Ask MIT Researchers About Fusion Power 318
Nuclear fusion power is the process of fusing light nuclei together to release energy, and ultimately, to put electricity on the grid. Today, we have six researchers from MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center here to answer your questions about fusion power, tokamaks, and public support and funding in the U.S. for this research. The Obama Administration's budget request for fiscal year 2013 is paying for the U.S. share of ITER construction out of the domestic program, starting with the closure of the MIT fusion lab. The interviewees are ready to answer technical and policy questions, so don't be shy! And, as always, please break unrelated questions into separate posts. Read on for information about the researchers who will answer your questions.
Dr. Martin Greenwald is a Senior Scientist and Associate Director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. His experimental work focuses on turbulence and transport, density limits, and pellet fueling of magnetically confined plasmas. More recently, Dr. Greenwald has been heavily involved with data management, computation, simulation, networks, and remote collaborations for fusion research.Professor Ian Hutchinson is interested in plasma control in tokamaks, as well as spatially resolved measurements of the radiated power coming from the plasma. He is the author of the standard fusion textbook Principles of Plasma Diagnostics. Prof. Hutchinson also works on particle-in-cell simulations of astrophysical and laboratory plasmas.
Assistant Professor Anne White researches turbulence phenomena on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, developing new diagnostics to resolve the small fluctuations which cause energy and particles to leak out. She is the recent recipient of the U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award.
Professor Dennis Whyte pursues research into plasma–material interactions; that is, the way the hot plasma in a magnetic fusion reactor interacts with the surrounding solid materials walls. His team is also developing novel diagnostics for fusion nuclear science, which is critical as fusion reactors start producing power (and neutrons) over long periods of time.
Nathan Howard and Geoff Olynyk are Ph.D students on the Alcator C-Mod project. Nathan, who is in the final year of his studies, studies turbulent transport phenomena experimentally and through simulation. Geoff, in his fourth year, is working on disruption mitigation, which is a way to quickly and safely shut a tokamak plasma down in a few thousandths of a second.
Re:What's the problem in building the future. (Score:5, Informative)
Fusion Milestone Prizes (Score:5, Informative)
In 1995, Robert W. Bussard submitted this legislation to all relevant Congressional committees, copying all US plasma physics laboratories.
Needless to say, the legislation wasn't passed.
Do you think the time is right?
Re:IEC's / Fusor (Score:3, Informative)
I spent my fusion time at NBTF (Neutral Beam Test Facility at Berkeley). Fusor type stuff is really easy and the plasma discharge is great to watch (got lots of photos). Making a few D-D fusion neutrons is easy. Making enough to be useful requires a larger machine. After a bit of quality slide rule time one ends up with a REALLY BIG tokamak or mirror machnine (MFTF, my project).
Sorry, fusor type setups are for show. I did work with a fusor like project afew years ago that might work as a neutron source, but not for fusion energy.
Re:Polywell fusion (Score:2, Informative)
If it's complete bull why is it's funding classified and why has the Navy replaced Richard Nebel with somone that does not want to publish? Have you ever considered that it might be a very well guarded national secret? (Like the manhattan project?)
And as for papers here's just a few. ... ... And in the first proof of Polywell fusion reactions, in MPG-1,2, and in fusion production in the later ... ... In conclusion it is gratifying to see that all four of the fuel combinations can be made to work ... ... A new concept for inertial-electrostatic spherical collid- ing beam fusion (Polywell) is based on ... ... In Section V we discuss the results, as well as the implications of these experiments ... In other words, we asked whether there were any ... ... concept). Work will be reported on modeling Polywell particle and power balance, with ... ... Plasma transport properties. Electric and magnetic plasma diagnostic measurements. Plasma ...
The Polywell: A Spherically Convergent Ion Focus Concept
[PDF] from askmar.com
NA Krall - Fusion technology, 1992 - askmar.com
Abstract The Polywell spherically convergent ion focus concept for controlled thermonuclear
fusion is described. The device magnetically confines electrons by a quasispherical-cusp
magnetic field, forming a potential well. Ions are electrostatically confined by this well,
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[PDF] The Advent of Clean Nuclear Fusion: Superperformance Space Power and Propulsion
[PDF] from fusiontorch.info
RW Bussard - Astronautical Congress (IAC, Valencia, Spain, 2006 , 2006 - fusiontorch.info
devices, WB- 4, 6. Questions have always been raised concerning the ability of the device to
maintain its quasi-monoenergetic energy distributions among the ion and electron
Cited by 3 - Related articles - View as HTML - All 16 versions
[PDF] Bremsstrahlung Radiation Losses in Polywell Systems
[PDF] from askmar.com
RW Bussard - Corporation Technical Report, EMC2-0891-04 - askmar.com
effectively in the Polywell system; a result that is not true for use of these fuel combinations in
“conventional” magnetic, Maxwel lian fusion systems in local thermodynamic equilibrium.
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[PDF] Some Physics Considerations of Magnetic Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement: A New Concept for Spherical Converging-Flow Fusion
[PDF] from askmar.com
RW Bussard - Fusion Technology, 1991 - askmar.com
the use of magneto-hydro-dynamically stable quasispherical poly- hedral magnetic fields to
contain energetic electrons that are injected to form a negative potential well that is
Cited by 63 - Related articles - View as HTML - All 3 versions
[PDF] Forming and maintaining a potential well in a quasispherical magnetic trap
[PDF] from askmar.com
NA Krall, M Coleman, K Maffei, J Lovberg - Physics of , 1995 - askmar.com
for the Polywell fusion scheme.
obvious anomalies in this portion of the Polywell fusion scenario.
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Performance of Polywell inertial-electrostatic confinement for applications
JF Santarius - Plasma Science, 1995. IEEE , 1995 - ieeexplore.ieee.org
an emphasis on moderate-Q (fusion power/input power) producers of fusion neutrons
and protons for various applications. Because electrostatic
Cited by 1 - Related articles
The dependence of the virtual cathode in a Polywell on the coil current and background gas pressure
[PDF] from 144.206.159.178
M Carr - Physics of Plasmas, 2010 - link.aip.org
devices. Body. THE POLYWELL CONCEPT. The Polywell fusion reactor concept was first
invented by Bussard in 1983, and patented in 1989, 1992, and 2006.
Cited
Re:Infighting by fusion researchers? (Score:2, Informative)
As someone working in the fusion field, I don't see much infighting, at least with in the magnetic confinement portion. The tokamak people I know don't seem to spend much, if any time, commenting on other designs unless asked about them, and many of the non-tokamak magnetic confinement people don't say much about tokamaks other than they are expensive. There is plenty of sharing and cross-pollination of ideas at conferences between these groups.
There is less talk between magnetic confinement and inertial confinement people, although there is less overlap in equipment and regimes of the experiments. I still see some talk between computer people working with models for both, where there is more overlap.
The polywell people seem to be keeping pretty low key about things, so I think most other researchers in the field don't even know of them. I've bumped into one of their researchers at a conference, but it was out of luck that I recognized the company name on his name tag, and he still didn't talk about their work when asked and wasn't present anything at the conference.
A lot of researchers see stuff like eCat as a fraud, although that is not specific to fusion researchers. It is not surprising more fringe stuff spends more time complaining about mainstream work, although I've found that many people that spend a large time complaining/attacking because they don't have much good to say about their own work. If they wanted to talk about the science of what they do instead of just complaining, they can present at a conference. Considering some of the crackpot presentations I've seen, as long as you pay the attendance fee and are roughly on topic, you're let in.
tl;dr: I haven't seen much infighting. I've seen a lot of collaboration, and at worse ignoring something that seems irrelevant by those in the field, and most attacks/complains by those that are on the outside.