Hi Tom.

24-Nov-03 05:38:54, Tom Walker wrote to Charles Angelich

 TW> cannot think of ONE that hasn't been an Out and Out FAILURE. Adn
 TW> we have poured HUGE ammounts of Money in some of them. And the
 TW> Stupid Fools even Stopped Developing the Very Promissing "Fusion
 TW> Projects". And they were getting Close to a break through.

I found this in the Science echo last week  (PNU is a weekly thing)

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 662 November 18, 2003
by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James Riordon

A LIQUID WALL IN A FUSION ENERGY DEVICE has improved the performance
of fusion fuel, and may lead to more resilient fusion devices.  At
last month's American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics
meeting in Albuquerque, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
researchers (Dick Majeski, PPPL, 609-243-3112, rmajeski{at}pppl.gov and
Bob Kaita, PPPL, 800-777-5732, kaita{at}pppl.gov) described how they
tested this idea on the Current Drive Experiment-Upgrade (CDX-U).
CDX-U is a spherical torus, a more rotund version of the well-known
tokamak. Like the donut-shaped tokamak, the device uses magnetic
fields to confine hot plasma.  At the bottom of their tubby tokamak,
the researchers placed a pool of liquid lithium.  Meanwhile, they
applied electrical current to the plasma both to create strong
magnetic fields that confine it and also to heat the plasma to
desired hot temperatures. In contact with the fusion plasma, the
liquid lithium increased the efficiency of transferring the current
to the plasma, leading to less wasted energy.  It also does an
excellent job of absorbing impurities, such as carbon and oxygen,
which could otherwise cool the plasma.  What's more, it absorbs
hydrogen plasma that reaches it, requiring the researchers
continually to pump in hydrogen gas.  This is actually a good thing,
as it prevents an undesirable buildup of cool hydrogen at the plasma
boundary which could return to the plasma and lower its
temperature.  Finally, since the liquid surface can be continually
replenished, the liquid wall is not subject to the same degradation
and damage that would occur by neutrons that bombard a solid metal
wall.  The liquid wall can conceivably be applied to future magnetic
fusion reactors, whether a spherical torus, a tokamak, or another
design.  (Meeting paper RI1.004; see picture at
http://www.aps.org/meet/DPP03/baps/press/press1.html; also see R.
Majeski et al., Journal of Nuclear Materials, March 2003.)

[ other article cut by me - JB ]

Physical Review Letters, 14 November 2003)




 -=> Bye <=-

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