Hi,

Yes it's a strange endeavor for sure, but the key point is that the benefits are so immense that at least an attempt to make it work is probably gogint to be extremely worthwhile. Who knows if we will ever actually get there though, that remains to be seen.

yes, very worthwhile indeed which is why so many projects are competing to get there. but waiting is soo boring..

but thinking about it rationally - it sure is challenging but so was pretty much any previous research project and i am sure we learn more with every step.
just thinking of first trans Atlantic cable, Wardenclyffe tower, etc. now making wired or wireless comms is quite routine. one can literally make the suitable transmitter from scraps and pieces already found in ones home and manage to send long distance message.

if this becomes a working model, i am pretty sure there will be some iterations to optimize it and one of the optimization will be to simplify it. ultimate goal is to make it stable, robust and portable ... much like ironman arc reactor. then my soldering iron won't need turning off. everyone will waste energy like there is nothing to be concerned about and sure enough we will still have a problem...

 

yes, very worthwhile indeed which is why so many projects are competing to get there. but waiting is soo boring..

but thinking about it rationally - it sure is challenging but so was pretty much any previous research project and i am sure we learn more with every step.
just thinking of first trans Atlantic cable, Wardenclyffe tower, etc. now making wired or wireless comms is quite routine. one can literally make the suitable transmitter from scraps and pieces already found in ones home and manage to send long distance message.

if this becomes a working model, i am pretty sure there will be some iterations to optimize it and one of the optimization will be to simplify it. ultimate goal is to make it stable, robust and portable ... much like ironman arc reactor. then my soldering iron won't need turning off. everyone will waste energy like there is nothing to be concerned about and sure enough we will still have a problem...

I was with you until Wardenclyffe tower... That was a complete waste of money.

 

yes, very worthwhile indeed which is why so many projects are competing to get there. but waiting is soo boring..

but thinking about it rationally - it sure is challenging but so was pretty much any previous research project and i am sure we learn more with every step.
just thinking of first trans Atlantic cable, Wardenclyffe tower, etc. now making wired or wireless comms is quite routine. one can literally make the suitable transmitter from scraps and pieces already found in ones home and manage to send long distance message.

if this becomes a working model, i am pretty sure there will be some iterations to optimize it and one of the optimization will be to simplify it. ultimate goal is to make it stable, robust and portable ... much like ironman arc reactor. then my soldering iron won't need turning off. everyone will waste energy like there is nothing to be concerned about and sure enough we will still have a problem...

Hi,

Yeah and you know what else is ironic, one of the biggest most expensive projects to day for this i snot even designed to produce electrical energy, it's only to produce heat, which will be just the 'proof' that electrical energy will be able to be produced from that heat.
So unless someone comes up with a REALLY good idea, we really do have a long wait. Some of us here may not even see this happen in our lifetime even if it is successful.

 

I was with you until Wardenclyffe tower... That was a complete waste of money.

it was a communication research project involving mega structure only to be rendered obsolete before it reached its objective. the conclusion of the project was not because it did not have potential but because someone else made it sooner using simpler and cheaper means. looking at the current mega structure (ITER for example) and pace of technological development, it is not that unlikely that history could repeat itself. if anyone raches the goal, all other projects will be instantly obsolete. and if it does then all of current projects trying to reach fusion would to be too seen the same way - a colossal waste of money. if they do not succeed, they will be even more colossal waste of money. but if they succeed, they will change the world. not sure if the change will be positive. humans are really wasteful with any resource they get their hands on.

 

it was a communication research project involving mega structure only to be rendered obsolete before it reached its objective. the conclusion of the project was not because it did not have potential but because someone else made it sooner using simpler and cheaper means. looking at the current mega structure (ITER for example) and pace of technological development, it is not that unlikely that history could repeat itself. if anyone raches the goal, all other projects will be instantly obsolete. and if it does then all of current projects trying to reach fusion would to be too seen the same way - a colossal waste of money. if they do not succeed, they will be even more colossal waste of money. but if they succeed, they will change the world. not sure if the change will be positive. humans are really wasteful with any resource they get their hands on.

It was a project that was never finished because it was based on bad physics (current as energy). Tesla never accepted modern EM theory so it was never going to work as advertised even with infinite money and time. Tesla was totally out of his league and jumped on the hype train to sell his dream.
http://www.moreisdifferent.com/2015/02/22/teslas-folly-why-wardenclyff-didnt-work/

The third workaround which Tesla had was his idea to produce longitudinal electromagnetic waves, which he called “electromagnetic thrusts” having a “non-Hertzian” character. Tesla adamantly believed that just like sound waves, electromagnetic waves should come in two varieties – longitudinal and transverse. Longitudinal waves oscillate along the direction of motion of the wave, while transverse waves oscillate perpendicular to it. In the air only longitudinal sound waves can exist, but in solids both longitudinal and transverse sound waves exist. A simple way of illustrating the difference between these two types of waves is to use a slinky:

Around 1900 there were in Britain a small circle of “Maxwellians” who were undertaking the mathematical analysis necessary to connect Maxwell’s equations to the experimental findings of Hertz regarding electromagnetic waves. These physicists included Oliver Lodge, Oliver Heaviside, and George F. FitzGerald. Using Maxwell’s equations they proved, among other things, that all electromagnetic waves are transverse and that light is an electromagnetic wave. Although Tesla kept abreast of the work of the Maxwellians and was very adept at mathematics, he had little patience for theoretical analysis of Maxwell’s equations. Likely Tesla saw the work of the Maxwellians as more of an ‘ivory tower’ pursuit and not very practical. Tesla made it very clear he thought that the Maxwellian’s central results were wrong, and he performed experiments with Rumkoff coils which he thought indicated that “non-Hertzian” “electromagnetic thrusts” existed (Carson, pg 125-127).

In the words of Bernard Carson: “At Colorado Springs, Tesla appears to have sought only evidence to confirm his hypotheses and not look for anything that might diconfirm his theories.”(Carson, pg 300) This is not, however, how science works. In order to prove a scientific hypothesis one must not only present data that supports it, but also rule out other possible explanations for the data. This can only be done through careful focused experimentation, repetition and the elimination of sources of error.

As a consequence of not performing careful tests and not having eyewitnesses, Tesla was hard pressed to convince investors of the value of his proposed system. He tried to convince numerous New York investors, including John Jacob Astor and his close ally George Westinghouse, but came back empty handed. He took to writing sensational newspaper stories to garner support from the public.

The fact is, like many of the electrical engineers of his day, Tesla harbored ideas about electromagnetism that were if not fully wrong, at least partially so – radio transmission doesn’t work like a telegraph circuit, electromagnetic waves are not like sound waves, and it isn’t possible to create current waves that pass through the earth for thousands of miles unimpeded. Yet somehow, some of his ideas persist in people’s imagination today — we feel the pain of Tesla’s failure, and we seem to hear his voice traveling through the ether, asking us to give him one more chance.

ITER on the other hand is based on very good physics but the engineering of those physics principles is still a work in progress.

 

Many projects or experiments performed in history ended up in abysmal failure or wrong conclusions. Hertz too thought that EM will have no practical use. Tesla sure was brilliant but strange, and very eccentric character. I did glance over some of his documents and could hardly understand what it was about. He was obviously very secretive too and liked to boast or stretch the facts and also had own agenda and motives. One thing is sure - he did make remotely controlled boat. doing that without semiconductors or vacuum tubes is astounding accomplishment. Marconi was also using Tesla patents to make a working radio. So it is fair to assume that Tesla knew a thing of two about communication. I don't know what Tesla was thinking or believing and do not want to get dragged into discussion about him. I cannot comment on his idea behind that or any other of his projects. He did help bring electricity to masses and not just to few rich and powerful so i am thankful for that. Maybe ITER or some other fusion research project will some day be able to match that.

 

I agree that Tesla was a great engineer that knew how to use the scientific principles of the 1880's to build interesting and valuable devices. It's just that using Tesla's name in any success/failure context of pushing the boundaries of technologies used today is a fantasy pushed more by popular media than actual science.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak_Fusion_Test_Reactor#Operations

Construction began in 1980 and TFTR began initial operations in 1982. A lengthy period of break-in and testing followed. By the mid-1980s, tests with deuterium began in earnest in order to understand its performance. In 1986 it produced the first 'supershots' which produced many fusion neutrons.[10] These demonstrated that the system could reach the goals of the initial 1976 design; the performance when running on deuterium was such that if tritium was introduced it was expected to produce about 3.5 MW of fusion power. Given the energy in the heating systems, this represented a Q of about 0.2, or about only 20% of the requirement for break-even.[8]

Further testing revealed significant problems, however. To reach break-even, the system would have to meet several goals at the same time, a combination of temperature, density and the length of time the fuel is confined. In April 1986, TFTR experiments demonstrated the last two of these requirements when it produced a fusion triple product of 1.5 x 1014 Kelvin seconds per cubic centimeter, which is close to the goal for a practical reactor and five to seven times what is needed for breakeven. However, this occurred at a temperature that was far below what would be required. In July 1986, TFTR achieved a plasma temperature of 200 million kelvin (200 MK), at that time the highest ever reached in a laboratory. The temperature is 10 times greater than the center of the sun, and more than enough for breakeven. Unfortunately, to reach these temperatures the triple product had been greatly reduced to 1013, two or three times too small for break-even.

Major efforts to reach these conditions simultaneously continued. Donald Grove, TFTR project manager, said they expected to achieve that goal in 1987. This would be followed with D-T tests that would actually produce breakeven, beginning in 1989.[11] Unfortunately, the system was unable to meet any of these goals. The reasons for these problems were intensively studied over the following years, leading to a new understanding of the instabilities of high-performance plasmas that had not been seen in smaller machines. A major outcome of TFTR's troubles was the development of highly non-uniform plasma cross-sections, notably the D-shaped plasmas that now dominate the field.

We are looking at maybe mid 2030s for breakeven (fusion power over auxiliary heating that’s effectively transmitted to the plasma) power at ITER. Fusion producing net electricity?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-00932-3

Helium-3 for fusion from burning Fossil fuels.

 

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/

 

I don't think a self-sustained fusion reaction will ever happen. Sure, you can smash atoms together and make them fuse, but the resulting energy output causes expansion which prevents adding more fuel to sustain it. Single-shot uncontrolled fusion with limited quantities of fusible material is the only way that I am aware of to achieve output. Getting more power out than that put in isn't the hard part, its capturing the energy that is released instantaneously and using it to ignite the next sample that's the tricky part. You can either use tiny amounts that lose most of the energy in various forms of radiation that is absorbed by the containment mechanism, or you can blow the heck out of the apparatus and claim success in achieving positive output. These people know that if they use enough material to output the same amount of power that went in, it would destroy the lab because that energy is released instantaneously. Its not like fission, you cannot throttle it back and slow down the energy release. They need to stop looking for better ways to light the match and work on more efficient ways to better absorb the energy. Right now, all I see is kids playing with really expensive firecrackers and bragging about the bang ~ on the taxpayers dime. Had they spent this much money on dealing with the safety and disposal/storage issues plaguing the exclusive use of fission, we wouldn't need fusion.

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/despite-conflict-russia-sends-france-180345377.html
Despite conflict Russia sends France giant magnet for nuclear fusion project

 

one heck of a coil

 

I see advancements now and then, maybe less often now though. Each advancement may bring us closer to the solution but it's a waiting game just like everything else these days. It's a very complicated and sensitive process probably the most complicated in the history of mankind. It stretches the limits of what we can control in Nature.

 

I worked on measuring the stress effects on the superconductors for ITER back in 1988 as an undergrad when working as a co-op student for NIST (NBS back then). Now, as then, we should have practical fusion generation "in another ten years".

 

I worked on measuring the stress effects on the superconductors for ITER back in 1988 as an undergrad when working as a co-op student for NIST (NBS back then). Now, as then, we should have practical fusion generation "in another ten years".

Oh ok, ha ha, so it's the proverbial 10 year prognostication hold off again and again

 

Oh ok, ha ha, so it's the proverbial 10 year prognostication hold off again and again

Yep. Whether it's fusion, flying cars, fully autonomous cars (although that one seems to always be "next year"), a cure for diabetes, cancer, or whatever, or lots of other things. Ten to twenty years seems to be the magic range where it's near enough that people get excited enough to be willing to throw money at it, but far enough away that they don't expect that money to actually produce tangible results.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

 

US scientists reach long-awaited nuclear fusion breakthrough, source says

​

“It’s about what it takes to boil 10 kettles of water,” said Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College in London. “In order to turn that into a power station, we need to make a larger gain in energy – we need it to be substantially more.”

 

US scientists reach long-awaited nuclear fusion breakthrough, source says
View attachment 282896​

Great news, they have refined the experiment to prove the physics work.
The Q (NIF measures Q by considering the energy of the final bit of laser that makes it into the chamber, so it's a bit of a cheat) from the actual fusion reaction might be net positive ( produce 2.5 megajoules of energy, 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules used ) but the overall Q (total faculty power system power from the grid to run the experiment to fusion power gain) is very negative. "more energy from fusion than delivered by lasers" is cool but the laser input energy (~500MJ) required to make that laser energy is much larger than 2.5 megajoules.

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...m-the-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory/
expert reaction to reports of advance in nuclear fusion from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

“Although positive news, this result is still a long way from the actual energy gain required for the production of electricity. That’s because they had to use 500 MJ of energy into the lasers to deliver 1.8 MJ to the target – so even though they got 2.5 MJ out, it’s still far less than the energy they needed for the lasers in the first place. In other words, the energy output (largely heat energy) was still only 0.5% of the input. An engineering target for fusion would be to recover much of the energy used in the process and get an energy gain of double the energy that went into the lasers – it needs to be double because the heat must be converted to electricity and you lose energy that way.
...
“Therefore we can say that this result from NIF is a success of the science – but still a long way from providing useful, abundant, clean energy.”

Still 20 years away ....

 

Yes, Sabine had a video on this type of claims a while ago, they keep lying by only counting a fraction if the energy actually used.

 

Still 20 years away ....

give or take ...