Prometheus Fusion Perfection

Joel Rogers has published new Polywell simulations. Get it while it’s hot:

http://www.plasma.ee.kansai-u.ac.jp/iec2010/pdf/pdf_slides_posters/Rogers2.pdf

I’ve come across some projects I really dig. Though I’d share:

ChemHacker is building an open source scanning tunneling microscope: http://www.chemhacker.com/topics/stm/

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Ivan Bozovic has fabricated a nanometer scale superconductor at Brookhaven National Laboratory:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100614092602.htm

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Junior has hacked together an incredible SLA style DIY 3D printer:

http://3dhomemade.blogspot.com/

This project has sparked my interest in the amazing Digital Light Processing technology.

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Kenneth V. Noren shows genetic algorithms can design electronic circuits!

http://www.mrc.uidaho.edu/mrc/people/knoren/GAs/B-159_paper.PDF

All photos.

Today I visited Lawrenceville Plasma Physics where Eric J. Lerner, Murali S. Krupakar, and Derek Shannon are researching Dense Plasma Focus Fusion. Eric Lerner was out today.

Provided it works, the real promise of Dense Plasma Focus Fusion is that it does not require physical scaling. In other words, you don’t have to build it any bigger than the machine pictured below, but it would require a larger capacitor bank.

Murali comes from the IEC world and has a ton of published papers on IEC. Previously he worked on POPS at Los Alamos. Derek recently joined the team and has a background in artificial intelligence.

Murali, me, and Derek in front of the reactor

Their radiation room is made of ~1 meter thick walls of normal cinderblock lined with EMF blocking metal screen.

Murali showing the spark gap triggers

The oscilloscopes below are used to ensure the capacitors trigger together. They use fiber optic to electrical converters with the fiber optic directly measuring the light from the spark gap plasma. At 20 torr, their reaction runs at 1,000 times the pressure of most IEC experiments. Murali stressed that DPF takes advantage of plasma instabilities… sort of going with the grain rather than against it.

Rezwan and Derek

Rezwan made contact with me and runs http://focusfusion.org/ a non-profit for the advancement of fusion.

Here is a shot of the vacuum chamber where the fusion happens:

You can tell these guys are scrappy, check out the copious aluminum foil shielding:

I talked to the team for hours, so this is just a bit of what I learned.

Big thanks to the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics team for showing me the lab!

UPDATE:

Murali pointed out that although they have electron neutron counters, they still use bubble neutron dosemeters as a double check… because the bubble dosemeters are not susceptible to EMF interference. Smart.

I’m giving a presentation on my fusion research at nerd nite this Friday the 15th around 8pm.

Nerd Nite NYC

Galapagos Art Space DUMBO 16 Main Street in DUMBO Brooklyn (F train to York St. or A/C train to High St.)

Friday January 15, 2009 at 7pm (Quizo) and 8:15pm (regular Nerd Nite)

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Fusing the Atom and Living to Tell

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Description: We have built an open source nuclear fusion reactor and fused the atom. This is the story of a remarkable fusion device called the Farnsworth Fusor and its successor, the Bussard Reactor (aka. Polywell). The Bussard Reactor holds the promise of clean cheap abundant energy from fusion. This is a story of research on the edge.

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Bio: Famulus is an entrepreneur, hacker, and rails developer. In 2008 he learned of the Bussard fusion reactor and left the software world to try and build a working Bussard Reactor.