On Jun 12, 2008, at 11:09 PM, leaking pen wrote:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/12/1136887.aspx
Emc2 Fusion's Richard Nebel can't say yet whether his team's
garage-shop plasma experiment will lead to cheap, abundant fusion
power. But he can say that after months of tweaking, the WB-7 device
"runs like a top" - and he's hoping to get definitive answers about a
technology that has tantalized grass-roots fusion fans for years.
With $1.8 million in backing from the U.S. Navy, Nebel and a handful
of other researchers have been following up on studies conducted by
the late physicist Robert Bussard before his death last October -
studies that Bussard said promised a breakthrough in fusion energy.
Interesting. See also:
http://www.emc2fusion.org/
http://www.emc2fusion.org/RsltsNFnlConclFmIEFPolyPgm120602.pdf
After briefly reviewing the above it seems that two concepts might be
of use:
1. The magnetic coils are said to do an adequate job of protecting
themselves, but electron leakage in the gaps is said to be the
problem. It therefore seems a useful concept to position layers of
coils like the layers of an onion, with the magnet configuration at
the n+1 layer configured to make the most use of the leakage, i.e.
reflect or return the leakage, from the inner layer n.
2. Loss can be expected at structural support and power or cooling
supply members. For this reason, a magnet geometry wherein the
electromagnet consists of a single long but folded entity, containing
structural members and cooling supplies within itself, makes sense.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
