NIF sailing forward.

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Richard Hull
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NIF sailing forward.

Post by Richard Hull »

The National Ignition Facility's website looks like it is sailing forward, if slowly. You folks should visit the site and see the slide shows (hompage) and movies.

http://www.llnl.gov/nif/nif.html

Once the page comes up, just sit there while the show loads and the image you see will change every few seconds to a new one.

The big chunks of neodymium glass (red) to be used in the 194 frequency triplers is especially neat. Once selected, cut and polished at about $1.1 million each (estimated), they are supposed to produce the terawatt UV pulses to the fusion chamber.

It is still unknown at this time whether these slabs will survive a shot or, if they do, how many shots can they give before optical flaws or stresses accumulate and they explode due to the absorption of beam energy.

The place is being built on a grand scale.

Look quick....The NIF may yet go the way of the super collider.

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
guest

Re: NIF sailing forward.

Post by guest »

Hey Richard:

You are absolutely right about these pictures!
Boy do they know how to gold plate things.
The funny part is I think our effort will pan out before the NIF visitor center gets too dirty (It will take many congressional fact finding commisions before they have to strip and wax the floors).
One bright ray of hope .... it will end up at EBAY.
I think a coffee table made out of a neodynium amplifier slab would add that touch of class that any Star Trek fan would want for his den.
Even if they even get something out of this whale,
they will be keelhauled if our stuff becomes practical.

But seriously,
Our machines have an effective advantage.
A deuteron is about 20,000 times more effective than an electron as a bombarding particle.
An electron is about 1,000 times better than an x-ray photon.
An x-ray photon is about 1,000,000 times better that an
IR photon in the NIF.
When you take into account the effective ballistic qualities you get an effective difference of about 1 x 10^13 to 1 in energy alone.
Makes this fusor stuff look very good indeed.

Larry Leins
Physics Teacher

Richard Hull wrote:
> The National Ignition Facility's website looks like it is sailing forward, if slowly. You folks should visit the site and see the slide shows (hompage) and movies.
>
> http://www.llnl.gov/nif/nif.html
>
> Once the page comes up, just sit there while the show loads and the image you see will change every few seconds to a new one.
>
> The big chunks of neodymium glass (red) to be used in the 194 frequency triplers is especially neat. Once selected, cut and polished at about $1.1 million each (estimated), they are supposed to produce the terawatt UV pulses to the fusion chamber.
>
> It is still unknown at this time whether these slabs will survive a shot or, if they do, how many shots can they give before optical flaws or stresses accumulate and they explode due to the absorption of beam energy.
>
> The place is being built on a grand scale.
>
> Look quick....The NIF may yet go the way of the super collider.
>
> Richard Hull
guest

Re: NIF sailing forward.

Post by guest »

Along with the cuts in Space Station Freedom , Bush Adminstration has thrown down the gauntlet on NIF.
People are actually looking for other jobs. This stuff
could be mothballed at any time now. They must be able to show something this next year or the budget axe will fall. My friend whose job is maintenance engineer for the plant has told me it would be a miracle at this time to save it. We shall see.

Larry Leins
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Richard Hull
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Re: NIF sailing forward.

Post by Richard Hull »

I feel so sorry for those qualified and bright folks caught up in the NIF web of obfuscation.

96 Giant lasers and 500 lb optical triplers that have never been tested or built are being ordered in quantity from manufacturers who have never manufactured them before. These are among some of the follies taking place there.

I guess someone said "Betcha' can't make just one".

All of the innocent technical staff signed on to a project destined for success, but the eggheads so mismanaged the thing, it will stand as a testament to good ole' boyism for years to come.

I suppose a group of these hypereducated types got trapped by some military types and one of the military guys said "Can a 6 terawatt laser be made?" Naturally, the eggheads snapped, "Yeah, we can do that"......Could you do 96?....NO problem.....

Then th' fun began.

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
guest

Re: NIF sailing forward.

Post by guest »

Oh well... theres always Star Wars research.
The Egghead for Lunch bunch assumes this will save them.... But not really as it turns out.
The idea for NIF was an offshoot of this clasically bad concept.
The terawatt laser always drew belly laughs in the old tech ranks. The number of technical problems has not been reduced by millions thrown at it. The LLNL that pioneered the only working concept (x-ray laser) took about two minutes on a slide rule to rule out continious Star Wars devices at extreme power levels.
They concluded it was a bad idea even at moderate levels (1 billion watts) . No repeatabilty. Stuff broke.
Not miniturizable under any know material or worst yet
required a substation to energize it. At the power levels required for missile interception all known laser media turned to jello or worst yet into plasma.
Gas Lasers can't generate enough power per cubic meter to be usable. Solid state is it. All gas plasma lasers would have to be deployed into orbit due to their enormous size... about as big as the Hubble Space Telescope.
Edwin Teller's Toy has been deployed.... It fits nicely into a Titan missile upper stage. The real star wars.
No power problems. None of the Problems of other Star wars gizmo's. Sits on the ground till needed.
Ever wonder why President Bush agreed to so few missiles? It's because he has a workable system
at the deployment stage.
It is fairly cheap too... uses the design research already at hand... it works great!... Amchitcha Tested,
Mother Approved.

The only other benefit of Star Wars tech is the laser
light sail at White Sands. But no Star Wars geeks thought of it... The Drexal University people used war
surplus laser generators from the Reagan Era to run them.
So Star Wars is history.
What is an errant savant to do?
Hopefully not find our webite!


Larry Leins
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Captain_Proton
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Re: NIF sailing forward.

Post by Captain_Proton »

What makes this technology so neat is that one uses a femtosecond pulsed Nd:YAG or glass laser at less than a joule to start with. Its then dispersed with a blazed diffraction grating or grism - "cleaned" to a single line mode - amplified, then put back in phase with another identical diffraction grating. The output at this point can be in the Terawatts, sure, but keep in mind - its an extremely short duration. Just long enough to fuse particles together when the magnetic and electric components of the wave "push" the atoms together. Interesting concept eh?
Turns out though, all of our fusion attempts have been by the use of brute force. Could there be a simpler way?
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Richard Hull
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Re: NIF sailing forward.

Post by Richard Hull »

I am sure that if man ever does fusion in a manner which can be turned into practical power, we will be stunned at the simplicity. I am already stunned at how easy it is to do period, albeit inefficiently. (our fusors)

In the saga of the nuclear bomb and such, Teller has just about the worst reputation. This given to him mostly by his fellow scientists of the period who ranged from closet Reds to out-right card carrying communists to efete', pre-politically correct, intellectual panty waists who viewed him as an out of control "bomb boy". Yeh... Right... Like these snooty, dispetic brains were going to stuff the nuclear genie back in the bottle and that their beloved soviet union would never persue thermo-nuclear device construction.......Next joke please.

Teller realized that there was undone science here and that if we didn't do it, someone would. He just instantly made himself a persona-non-grata when he worked around his old Los Alamos pals to push for the super. They were still wallowing and blubering about the horror of what they had done in typical intellectual, self-guilt mode while Teller saw the future, as bad as it was to be.

I believe Teller is still alive, outliving everyone in his crowd except for Pauling who is always there in any history presentation to damn Teller for his part in "creating" the arms race.

Still, Teller contributes. He even warned against the huge fusion tokamak monsters as being a good test bed, but wasteful of resources. This, also, didn't endear him to the next generation either who had traded science in for money and nest feathering.

Teller, in my mind, was an OK guy who had just about the right amount of good old American drive and the know-how. He saw a job through that was difficult, but necessary and which he though important, shoving aside the fence setters and hand wringers.

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
guest

Re: NIF sailing forward.

Post by guest »

Can't fault Teller on shear intelligence and guts.
The old bird is still alive..... he's in his nineties.
People assume that when you get older you lose it not so with Teller.
The X-ray Laser was his concept and he should be
lauded for creating a usable Star Wars project amidst the techno mush everyone was coming up with.
He was eighty then... but a lot sharper than the weenies half his age. He came up with the idea in less than a day. But it took about 5 years from start to finish to wrap and package his vision into a device.
He is a bitch to work with but people who happen to be right are like that in the real world.
If you want to see his preliminary stuff goto a book called Beam Weapons by the High Frontier Society.
The basic idea is there with a schematic of the non classified parts.

Larry Leins
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DaveC
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Re: NIF sailing forward.

Post by DaveC »

Back in the early 90's while at the ultility, I was exploring a possible joint project with a group at China Lake... was to be a free electron laser (FEL) - IR or near IR wavelength, about few MW continuous or CW mode operation. The beam was so intense it had to expand for about 1/4 mile before any known mirror element could redirect it. The application was fairly mundane - to repower the birds in geo-synch orbits.

Not sure if China Lake ever went forward with the development part... which involved Duke Univ and the Budker Institute in Russia. Re-Org and De-Reg foolishness overtook the utility and Research died an untimely death.

Dave Cooper
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Re: NIF sailing forward.

Post by guest »

It has been done... it is called light craft. It is being developed at White Sands as we speak. I've got a video tape from the Discover network on rocket ships that shows it in action ... Also they have footage of anti proton storage in Fermi Lab.

Larry Leins
Physics Teacher
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