable by the lining by the time a blast at the center reached it. In operation it would be full of superheated steam, which would be heated by a bomb whenever it dropped below efficient operating temperature for the steam turbines.

My point was not so much that these were practical ways of generating power, (Though I think they could be.) as that we HAVE managed to produce fusion reactions, getting much more power out than was put in. It's not, therefore, physically impossible. It may simply be that we're working at too small a scale.
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Re: On to every parade a little rain must fall.

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

Interesting to see this tread picked up again, and to hear some new voices. Brett, I salute your desire to think "outside the box" (outside the vessell? outside the bell-jar?) but, on the surface, this particular idea of "bomb containment" strikes me as somewhat contrary to the real quest for useable fusion. One of the appeals of fusion - and of the Farnsworth Fusor, in particular - has always been that it is "not a bomb" and not even a "controlled bomb" (which is really what a fission reactor is) because there is never more than a minimal amount of fuel present in the reactor at any given time. And if the reaction should start to get out of control, the first thing that will happen is the containment vessel will rupture - causing loss of vacuum and an end of the reaction.

I happen to belong to that small cadre of impressionables who believe that the Fusor IS a viable approach to useable fusion, that Farnsworth was on to something that the rest of us haven't figured out yet, and if and when fusion ever does find its way into our energy supply, it will be using an approach directly traceable to Farnsworth's work in the 1960s and not Edward Teller's work in the 1950s.

--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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Richard Hull
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Re: On to every parade a little rain must fall.

Post by Richard Hull »

I think I will stick with good old fashion fission reactors.
Proven..... workable....... mature technology..... inplace now..... could solve all power problems NOW! This would give us the buffer zone we would need to continue the "real soon nows" on fusion.

Heck! Based on the nuke fission fuels now avaialble from those old cold war warheads, we've got a century or two of free fision power on our hands which means the fusionists could be lookin' at another 5 generations of retiring on inplace, proven effective mantras.

The thought of actually setting off small H blasts with 100% of the nuke wastes attendant with same seems a lot more bizzare than keeping a slow going fission reaction way down in the low performance range and chucking the hot nuclear ash in a cave.

Catching the energy from an H blast (no matter how small) makes about as much economic sense as making a lightning energy recovery system. Not a whole lot of difference in the two except lightning needs no state conversion and is 100% ecologically sound.

Besides, remember, we are a boiling water society.

Developmental dollars will never rush towards little understood, ill tested, of totally foriegn ideas unless they are so stunningly and abysmally cost effective and so thoroughly beat up on the infrastructure that it would be stupid not to go for it.

There is nothing even close to this on the horizon, including hydrogen energy, which I think will be a winner.

As fossils, go we still have a couple of hundred years on coal. Maybe 50 years or more on petro liquids and gases. However, cheap power, as we now know of it, assuming no new nuke plants, is doomed to ending in the next 10-20 years.

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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