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: An interesting benefit to pulsed fusors
Date: Nov 18, 3:21 am
Poster: Scott Stephens

On Nov 18, 3:21 am, Scott Stephens wrote:

>Off the political crapola and back on to building cool neato nifty-keen fusion devices.

Sorry for the rant. LLNL has a great pdf server. I just got a pdf and simulation software on thermoacoustics. Could have some thermonuclear fusor applications. At least they give me something for my tax dollars :-)

>I was recently thinking about extracting electricity directly from charged reaction products of fusion, as has been suggested for p-B11 fusion. A serious problem with this is taking 1.5 MV DC current and inverting it to high voltage AC.

How about an electrostatic motor? Something like a Whimshurst or Varley run backwards.

>It struck me that if you pulse the fusor, this DC current comes in pulses, meaning you can then use a pulse transformer to bring it down to a reasonable voltage, and work with it from there. Thoughts?

I think that ball lightning is a plasmoid that has trapped EM modes. Thermal pressure in the core expanding the plasma outward causes a frequency shift that wants to contract the plasmoid- plasma tied in a knot. (Something like a ferro-resonant transformer?) If this is the case, it might be possible to beam microwaves at the plasmoid and have a stronger beam reflect off, as in a negative-resistant amplifier. Or just tap as much energy off as possible without damping the oscillations.

Magnetrons, klystrons and semiconductor oscillators can show this negative-resistance amplifier action.