[ExI] lockheed's fusion video

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes



 

>…Ah.  So, neutrons get captured inside a larger fusing mass at an exponent even larger than the increase of the volume, then?

 

No.  As I understand it, the neutrons don’t get captured.  The plasma gets captured because it is charged, so it can be contained by a magnetic field, in accordance with Maxwell’s (I think third) equation, that bit about a changing magnetic field inducing an electric field.  But the neutrons go flying out and hit the metal walls of the reaction vessel, and that’s what erodes regardless of what magic is used to contain the plasma.

 

 

>…My mistake - I meant to ask, why magnetic containment can't confine plasmas at all for more than a few milliseconds.  It's been bugging me for a while.  Are plasmas just that chaotic?

 

I am not the expert on this.  I think John Clark is the man to answer that one, but I kind of assumed away the problem, or let the real physicists hand that plasma containment problem.  Like a typical mechanical engineer, I looked at how to handle the hot neutrons.  Perhaps it is because that seems to me to be a simpler problem, at least in concept.

 

>…That noble atom (all ions are technically still atoms) is gone...

 

Oh, I haven’t heard it used that way.  I have always heard that it is either an atom or an ion, but cannot be both.  Atoms are neutral, ions are charged.

 

>…and you have to replace it with something else, or eventually your shielding goes away…

 

There should be literature on this from the tokamak.  They have been dealing with this problem since the 1960s, or rather as long as they have been able to sustain a reaction.  When was that?  There should be a ton of data on that somewhere.    


Adrian we are making a mistake here, me lad.  There are surely internet groups that grok and discuss this stuff the way we discuss qualia and cryonics and ineffable stuff like that.  They would be up to speed on this neutron chamber erosion problem.  We should study their stuff rather than groping around in the dark like a bunch of drunken frat boys in an initiation rite.  Keith?  John Clark?  Where should we go to learn about this?

 

spike

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