Scientific explanation overturned -- good news for nuclear fusionFlat out wrong. This is what a team of Duke University researchers has discovered, much to its surprise, about a long-accepted explanation of how nuclei collide to produce charged particles for electricity — a process receiving intense interest lately from scientists, entrepreneurs, and policy makers in the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis.Plasma physicists have been trying for twenty-five years to create electricity from the fusion of boron and hydrogen atoms.The new study says their efforts have been based on a misunderstanding of the underlying physics – although the error could end up actually helping those looking to fusion energy as an alternative energy source.Researchers have been developing reactors to slam hydrogen at high speeds into boron-11, a collision that yields high-energy helium nuclei, or alpha particles. Those alphas then spiral through a tunnel of electromagnetic coils, transforming them into a flow of electrons, or electricity.“Obviously, a detailed understanding of the energy and location of every outgoing alpha particle is crucial to the development of this reactor,” says Duke nuclear physicist Henry Weller, a co-author of the new study.>
Seems our understanding of how p-B11 works MAY have been wrong - potentially to our benefit.Homeland Security News Wire....QuoteScientific explanation overturned -- good news for nuclear fusionFlat out wrong. This is what a team of Duke University researchers has discovered, much to its surprise, about a long-accepted explanation of how nuclei collide to produce charged particles for electricity — a process receiving intense interest lately from scientists, entrepreneurs, and policy makers in the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis.Plasma physicists have been trying for twenty-five years to create electricity from the fusion of boron and hydrogen atoms.The new study says their efforts have been based on a misunderstanding of the underlying physics – although the error could end up actually helping those looking to fusion energy as an alternative energy source.Researchers have been developing reactors to slam hydrogen at high speeds into boron-11, a collision that yields high-energy helium nuclei, or alpha particles. Those alphas then spiral through a tunnel of electromagnetic coils, transforming them into a flow of electrons, or electricity.“Obviously, a detailed understanding of the energy and location of every outgoing alpha particle is crucial to the development of this reactor,” says Duke nuclear physicist Henry Weller, a co-author of the new study.>
Bussard is right a tocamac won't work, you need a spheromac or some form of electromagnetic confinement device to hold boiling hot gases in a magnetic field.
Quote from: zaarin on 04/03/2011 01:46 pmBussard is right a tocamac won't work, you need a spheromac or some form of electromagnetic confinement device to hold boiling hot gases in a magnetic field.I don't know about Bussard, but my understanding is that the "magnetic bottle" concept has not yet been made to work. This was the problem at the World's Fair in 1964, and continues to be the problem today.I anybody working on containing the plasma in a magnetic bottle?
The new version, officially MFTF-B, started construction in 1977 and was completed in 1986, on the very day the project was canceled by the Reagan administration Department of Energy. No experiments were performed.
Fusion with anything other than D-T is much more difficult to accomplish.
No, he's technically correct. Even if Polywell works, D-T (and to a lesser extent D-D) will have much lower voltage and B-field requirements and/or a much higher power density than p-¹¹B - if the latter is even possible.Of course, if p-¹¹B is possible in a reasonably-sized Polywell, its other advantages pretty much trump the ease of reaction of D-T...