I am delighted to be involved with this small, but exciting meeting being held here in Dublin on the 6th and 7th of September. I published a number of papers in the 1990's on pulsed plasmas, including a letter in Phys Rev Letters on efficient negative ions sources using modulated RF plasmas. The idea of …
Continue reading Pulsed Plasma Diagnostics Workshop, Early Registration Deadline Extended
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has finally been given the go ahead by French authorities. The ITER organisation received a letter from the French Safety Authority, Agence de sûreté nucléaire (ASN), on 20 June 2012 which granted a license to build an experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor in the south of France. Construction of ITER …
Continue reading Plasma Fusion Device Gets Go Ahead from French Government
The 13th International Conference on Plasma Surface Engineering will take place from 10 to 14 September 2012 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Plasma is an important tool for manufacturing high quality thin coatings. It is also an important component in the process of producing innovative new products and surfaces. For example, wet chemical and dry plasma treatments …
Fusion energy is similar to Fission (on which nuclear reactors depend) in that both are based on Einsteins famous equation E=MC^2. Pronounced as E equals M C squared. E is the energy released and M is the mass destroyed and C is the speed of light. How is the mass destroyed? Well, nuclear particles will bind to each …
A while back, I responded to a claim from Lawrenceville Plasma Physics that they were close to a commercial fusion reactor. I was annoyed that such claims were being made and even more concerned that such claims were not receiving a strong criticism from the scientific community. I read the paper published in the journal - …
Continue reading Why Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Results are Not Even Wrong; a Detailed Analysis.
The third in a series of a basic course in plasma physics, Basic Plasma Parameters explains the importance of the concepts of temperature, thermal speed and quasi-neutrality in plasma physics. The page is accompanied by a short video.
I started this blog with the aim to promote topical stories in the area of plasma technology. I wanted to talk about things that interested me that I thought would interest a wider audience of scientist and engineers working in the area of plasma technology. In the last few months two new sources of news have started. The first …
Continue reading Plasma in the News, Two New Sources of Information on Plasma Technology
I have said before that plasmas are often considered an art more than a science. This is true in industry where plasmas are developed to do many exotic things and then locked in copy exact mode to perform the same feat forever. It is why plasma measurement is usually referred to as plasma diagnostics rather …
I am publishing the second in a series of courses in Plasma Physics, A brief History of Plasma Physics. It is interesting that the term plasma was first used by Langmuir in 1920's, less than a hundred years ago. The contribution made by plasma to our everyday life is now quite remarkable. Everything from mobile …
Continue reading Basic Plasma Physics: Course 2, History of Plasma Physics
I see that Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is back in the news again with the announcement of a collaboration between LPP and an Iranian research institution. The collaboration agreement is for scientific publications on aneutronic fusion, which some sources claim could be a possible route to cheap, safe, clean energy. This blog believes the claim is the result …
Continue reading Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is Back in the News
Mike B Hopkins 