Fusion Message Board

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: High pressure D2 fusion
Date: Oct 26, 5:03 pm
Poster: Jim Lux

On Oct 26, 5:03 pm, Jim Lux wrote:

> In the D2 lamp of 1atm. or greater, assuming we could support 20kv across the lamp, (which we cannot), and with a spacing of the arc electrodes of 4mm, that would allow the deuterons to achieve about 5kev/mm of travel. With a mean free path of even 1/100 of a mm, no deuteron could ever exceed 50ev before colliding with a fellow ion and losing energy. In actuality it is far less than even this figure.


What about using a very(!) short pulse of voltage (not what's going on here) that doesn't allow a glow discharge or arc to develop (which takes some time...). Something like a high reprate transmission line pulse former? Some of the BIG (multi kW) TEA lasers use a technique like this to excite the gas at high pressures, without forming an arc (which would quickly destroy the laser). I seem to recall one (the researcher's name was Daugherty, or something like that) that ran multi kJ pulses with something like 100 kV on the electrodes. They used a preionizing UV discharge to get many ions in the volume before hitting it with the pulse.