Fusor Forums

Just wandering the Internet and stumbled on this:
http://www.finds-space.org/He3.2000.html

I don't know if it has been discussed before or not. But there's the link.

If you look way back at the beginning of "Files", you'll find a paper from the U. of Wisconsin fusor group. Alas, for the self- funded experimenter, 3He is out of the question, as it is several thousand dollars per gram. You also need a wicked power supply (high voltage and current) for significant reaction rates. Wisconsin has the 3He (grant money?), and a big donation from Wilson Greatbatch (inventor of the cardiac pacemaker) got them a power supply large enough for a decent reaction rate. Greatbatch is interested in 3He fusion himself, and his group is constructing a fairly large scale reactor in (I think) Clarence, NY, just outside of Buffalo. So far, there hasn't been a lot of information on that effort.

While there are other smaller efforts in IECF, the classic universities looking into the process have been the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne (longest history of investigation under Miley, et al), and the University of Wisconsin.

Brigham Young University actually took over the Farnsworth systems and toyed with them under Andrew Gardner and Robert Bass from about 1968 to 1972 or 73. Gene Meeks was out there during this period assisting in the effort. But, ultimately, the program got dropped and it really was not until the interest by Miley at U of I that IECF gained any more acedemic study.

Richard Hull

I actually work for Wilson Greatbatch so maybe I can shed some light on what it is we do. Wilson is very much interested in 3He fusion (Mr G promotes the 3He+3He reaction), but we are focused on Direct Eletrical Conversion. We do have contact still with Kulcinski at Wisconsin, but our progress is very slow due to Mr Greatbatch's age (84) - he is concentrated on other projects (batteries and photonic ICD's) right now. At present little work is getting done, and we are currently seeking contacts and others who are working on the same things. We are also searching high and low for good current research and publications - most see the 3He reaction as fanciful at best so finding promising research is hard.

We are also working with Alex Klein (Univ of Columbia) who is helping us figure out problems in our reaction chamber, whilst we help fund his p-B11 fusion research.

Nice to hear from you guys!, I hope you have interesting results
from the extra scale you'll be able to run your experiments on.
Possibly with the odd photo?

Mark Harriss

I'm trying to find a photo of the chamber ("The Monster"!) for you guys.

Very interesting, indeed. I look forward to any report of progress from the Greatbatch effort. There are very few privately funded projects of this magnitude. I'd also be interested in hearing a little more about Klein's work with the P-11B reaction - has he published any papers?