It must be remembered that when our fusors are running well at 10e5 n/s they are fusing about 1 quadrillionths part of the total D2 gas in the chamber during any given second. If we used up all the D2 in a fusion reaction over even a small unit of time like 20 seconds, we would do a lot more than poke holes in our reactor vessels! (maybe take out a small community.)
If some form of self sustaining, but highly self-limiting ignition took place, the thing might run for a long period (days, months) off of D2 in the chamber and still take the chamber up to near incandescence for the entire period! Of course, the holes would appear very shortly in this scenario.
What would keep the reaction going is anyone's guess. Once started the entire grid system (which is powered down) might have no bearing on system operation! We just don't know. A bizarre microwave self sustaining resonance mode may take over in the spherical cavity to sustain the reaction. A million long shots could be posited for sustained fusion.
In short, it may be like many things in our technological past. We may get the reaction going and even figure out how to do limited engineering of it by trial and error before we ever really know what myriad of conditions make it go and sustain. Once operational though, I suspect the paths taken by nature might be painfully obvious.
I have a feeling that the gunned fusor with bright ion sources might be a better candidate for the self igniter model. Our work is in the direction of testing concepts.
Richard Hull
Created on Monday, May 21, 2001 10:52 AM EDT by Richard Hull