Post by Richard Hull » Thu Feb 01, 2018 7:06 pm

Thanks for posting your results. I have added your name to the list of fusioneers. Good work. Nice system. You have put some money into this.



To others.....



This is another tiny volume fusor that is working well and shown to be doing so with decent instrumentation. Again the removal of the tube from moderator count fall off to zero and re-insertion resume counting coupled with the image of the pink discharge and star rays is a true representation of fusion, regardless of final count, errors in counting, etc. If a neutron detector tube is counting in moderator and dummies up outside during a run, well, that sort of tells it all.



As to vacuum...



Remember, this is a microscopic volume to be evacuated compared to a large 6-8-inch spherical fusor. Pump down can be lightning fast compared to a larger system. Even with the small cross chamber, you are effectively only pumping down what in a larger more complex system are just vacuum "lines"!! I think this is all part of a new day dawning in a way that was just not seen or expected and it might just be due to a near perfect balance of size versus mean free path at pressure in a small fusion system. Dwell on this a while.......



What is the "take-away" from all this?



There is such a thing as too small where arcing of the HV takes over and failure to reach voltages that allow for decent tunneling can limit results.



There may be a point where smaller is better, even if it is not as pleasing and impressive to the eye as a lovely, impressive, big old spherical reactor chamber. This appears to be the case due to recent adventures by the less well heeled applicants, limited to "catch as catch can" small crosses and tees substituting for what has been a formal, separate fusion reaction chamber entity. Fusion may turn out to be cheaper and easier than even we thought. Sure, we are not doing power fusion and relying on quantum tunneling, but we are doing nuclear fusion.



I have looked at quantum tunneling fusion, on our part, as flying at the coal face, (fusion wall), with hard hats on to get coal, (fusion), as "bull-heading" fusion. Yes, it is not elegant, but we do get a bit of broken shards of coal, (fusion), at the foot of the coal face for our efforts. There is little disgrace in quantum tunneling....It seems to have been the basis for the semiconductor, (transistor), revolution. Bizarre thoughts come to mind.....Like would fusion tunneling in solids be the lucky donkey that licks the fusion quest? Is hot fusion a must do thing or is it just another coal face we are banging our heads against?



In a way this was a "lucky donkey" moment here at fusor.net! A bunch of newbies who were not trying to find a new, novel way to do fusion, but, instead, driven by the paucity of funds and resources have stumbled on a way to do fusion via tunneling in a much more economical way. I have refused to see this due to the fact that prior attempts in such tiny chambers were stumbling efforts with what could charitably be said to be poor neutron detection efforts. However, over the past two years, small chamber enthusiasts have put into their fusion efforts the money they saved in vacuum gear, plowing it into far better detection gear. They have been giving us good quantitative data that we have felt good enough to sit up and take notice.



In the end, I am almost as excited by this new revelation as the day I first posted on "Songs" 20 years ago!



Richard Hull

Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra

Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be

Retired now...Doing only what I want and not what I should...every day is a saturday.