In this space, visitors are invited to post any comments, questions, or skeptical observations about Philo T. Farnsworth's contributions to the field of Nuclear Fusion research.Subject: Re: Non-Thermonuclear neutrons-
Date: Aug 09, 11:18 pm
Poster: Richard HesterOn Aug 09, 11:18 pm, Richard Hester wrote:
I read a long time ago, in Glasstone or some other survey book, that the researchers at Culham (the Zeta folks) were fooled for a while into believing thay had achieved thermonuclear fusion with their toroidal pinch device. The neutrons in question were created instead at instability sites by high electric fields. I would think that the neutrons were created by fusion rather than spallation, as the energies even in the high electric field regions were probably fairly low. The references did not say one way or the other.
Richard Hester
>to anyone who can shed light...
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>In a number of books and in some conversations over the last three years, I have heard of "splitting", That is non-Fusion neutrons coming from deuterium plasmas.
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>In the most recent book on the history of fusion, all of the early devices in the 50's produce what the author termed non- thermonuclear neutrons. paraphrasing several entries in the book...' The early systems could not achieve the temperature needed to do fusion but, from the edges of the plasma reaction came neutrons.'
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>Any data on this out there????
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>Any comments???
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>Richard Hull
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