Web site

I have gotten round to create a web site for my idea. It is:

http://www.headonplasmafusion.info/

Not .com!

Anyway it contains a complete description of a low cost experiment to achieve hydrogen plasma fusion. Not deuterium. Not tritium. Hydrogen.

It is a new method. No Tokamacs. No lasers. No Bussard style electrostatic nets.

The way it works is: two streams of hydrogen fusion are accelerated to high speeds, and fired head on at each other. They collide, and a small proportion of the hydrogen plasma fuses into helium, giving off large quantities of energy. This energy release can be tapped as described on this web site.

The beauty of this device is that whatever minimum relative collision velocity is required for fusion, this required velocity for the plasma jet is halved as two plasma jets are fired at each other head on.

Physicists I have talked to say that it is a good idea - except for one snag. You have to accelerate the plasma jets to very high speeds to achieve fusion. Velocities in the region of hundreds of thousands of kilometers per hour.

Also you need a dense plasma to achieve the Lawson Criterion so as to allow complete four stage fusion of hydrogen into fusion.

I have looked at this, and my calculations based on probabilities and quantum mechanics indicate that the individual plasma jets need not be accelerated past 25,000 kms per hour! This is quite feasible using the acceleration device also described on the web site. Also the plasma jet can be made increasingly dense to achieve the momentary four stage fusion. It is a matter of experiment.

The experiment is low cost and can actually be conducted in a simply equipped laboratory.

Anyway I have passed this idea on to a number of international universities. If anyone tries the idea and is successful let me know at my gmail email address. I would like to keep track of progress in this area.

Big Bang

People are now getting quite enthusiastic about the proposal, but they seem to be thinking in terms of Tockamac size experiments. Whilest that would provide a lot of employment to physicists, it could be very dangerous. Remember if you convert several grams of hydrogen to helium immediately you will end up with a crater ten miles across! If this was done at the Livermore laboratories for instance this will take out the town of Livermore and a chunk of the surrounding area!

What I suggest is to start small. I have previously suggested that all that is necessary are two tubes the size of shotgun barrels facing each other. That should be more than sufficient. Also conduct the experiments way out in the desert. Then all you will lose if anything goes wrong are a few expendable physicists and techos!

Mathematical Disprooofs

Over the past few hundred years irrefutable mathematical proofs that something will not work have been ten a penny. For instance it was proven that since the contact between a circle and a tangent was infinitely small there could be no friction and so locomotives could not work. Steam driven ships could not cr0ss the Atlantic. Lord Kelvin mathematically proved that mechanical flight was impossible and that the sun would burn out in a million years. It was proved that the bumblebee could not fly. Descartes proved mathematically to Empress Catherine that there was no God.

I suggest that an experiment be conducted, and then it can be shown mathematically that this method does work.

The Squeeze

In my patent (location below) I said that the "magnetic pocket" would be kept the same size as it moved along the tube as it travels from one end of the tube to the other.

In fact, if hydrogen plasma is being used, it would be more useful if the magnetic pocket was made smaller as the plasma was accelerated along the tube. The reason for this is that if the magnetic pocket was made increasingly smaller the magnetic field would squeeze the plasma and increase the pressure and density of the plasma. This would assist the effect of the acceleration so as to increase the pressure and density of the plasma, and thus making it easier for the required pressure and density for fusion to be achieved; so that hydrogen fusion would occur when one jet of hydrogen plasma strikes the other on-setting jet of hydrogen plasma.

Halve That

There may be a misunderstanding derived from the piece below that the density of the centre of the sun must be achieved by the acclerated plasma for the fusion to work.

In fact the final density recquired to be achieved for each plasma jet is half the density of the centre of the sun. When the plasma jets hit each other and combine, after the plasma jets hit each other head on, the density achieved is double the density of the individual plasma jets. Thus the final density achieved will be the density at the centre of the sun if the final density achieved for each plasma jet is only half the density of the centre of the sun.

Achieving a density of half the density of the centre of the sun by acceleration is far more easy to achieve. Only half the acceleration is required.

Similarly the relative velocity calculated to penetrate the coulomb barrier is double the velocity which is required the be achieved for each plasma jet. The velocity required for each plasma jet is half the relative velocity required to penetrate the coulomb barrier.

Why Hydrogen Needs to be Compressed for Fusion - the Proton-Proton Reaction

Previously I said that two head-on deuterium plasma jets could be used to create fusion energy by directly fusing deuterium into helium. I have found that the process/device I have patented (http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/patents/search_index.shtml Invention no. 2009100970) also can be used to create energy by fusing hydrogen at an even lower velocity. However a much higher plasma density is required (the same plasma density as at the core of the sun - but using this device easy to achieve).

Deuterium fusion, as in Tokamacs, has a coulomb barrier of 4 x 10^8 Kelvin. This is a measure of the repulsive force of two deuterons before they penetrate the electrostatic repulsive force, the coulomb barrier, and fuse into helium.

However the coulomb barrier between two protons (hydrogen nuclei) is far less. It is 1.5 x 10^7 Kelvin. 30 x less.

As is generally known the steps towards hydrogen fusing into helium are as follows:

1. A pair of protons fuse, forming a deuterium nucleus, a deuteron.
2. The deuteron fuses with an additional proton to form Helium 3.
3. Two Helium 3 nuclei fuse to create Beryllium 6, but this is unstable and disintigrates into two protons amd Helium 4.
4. The reaction also releases two neutrons, two positrons, gamma rays and a great deal of heat energy.

Thus it takes 30 x less energy (relative velocity) to initiate fusion of two hydrogen nuclei (protons) than it does for deuterium. This releases sufficient energy for the fusion process to continue until Helium is created, if the density conditions are right.

What conditions are necessary? A very high density of the plasma. The various different nuclei need to be numerous enough and close enough together to raise the probability that sufficient numbers of the correct nuclei collide so that a sustainable reaction is created. In effect there is a critical or minium density of the hydrogen plasma required. This is the same density as in the core of the sun, where this fusion reaction creates the neccessary heat and light which reaches Earth.

At this point most scientists turn off and say that this density is impossible to achieve on Earth. However this density is exactly what the plasma accelerator I have invented is designed to achieve.

Very high acceleration causes very high pressure and density in the plasma. The higher the acceleration the higher the plasma density which is produced. There comes a point where the critical plasma density necessary for hydrogen fusion is created.

If two hydrogen plasmas with the necessary high density and necessary high velocities collide, hydrogen fusion would be initiated. Conceptually very simple.

A further benefit is that, while this device could also create deuterium fusion, a much lower relative veolcity is required for hydrogen fusion. There is a trade-off between the higher velocity required for deuterium fusion against the higher acceleration and lower velocity required for hydrogen fusion.

As hydrogen is a lot more common than deuterium, the easy achievement of hydrogen fusion is a major benefit. As described below electricity generation using this device is technically and conceptually feasible. Cheap unexhaustible energy is now achievable!

The race is on for the Nobel Prize!

Easy hydrogen fusion

Further to the possibility of hydrogen fusion. I have done further calculations. Since the energy requirement for hydrogen fusion is 30 x less than for deuterium, a plasma velocity of only about 200 kms/sec would be required. To put this into context, a shotgun discharge is 50 kms/sec. So it is not a very high velocity.

In fact the shotgun analogy is very apt. In order to accelerate the hydrogen plasma so that the intense pressure requirement is achieved, (equalling the pressure at the core of the sun), the acceleration distance would be about the length of a shotgun barrel.

So two head to head shotgun tubes are all you need for hydrogen fusion. Maybe lasers can be used to accelerate the hydrogen plasma. But you will still need a magnetic pinch to keep the hot plasma away from the sides of the tube.