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: IEC in the news
Date: May 08, 1:48 pm
Poster: Blair P. BromleyOn May 08, 1:48 pm, Blair P. Bromley wrote:
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>>Another pioneer in the field of electrostatic confinement during the 1960s and early 1970s was
>>O. Lavrent'yev at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences of the former USSR. Most of his work was theoretical, although his team did perform some experiments on spherical gridded IEC systems. In fact, I think he may have been the first to used grids for the purpose of electrostatic confinement, unlike Farnsworth and Hirsch who used ion guns exclusively as it seems.
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>This is not correct. In late 1965 and early 66 Hirsch made up a grided simple fusor without any ion guns at all! This machine was actually demonstrated producing neutrons (10e7/sec) powered by a simple wall outlet in the conference room at the AEC! (Much to the stunned amazement of the megawatt Princeton onlookers and AEC officials.)
I was not aware of Hirsch's early work with gridded systems; however, Lavrent'yev may have performed experiments at the same time, although I haven't checked to see if there was any documentation reporting earlier experiments.
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>I have a period photo of Gene Meeks and Steve Blasing standing beside the system, assembled on a roll-around stainless steel hotel maid's cleanup cart!!!! Real slick, and just impressed the hell out of the wheels at the AEC. So much so that within a year, they had hired Hirsch into an AEC management position!! With Farnsworth retired, and Hirsch hired away, this effectively ended the ITT/Farnsworth effort.
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>It is true that all of Farnsworth's machines used ion guns, but Meeks and Hirsch studied the simple grided systems for about 1 1/2 years at the end. They have a patent on same. RH
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>>you some references to Lavrent'yev's papers for your study and consideration if you so desire.
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>Yes, please give us the refs. I haven't heard of Lavrent'yev's effort and am most interested.
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>Richard Hull
Here are a few references that I found on Lavrent'yev's work. The publication by the New York Academy of Sciences in 1975 may be the easiest one for most people to obtain. The others are a bit more obscure. The other two are translations, one done by Thomas Dolan who did some of the first IEC experiments here at the University of Illinois back around 1970. Dolan has been a strong proponent of magnetic-electrostatic confinement which relates to some ideas that both Lavrent'yev and later R.W. Bussard were advocating.
Here are some references:
Lavrent'yev, O., "Electrostatic and Electromagnetic High-Temperature Plasma Traps,"
Electrostatic and Electromagnetic Confinement of Plasmas and the Phenomenology of Relativistic Electron Beams, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, L.C. Marshall and H.L. Sahlin (Editors), Volume 251, New York Academy of Sciences, pp. 152-178, (1975)
Lavrent'yev, O.A., Sidorkin, V.A., Zaitsev, V., Goncharenko, V.P., and Ovcharenko, L.I.,
"Investigation of Gaseous Discharge in a Spherical Diode," (English Translation) UDC537.525.6, Ukrainian Journal of Physics (Ukrainskii Fizicheskii Zhurnal), Volume 17, p. 184-188, (1972).
Lavrent'yev, O.A., "Investigation of an Electromagnetic Trap", Report Number AEC-tr-7002, pp. 72-193, (1968) (also found in Magnetic Traps, Issue 3 of the Plasma Physics series of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Kiev, 1968).
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