A Polywell in operation: built as a summer project (cost: $3,000) by students at Pennisula College in the US.As regular readers will know, your humble Devil has been following the Polywell Fusor project for some years now.
The last lot of testing was done on WB-7, but the results have been somewhat shrouded in secrecy, due to the involvement of the US Navy in funding the project.
However, IEC Fusion Technology finally has some news on this front: essentially, the WB-8 has been commissioned.
To gain the full significance, it is worth reading the whole post; however, the main conclusions are reasonably clear.
All in all the new contract has a lot of good news. To sum up:
- What it means about past work: it went well.
- What it means for the future: verifying engineering rules
- More: there is a plan to test the Hydrogen/Boron 11 fuel combination
- More: They must be confident of results since they are planning a WB-9
It is also worth reminding ourselves that the Fusor project is costing a few million dollars, whereas the so-far utterly unsuccessful tokamak ITER project—which involves such delightful regimes as China—is costing tens of billions and is already severely over-budget and behind schedule.
Guess which one our government is backing and funding...?
11 comments:
Dr. Nebel has also said he believes we will know for sure about Polywell in 1.5-2 years.
Power and Control
BTW we (ie the taxpayers) are still giving bilateral aid to China: third world country and all that crap . . . . .
the photo shows a grid. its not a polywell.
The WB6 model is held together with jubilee clips in the wikipaedia picture.
I find this quite encouraging, but don't really know why...
Dr Bussard giving a talk on the polywell fusor at Google
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhL5VO2NStU
interesting stuff!
The WB-8 will be configured as a dodecahedron
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell_fusor
i couldnt help remembering Carl Sagan's "Contact" novel - the interstellar spaceship built is in the shape of a ... dodecahedron.
weird eh?
discussion forum on polywell fusion:
http://talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php
polywell fusor story has been noticed on Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/20/729457/-Polywell-Proton-Boron-fusion-reactor-approved
There's nothing wrong with Jubilee clips.....
Mate, I is planning to drink 6 Carlsberg Special Brew the night Brown loses power.
The power of your posts suggest you achieve this level of inebriation every night. But this is Thatcher's fault because if you had free milk you would not be so bitter and twisted.
Come and bail me out on Brownout night!
Labour 6/1 to win the election.
Will crack another Carly Grenade to celebrate
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