Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] A ROOM-TEMPERATURE PALM-SIZED NUCLEAR FUSION DEVICE

From: Adrian Tymes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:01:30 -0700 (PDT)

One can get bursts of nuclear fusion from small devices.  That's been
known for a while.  The problem is getting a net production of
electricity - in this case, more joules out than are consumed by, for
example, heating the crystal.  (Looking at energy creation without
acknowledging energy consumption is like looking at income without
acknowledging expenses.)

Still, this might have use as a neutron source for MEMS devices.
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From: "John K Clark" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:07:20 -0400

"Dan Clemmensen" <[email-masked]>

>With just a bit of cleverness, it may be possible to
>engineer a micro-scale chain reaction and achieve
>a controllable break-even. This should scare you,
>since it would then be trivial to use the result as
>a trigger for an arbitrarily large thermonuclear device.

To my knowledge a fusion chain reaction has never been observed, not in a
H bomb or even the center of a star. And it's already possible to make an
arbitrarily large thermonuclear device; you just need a chain reaction in a
small fission bomb to heat and compress the fusion fuel. The recent
developments claim to fame is that it is small and very cheap, not needing
expensive high voltage power supplies. Even if it can't be scaled up for
power production (the inventors don't seem to think it can be) a cheap
neutron source would be very useful and a gadget that can accelerate gas to
high velocity could perhaps be used in rockets.

  John K Clark      [email-masked]

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From: "John K Clark" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:51:22 -0400

One thing that impressed me about this cheap simple little gadget is that it
could produce electrical fields as high as 25 volts per nanometer. That's
HUGE! With something like that you might be able to make a particle
accelerator that would fit on a desk that's as powerful as one of today's
machines that cost many billions and is the size of a small country.