Polywell is a branch of fusion research started by Dr Bussard of the Bussard Ramjet fame. EMC2 is a corporation set up to conduct research which has been funded by the Navy going back about 15 years. Since the Navy has funded Poywell fusion they have issued a publishing embargoe from the beggining of the funding.
Until now. EMC2 has published a 12 page report found here.
Heres the short version of whats been happening with Polywell over the last few years. When Navy funding increased to 3-4 million a year, EMC2 built WB-8 which was bigger than WB-7. WB-8 likely used liquid nitrogen to cool the magnets, a significant upgrade from WB-7. This allowed quicker cooling after a test run, or increased run time from 5-6 milli seconds to 5-10 seconds. WB-8 was test run possibly hundreds of times, ultimately it was found to have an issue with its E-guns. Conjecture at the time suggested a need to reposition or go big and build big honking E-guns. WB-8 did yield some good hints at proper scaling.
Unfortunately, the Navy apparently wouldn't fund the big honking E-guns and the prevailing theory fell on the side of bigger E-guns.
This paper concerns itself with a smaller device about the size of WB-6, that has bigger E-guns, possibly taken from WB-8 and a new start up procedure. It appears EMC2 installed bigger Ion (fuel) guns too. They then mashed down the gas pedal and....
Dr. Bussard's ex assistant Tom Ligon:
The "pop the clutch" analogy is pretty good. And rev the engine first ... the conditions needed to instigate a proper wiffleball are apparently a bit steeper than first modeled, and it is quite helpful to have some data to tell just what it takes. Building a big machine and then trying to sneak up on a wiffleball from the bottom using inadequate equipment is a terrible waste of time and money.
http://www.talk-polywell.org/...
So mashing the gas pedal & popping the clutch builds the potential well quickly, all but shutting the cusps and starting fusion. This is undeniably proof of the Wiffleball concept.
Here's the money quote, from the EMC@ paper, page 7:
Since there are 14 cusps in the hexahedral system, the required electron beam power to maintain a B=1 state would be 213 MW. Separately, this system will lose an additional 51 MW of power via Bremsstrahlung radiation for an average electron temperature of 60 keV, assuming no ions other than hydrogen isotopes are present.[19] In comparison, the expected D-T fusion power output would be 1.9 GW for
a D-T cross section of 1.38 barns at a center of mass energy of 30 keV
No Todd Rider is not right, Mr Rider is very wrong and no longer works in the Physics field. See page 5 & 7. OR see this Tom Ligon quote:
Todd Rider's objections were not just for the Polywell, but for hot fusion generally. The heart of his objections are essentially that everything will thermalize and spew bremsstrahlung radiation. Dr. Bussard could never get thru to him and quit trying. If Rider is right, no fusion project will ever work.
The continued sincere efforts my multiple research efforts suggest that a lot of good people in the field disagree.
And Rider is NOT in the field. Nor should he be. He's a clever enough person and is making good contributions in his chosen field. Good thing his chosen field is NOT fusion, since it would be a real downer to spend a career working on something you think is folly.+
http://www.businessweek.com/...
Since most fusion researchers are used to Tokamak terminology, EMC@ uses D-T fuel as an example. We are more interested in the Proton Boron11 (P-B11) fuel for its high power and relative lack of radiation as compared to any Fission or Fusion reactor you've likely ever heard of. My back of my pants guess is 1.3 Gw to 1.6 Gw output using P-B11.
So, EMC2 figured out the trick to make polywell work is to pop the clutch, slam the polywell full of electrons and ions so that the cusps close before too many ions escape through the cusps and cause an arc. Jump right to beta = 1.
mvanwink5 at talkpolywell
Though speculative at this point, this simple power balance scaling, coupled with the observed good plasma stability of a magnetic cusp system, indicates that the Polywell may emerge as an attractive concept for a compact and economical fusion reactor.
This paper also seems to validate Dr Bussard desire to build the big one. A view DR Nebel came to share after Dr Bussards death. And that is the only way to know how a net power Polywell acts is to build a net power sized reactor. Its quite clear the Navy's funding and management has lead researchers down to a dead end. And that took more than 3 years.
EmC2 also posted some videos here
http://arxiv.org/...
An average electron temperature of 60 Kev puts Polywell in the ball park for P-B11 fusion which has a resonance peak at 550Kev, but in the potential well one only needs 55Kev. Wb-8 was intended to be modified from D-D fuel to P-B11 fuel, this needs to be funded right now.