Re: Shiva "Shiva Star"
Russell Garber ( (no email) )
Tue, 05 Oct 1999 11:26:02 -0400
Hi Bob et al!
I am not sure if this is what you are speaking of, but I have a little info
on some Laser Fusion devices and Particle-beam fusion devices. I can list
the names of these devices and maybe a brief description and maybe you
could search the web for more info, once you had the names, etc... Laser
Fusion devices typically focus 10 or more laser beams at regularly spaced
angles onto a fuel pellet. I am not sure what the fuel is in these fuel
pellets. One such device was called OMEGA at the University of Rochester
in New York and used 24 laser beams. Another was called Gekko XII at the
Osaka University in Japan, and was the most powerful laser fusion reactor
in the early 1980's. In 1985 the Nova fusion reactor at Lawrence Livermore
became the worlds most powerful device of this kind and in 1989 was
nearing breakeven (on the way to over unity?). A do not have any
information as to what the progress of these devices is at now. The U.S.
DOE was proposing building such a device that they believed capable of
surpassing breakeven by the late 1990's. Not sure what became of that. It
was classified as Halite/Centurion program.
As for Particle beam fusion devices, these devices use pulsed beams of
high energy subatomic particles (usually ion beams) to produce an implosive
shock wave. One of the most advanced of these devices is the Particle
Beam Fusion Accelerator (PBFA) at Sandia National Laboratories. In PBFA ,
protons are accelerated by pulses of electrical energy released from a
massive bank of storage devices called capacitors. A larger accelerator at
Sandia called PBFA II accelerates lithium ions instead of protons, and
these bombard fuel cells made of deuterium and tritium (maybe this is the
one you were looking for?). Researchers at Sandia believe that the PFBA II
will eventually reach breakeven. Again I do not have any information on
the current status of these projects either and I belive that this info is
only as current as 1990. I hope this info helps you to find what you were
looking for.
Good Luck
-Russ
BTW: The reason I used the word breakeven instead of self-running or over
unity is because that is the wording used in the source of this information.
-------------------------------------------------------------
To leave this list, email <listserver@keelynet.com>
with the body text: leave Interact
list archives and on line subscription forms are at
http://keelynet.com/interact/
-------------------------------------------------------------