New record for fusion

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

A micro-mini black hole, the size of an atom, is estimated to weigh about six million tons...should have it's own magnetic field, including a magnetic field that is caused by electrically charged swirling plasma currents.

I believe it is conceivable to have a micro-mini black hole fusion reactor --- because I've seen the possible real-life operation of an unidentified aerial object, that sported such a magnetic confinement field of fusion plasma --- Back one night in November, 1976, approximately 40 miles west of Washington D.C.

a reply to: Erno86

Sorry, I misread your post as that is what was happening currently. So got ya'!

That would be something wouldn't it? I think we need to learn how to walk before we can run. The D-T reactor is causing enough problems (the running joke is it always 30 years away) after some 60 years of research. Even D-T fusion reactor may just be a stepping stone to further break throughs (keep seeing stories on plasma being used to cure cancer). So maybe one day in the future, a magnetic singularity fusion device will be a reality!

Unless a new device is announced and constructed, the pressure record just set in the C-Mod will likely stand for the next 15 years. The International Experimental Reactor (ITER), a tokamak under construction in France, will be approximately 800 times larger in volume than the Alcator C-Mod and will operate at a lower magnetic field. The ITER is expected to reach 2.6 atmospheres when in full operation by 2032, according to a recent U.S. Department of Energy report.

Source: Computerworld.com, Oct 18, 2016 - MIT reactor sets nuclear fusion record on the day it's closed down.

A few more number from Computerworld to help you understand what has been achieved by the OP. The strength of the magnetic fields on the Alcator C-Mod are that strong! The article also mentions in passing that Alcator was built with the expectations of reaching 8 T. The announcement from OP says they only reached 5.7.

And ATS beat Computerworld by 4 days!

a reply to: Arbitrageur

The "main" Lockheed Skunkworks T-4 thread is a little off the beaten path.

ATS Breaking Alternative News - Lockheed says makes breakthrough on Fusion Energy project.

I posted the magnetic confinement configuration from the patent and the same link from your post when I ran across it back in May.

Here is another thread asking a legit question: Do we want a defense contractor controling fusion? (sic)

Here is the Lockheed confinement scheme again:

Here is the records set by the Wendelstein 7-X back in March before it shutdown for upgrades (including installing carbon tiled first wall)

Originally posted by me at: Breaking General News - Nuclear Fusion machine looks promising at startup...... [Clarified what I was trying to say below]



originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

The new Max Plank newsletter is out!

Some of the highlights:
* They ran 942 plasma discharges with 92 being of a "technical" nature.
* The control systems are functioning far better than expected allowing more plasma runs
* Central plasma temperatures went up to "~100 million deg. C"
* Outer plasma/ion temps went up to "~10 million deg. C"
* The final plasma runs lasted up to 6 seconds
* At higher plasma densities the temps were slightly higher for the edges.
* The runs were with a 4 MW heating gun which will eventually be stepped up to the 20 MW model
* After this run, heat shielding and a Test Diverter Unit (TDU) are being fitted with a planned 8 MW for 10 seconds by early next year, 2017.

Source: Max Plank Institute for Plasmaphysics, April 2016 - Wendelstein 7-X Newsletter

This is really great news! The newsletter is a free PDF and has more information (no registration required). They mention that this was a world-wide effort, not just a German one, with 40% being European and 24% being US led. I like how they did not go toe-to-toe with China's EAST tokomak and have a press release battle since that is what China did after [their first] run [back on] March 10.

• Quickly surpassing the maximum magnetic field strength and pulse duration of its predecessor prior to the upgrade.

• Achieving high plasma confinement, or H-mode, on just the eighth day of the 10 weeks of experiments. H-mode is a superior regime for fusion performance.

• Identifying and learning to correct conditions called error fields that are common to tokamaks and can hinder the performance of fusion plasmas.

Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, Oct 24, 2016 - First results of NSTX-U research operations presented at the International Atomic Energy Agency Conference in Kyoto, Japan.

There is a lengthy discussion of plasma, instabilities, and corrections to those issues at the article. H-mode is also discussed. The "predator-prey" model cannot be applied to H-mode so they chucked it and created some new math model.

To test this theory, the PPPL physicists used a gas puff imaging (GPI) diagnostic that let them directly see turbulent plasma fluctuations in the edge region of PPPL’s National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), the laboratory’s flagship fusion facility, which has since been upgraded. By pumping small amounts of neutral gas into the plasma, they caused the neutrals to interact with the plasma and glow. A fast camera recorded the glow and revealed how the turbulence evolved in space and time.

(same source)

That is pretty cool trick to image the plasma and test their theory! Imaging the plasma will help in using computer simulations. As they mention several times this information is shared and when ITER is up and going the lessons learned from this device will be applied to it helping to further advance research.

The sad news, still no update on what happened to the magnetic coil that failed. Guess we have to wait for the full report to come out.

I find it an interesting coincidence that Beryllium keeps popping up in science and UFO information.
I would think the future of energy would run mostly magnetics at it 's best expression.
Is that idea too pie in the sky?
I remember seeing an actual floating part device in an article ,but I can't remember.

a reply to: cavtrooper7

Was it the Australian guy who made a "free energy device" that he called a magnetic engine? I think that is what it was... that was a while back.

Mechanical energy to generate electricity is so 1800! But that is what we have.

Nothing wrong with being pie in the sky because that allows the dreamers to invent new and radical approaches to difficult problems. Oddly enough I was off reading about this...

General Fusion’s Magnetized Target Fusion system uses a sphere, filled with molten lead-lithium that is pumped to form a vortex. On each pulse, magnetically-confined plasma is injected into the vortex. Around the sphere, an array of pistons impact and drive a pressure wave into the centre of the sphere, compressing the plasma to fusion conditions.

General Fusion website: How it works.

This comes from Naval research done in 1970's. It is a strange and novel idea! Magnetically levitating a molten ball of lead, shooting more plasma inducing particles into it, them smooshing it all together until fusion happens. I like this one! It falls under, "That is so crazy it just might work".

General Fusion has confined the plasma up to 500 micro seconds while creating between 200 - 300 eV.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
I find it an interesting coincidence that Beryllium keeps popping up in science and UFO information.

The next step beyond the new experiments with the existing tungsten electrodes is the installation of the beryllium anode, expected to arrive in September. This will be the first time that a beryllium electrode has been used in any plasma focus device, an idea covered by LPPFusion’s patents. While most work is still concentrated on the all-tungsten experiments, the LPP Fusion research team is also getting ready for beryllium. As a light metal, with only 4 electric charges per atom, beryllium will produce hundreds of times less impurity impact on the plasma than tungsten does, for equal energy inputs.

LPPFusion, Aug. 16, 2016 - Safety Procedures, Instrument Design Paves Way for Beryllium Anode.

This is happening at LPPFusion which has crowd-sourced some of their work. They are small, under-funded, and keep on posting their results at regular intervals. This was back from their August update. The have moved from copper, to tungsten electrodes. They should now have the beryllium anode installed. Their plan is shorten the electrode to make the distance shorter (and more efficient).

And hey, look! There is our new friend, beryllium!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

SOUNDS like an investment strategy origin.

Thats so 1950's

a reply to: EartOccupant

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I bet it was hard to find a shop to do the machine work on the Be. Crazy toxic stuff for machinists and their families.

a reply to: cavtrooper7

For those guys I do not mind the long, drawn out timelines. They are operating on a shoe string budget. They are doing the work that requires more up front engineering.

I am not that cynical to believe it is just a method to keep money rolling in. At least not yet.

a reply to: punkinworks10

The electrode aspect (shortening) is not so dangerous. Working with beryllium is. They keep that in the vacuum chamber, flush it out with nitrogen, and filter that in case any flakes off during their shots (from link). So they have considered the consequences and have tried to mitigate them.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Hmm when I first started in the metal cutting industry,Be poisoning was all the talk.
People and there families, who hadn't seen any Be. exposure for more than twenty years. were dying from it.
The toxic exposure level is so low as to be nearly impossible. A few micro grams of incidental aerosol exposure, is enough to give you and your family, a fatal dose

originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I bet it was hard to find a shop to do the machine work on the Be. Crazy toxic stuff for machinists and their families.

Still occasionally have to work with Be heat sinks/tube bases and the like. I won't even handle it without gloves, although it ought to be safe.

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I bet it was hard to find a shop to do the machine work on the Be. Crazy toxic stuff for machinists and their families.

Still occasionally have to work with Be heat sinks/tube bases and the like. I won't even handle it without gloves, although it ought to be safe.

My engineering/cnc/ machinist "mentor", when I was in school, was a lead tool and die cnc programmer/machinist at Rockwell and then MD, and they were still having issues with Be exposure in the late eighties.

Back in the early ninties one of the high end mountain bike makers(ABM) made a run of beryllium frames@$26.000 each.

We had a customer that wanted one, he had the money for it too, but i talked him into finely crafted Merlin Ti frame.
Much better ride and it wont give dermatitus from handling it.

a reply to: punkinworks10

The first wall will be made of beryllium tiles welded onto a subsurface of copper-chrome-zircon alloy, contained in a stainless steel construction. Scale models, using the same tiles, will be placed in the core of the HFR, which is used to produce radioisotopes, to simulate the environment and temperatures that will be found in Iter.

World Nuclear News, Oct. 11, 2016 - Iter transformer in place as materials tests continue.

That news bit got me thinking of the stuff. Then I saw some study out on the arXiv then another then another. Then I looked at it a bit more in depth. There was quip I ran across about their '"being more construction at ITER in the last six months than the last three years" (something close to that). So thanks for info about what *not* to start working with (hehe). I bet the welders will be automated and everything CNCed cut as well (kind of like the space shuttle). Good news is the guy that said that is optimistic at 2025 first plasma target time.

Beryllium, good for fusion reactor walls bad for humans.

A tokomak is a toroidal vacuum vessel surrounded by electromagnets that keep the charged hydrogen plasma confined away from its walls while it is heated and accelerated around the torus to encourage its constituent particles to undergo nuclear fusion, releasing energy. These neutral beams are an important component of the fusion system, as they heat the plasma in two ways: [one] by injecting uncharged particles into the plasma at high speed, they transfer energy to the plasma particles by collisions, and [two] also add momentum and torque to the spinning plasma.
…
The General Atomics team [using the DIII-D tokomak] has devised a method for tuning the accelerating field so that the velocity of the neutral particles as they enter the plasma differs. This responds to changes in the behaviour of electromagnetic waves in the plasma as it heats up, which in turn changes the way that neutral particles interact with it. The new system varies the velocity of the neutral particles to minimise their interaction with the electromagnetic waves; this keeps the particles in the plasma while also maximising the input heating power.

The Engineer (.uk), Oct. 28, 2016 - Varying neutral beams to improve control in fusion reactors.

As stated, neutral beam injectors are used to heat the plasma within a fusion reactor. First, you add your fuel and heat it up to plasma level. Then you add more energy into the system by either radio-waves (like a big microwave) but that only heats it; you also have to stir the plasma by using a driving current typically using a solenoid within the reactor itself. Neutral beam injection can do both. And these guys found that if you vary the velocity (kind of like the frequency) to minimize unwanted side effects that can either damage the reactor’s first wall (plasma facing reactor wall) or plasma cooling by the plasma being too energized and crashing into the first wall.

This is a major step towards real fusion reactors. Tuning for purpose is always a better option than just throwing more power at it (the “work smarter, not harder” strategy). The last line sums it up well…

“Now we get to focus on the next exciting step, which is demonstrating all the ways these variable voltage beams can improve magnetic fusion in machines across the world.”

Did somebody say “solenoid”? That is the device that used to drive a current into plasma to stir it around. Earlier this year Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (links to pppl.gov stories – Scientists challenge conventional wisdom to improve predictions of the bootstrap current at the edge of fusion plasmas May3, and - Physicist Fatima Ebrahimi conducts computer simulations that indicate the efficiency of an innovative fusion start-up technique from May31, 2016).

Recent computer simulations have suggested a novel method for launching the plasma without using solenoids. The simulation modeling shows the formation of distinct, current carrying magnetic structures called plasmoids that can initiate the plasma and complete the complex magnetic field.

Everything starts with magnetic field lines, or loops, that rise through an opening in the floor of the tokamak. As the field lines are electrically forced to expand into the vessel, a thin layer, or sheet, of electrical current can form. Through a process called magnetic reconnection, the sheet can break and form a series of ring-shaped plasmoids.
…
The computationally predicted plasmoids have been confirmed with fast-camera images inside the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX)

Sciencedaily, Oct. 28, 2016 - Launching fusion reactions without a central magnet, or solenoid.

QED! Back in May there was first announcements that it could be done and then simulated in computer models. Now, it has actually been done and the theory proven correct. Taking the solenoid out of the reactor is a major step. It is also a huge cost savings. Using the magnetic fields themselves to bootstrap the current is really cool science!