Posted on 03/09/2022 12:41:56 PM PST by Kevmo
This is an update to the 2015 DARPA-E $30Million grant — this team won 1/6th of it.
https://www.llnl.gov/news/fusion-could-be-zapped-reality
Fusion could be ‘ZaPped’ into reality
With funding from the Department of Energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the University of Washington (UW) will work to advance the sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch concept and assess its potential for scaling to fusion conditions.
Fusion is the same energy that powers the sun and the stars, and scientists have worked for years to create the same power on Earth. The ultimate goal is to get more energy out than it takes to power the system itself. In this project, the researchers will upgrade an existing Z-pinch system to test the physics of pinch stabilization at significantly higher discharge energy and pinch current.
The team was awarded $5.28 million from ARPA-E’s Accelerating Low-cost Plasma Heating and Assembly (ALPHA) Program.
The ARPA-E ALPHA projects are aimed at developing prototype technologies to explore new pathways to fusion power. The UW/LLNL team was one of nine winners of the $30 million call for proposals.
The Z-pinch is a geometrically simple and elegant approach to fusion, utilizing an electric current to simultaneously magnetically confine, compress and heat a cylinder of plasma. However, the traditional Z-pinch has been plagued by instabilities that prevent attainment of conditions required for net fusion energy output.
Sheared axial flows have been shown to stabilize disruptive Z-pinch instabilities at modest plasma conditions. “Through experimental and computational studies, the team will attempt to scale this concept to high current, plasma density and temperature with a goal of demonstrating a more practical path to a compact, low-cost fusion reactor,” said Harry McLean, a physicist within the Fusion Energy Sciences Program at LLNL and project scientist leading LLNL’s side of the partnership..
The project will take three years to complete. Based on a seminal publication authored in 1995 by Uri Shumlak, now a UW professor and the project lead scientist, along with Charles Hartman of LLNL, and further motivated by encouraging experimental results in the intervening 20 years, the program combines experimental and computational efforts to answer key questions on whether the sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch concept has the potential for scaling to a fusion power reactor.
The existing “ZaP” experiment, as it is called and sited at UW and operating for the past 16 years, has shown promising results at low discharge current and input energy. This device provides the starting point for the proposed project and has identified the fundamental issues to be addressed:
The device shows stability at low current, but can the device be scaled to the levels necessary to reach fusion plasma conditions by increasing input energy?
The physics of establishing the flow conditions initially for stability are understood at low energy, but can flow conditions be controlled when high plasma currents are used?
Fundamental plasma physics questions exist about the ratio of current density to plasma density as the pinch evolves.
The objectives of work require that the discharge current and energy be increased by a factor of 10. This requires two large construction tasks: installing a larger capacitor bank for more input energy and fabricating new electrodes to handle the higher energy. LLNL will relocate and adapt pulse power systems, controls and data acquisition equipment used in previous fusion experiments at LLNL. UW postdocs and graduate students, under the direction of professor Brian Nelson at UW, will redesign the existing electrodes, which form the flow conditions and generate the flow Z-pinch plasma, to handle the much larger currents and heat loads expected. Both institutions will collaborate in performing experiments and adding new diagnostics and control systems.
Integrated computer modeling will play a critical role in this effort in two key areas: achieving predictive whole-machine modeling capability and guiding the next steps as performance is scaled up. In addition to macro-scale fluid modeling, particle-in-cell kinetic modeling will interrogate the physics at the smallest scales. These codes and computing platforms only recently have advanced to the point where details of sheared-flow stabilization can be examined. LLNL Engineering Group Leader Andrea Schmidt will lead the kinetic modeling efforts for the team. Shumlak and Nelson will lead the fluid modeling activities.
“The flow-stabilized Z-pinch is a simple and compact device with compelling features, such as easy integration with liquid walls and no large magnetic coils. This eliminates many of the unresolved materials and technology problems facing most other fusion power concepts. If the plasma physics works out as we scale up in energy, the device could make a very attractive fusion power system” McLean said.
Tags:Physical & Life Sciences
The Cold Fusion/LENR Ping List
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/lenr/index?tab=articles
Keywords: ColdFusion; LENR; lanr; CMNS
chat—science
—
For beginners:
http://lenr-canr.org/
Click on “Introduction”
https://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=263
Vortex-L
http://tinyurl.com/pxtqx3y
Acronyms:
LENR: Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. [Also Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reactions, but seldom used]
CANR: Chemical Assisted Nuclear Reactions [fallen into disuse along with LANR/Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reactions]
CMNS: Condensed Matter Nuclear Science
LCF: Lattice Confined Fusion [NASA’s term for it]
AHE: Anomolous Heating Effect. Also PFAHE, for the Pons-Fleischmann AHE.
Best book to get started on this subject:
EXCESS HEAT
Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed by Charles Beaudette
https://www.abebooks.com/9780967854809/Excess-Heat-Why-Cold-Fusion-0967854806/plp
Updated No Internal Trolling Rules for FR per Jim Robinson
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3928396/posts
“If someone says stop, then stop. Do not enter onto a thread on a topic you don’t like just to disrupt, rattle cages, poke sticks, insult the regulars, or engage in trolling activities, etc.” ~Jim Robinson
The issue isn’t whether we allow skepticism, it is whether we allow hyperskeptics and skeptopaths to ruin the scientific dialog. Such FReepers who persist in polluting these threads have been asked to leave, and we are asking that they open their own threads if they have comments.
“This topic has a following, people who wish to learn and discuss the materials presented. Please refrain from posting anything that doesn’t legitimately address the issue. Something is going on in this segment of science. There are a considerable number of research groups studying the matter.” ~ Sidebar Moderator https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3977426/posts?page=19#19 —————————————————————————————————————
slow
My sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch device never did that.
“This is direct proof that thermonuclear fusion produces these neutrons and not ions driven by beam instabilities,”
***LENR researchers have been documenting neutrons in their research for a long time, including in their ion beam experiments.
Have you considered a sheared-flow non-stabilized Z-pinch device?...
Discussion at LENR-Forum
https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/5789-norront-fusion-energy-as/
I do not know how we missed this company, but they are solid, well funded, and have some of the most respected names in LENR behind them. Call it what you will...Muon Catalyzed, UDD, whatever...it is all in the LENR family as far as I am concerned. And when they have names like Holmlid, Olaffson, and Gunderson ( who Mizuno recently gifted a reactor to) backing it, they have to be taken seriously. Not much on the internet about them, but here is one translated article about them:
GU Ventures company UltraFusion Nuclear Power is merged with Norrønt Fusion Energy
Press Release • May 08, 2018 14:51 CEST
GU Venture Incubator Company UltraFusion Nuclear Power AB, founded with Professor Leif Holmlid at Gothenburg University, has collaborated with Norrønt Fusion Energy AS. The purpose is to combine companies’ results, to resource efficiency and speed up product development of the new merger reactor.
UltraFusion Nuclear Power AB (”UltraFusion”) is based on fusion research by Leif Holmlid, Professor Emeritus at Gothenburg University, and is owned by him and GU Ventures. UltraFusion managed to experiment experimentally with a new, functional small-scale fusion process that works and gives energy over break-even, which means that more energy comes out of the system than it is supplied. It’s a unique result that has been very difficult to show earlier. It was published in a scientific journal (AIP Advances 5, 2015) and was attracted to press internationally. After that, work has continued and several new results have been achieved and patented.
Norrønt Fusion Energi AS (”Norrønt”) has in parallel built up its own prototype and demonstrator, partly differently designed but based on the same research. It shows the same unique results. For more than three years, Ultra¬Fusion and Norrønt have had cooperation, which has now led to the merger of companies. The main reason for the merger is that resources should be used in a more efficient manner and that the next version of the fusion reactor can be obtained faster.
“Leif Holmlid has gone a different way from the major international merger projects with regard to what is called cold merger. Thanks to his choice to do that, it has produced extremely interesting results. Now we want to show that it also works on a larger scale. Together with Norrønt, we will reach the target faster, “says Roger Cederberg, chairman of UltraFusion.
Dr. Dag H. Zeiner-Gundersen and PhD student Sindre Zeiner-Gundersen lead the research and commercialization in Norrønt in Norway.
“The Nordic Alliance with Norrønt is now conducting extensive research and commercialization efforts to produce clean and efficient energy from ultra-low deuterium, a form of hydrogen. We are now working on optimizing and scaling up technology for a number of industrial applications, Dr. Day H. Zeiner-Gunder.
Fusion is an energy source that potentially can make a major contribution to the host’s energy and replace coal and oil.
Appreciated, as always.
I'd be more interested in a gentle-flow stabilized non-pinch device.
That is a solid consideration.
Please refrain from posting anything that doesn’t legitimately address the issue. ~ Sidebar Moderator https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3977426/posts?page=19#19 —————————————————————————————
The Z-Pinch machine is left over technology from the development of advanced thermonuclear weapons.
And yes it really does work and is probably farther along than any other system out there.
The problem is after every “shot”, it takes I think a couple weeks to rebuild.
I hear when it goes off, it shakes the entire building.
The Z-Pinch Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaopaLJk3-Y
In the words of Bob Marley: Nevah gonna hoppen, mon. A lot of money seeking a chimera.
Not for CHF [Controlled Hot Fusion].
Cold Fusion is 25 ORDERS of MAGNITUDE better bang for the buck than CHF.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4000502/posts?page=45#45
I hear when it goes off, it shakes the entire building.
***They showed that in the video. I think it might be the Poynting Vector discharging.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynting_vector
If you apply that to an asymmetrical capacitor, you generate enough force to lift that entire building, known as the Befield-Brown effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biefeld%E2%80%93Brown_effect
Seriously? This is Free Republic. Good natured silliness is part of our nature. Everyone ridicules and parodies everything. Its what conservatives do. Are you logged in? When did this new Janet Reno policy come along?
After at least a decade of harassment from seagulls on these LENR threads, yes: Seriously.
The mods take it seriously on ~qtard threads, even those not deliberately labelled as protected. And the religion mod has taken it seriously on those heated religion threads for a much longer time.
This topic attracted gang trolls and deliberate railroading of the serious scientific discussion intended to take place.
So take the advice given in the intro blurb: If you want to exchange seagull greetings with other gang trolls, open your own thread. Some of us will even join you.
You need a (No humor caucus)
I’ll try to remember not to post humor on Kevmo threads. But no guarantees.
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