mwg@petrus.UUCP (Mark Garrett) (07/18/85)
++ > BTW, isn't the new NOVA laser supposed to 'break even' in energy > input/output? Does anyone know anything about this? > I know the original shiva used a lithium 'waterfall' to capture some > of the energy (presumably to be thrown away), what scheme > have they devised this time? > Jordan K. Hubbard When I was there a couple summers ago, the guy who gave us the grand tour said they expected to do an experiment, in four or five years, that would determine the feasibility of having commercial-style fusion reactors in 20 years. They were schedualed to have the first "break even" experiment in the next two or three trials (from July 1982). I have heard since that they've had some dissapointments. The liquid lithium waterfall idea was never implemented. Think about the scale involved here. The idea is that the reaction area is surrounded by a continuous flow of molton lithium metal on all sides, which will absorb all the heat of a fusion explosion produced by twenty laser beams, each a foot in diameter and the length of a large building, focused on a small pellet of fusion material. The laser pulse lasts for one nanosecond, after which the laser must be cooled for 8 hours before being fired again so that the glass lenses and plates containing the lasing medium don't melt! The absorbed energy (which is much more than that of the driving laser) is carried away by the lithium and used to boil water and make electricity. This explanation was really devised to complete the power-plant senerio to satisfy senators, and the-people-with-the-money. They really weren't prepared to say how it would be done when they got to that part. -MWG
pmk@prometheus.UUCP (Paul M Koloc) (07/29/85)
> ++ > > BTW, isn't the new NOVA laser supposed to 'break even' in energy > > input/output? Does anyone know anything about this? > > I know the original shiva used a lithium 'waterfall' to capture some > > of the energy (presumably to be thrown away), what scheme > > have they devised this time? > > Jordan K. Hubbard > > . ... They were schedualed to have the first "break even" experiment > in the next two or three trials (from July 1982). I have heard since that > they've had some dissapointments. Right, that's putting it kindly! > > ... .. . The idea is that the reaction area is surrounded by > a continuous flow of molton lithium metal on all sides, which will absorb > all the heat of a fusion explosion produced by twenty laser beams, each a > foot in diameter and the length of a large building, focused on a small > pellet of fusion material. The laser pulse lasts for one nanosecond, after > which the laser must be cooled for 8 hours before being fired again so that > the glass lenses and plates containing the lasing medium don't melt! .. . Actually, the delay is for the thermal distortion in the medium is eliminated and the laser optics is focusable again. It seems to me that 8 minutes are required. But, there are flashlamps that must be replaced because they become weakened by "solarization" and explode with a relatively few shots. The idiots apparently didn't provide any means of heating the lamps between shots so as to "anneal" them between shots and thereby get rid of the "color centers" and the related crystalization of the amorphous silica. Lamp failure is enormously costly and time consuming. > > This explanation was really devised to complete the power-plant senerio > to satisfy senators, and the-people-with-the-money. They really weren't > prepared to say how it would be done when they got to that part. > -MWG If this is true, the bastards should be investigated. There is a hell of a lot more physics and engineering that could be done with that money than dump it down the rat hole of a "LLNL science welfare program" Until the ARPA domains are functioning, prometheus.UUCP collides with PROMETHEUS.MIT.ARPA at umcp-cs.ARPA. However, seismo!prometheus!pmk.UUCP works. +-------------------------------------------------------+--------+ | Paul M. Koloc, President: (301) 445-1075; | FUSION | | Prometheus II Ltd., College Park, MD 20740-0222 | this | | pmk@prometheus.UUCP: ..seismo!prometheus!pmk.UUCP | decade | +-------------------------------------------------------+--------+