An article that is interesting to me as a plasma scientist
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.
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 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
Importance of Scientific Research Scientific research is an important factor in the analysis of new technologies. It is important to have independent scientific data especially when we are talking about plasma technology. Plasmas are very complex and it is easy to make claims that are not based on true scientific fact. You can get a …
Continue reading Plasma Science and Technology is Useful in the Home
Naval Research Laboratory scientists have obtained a first-ever measured altitude profile of a dim extreme-ultraviolet terrestrial airglow emission that provides vital information needed to test and improve the accuracy of advanced techniques for remote sensing of the daytime ionosphere. They have obtained this altitude profile using scans from the Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric Detection System …
Magnetized target fusion is a hybrid approach to fusion that lies between magnetic confined fusion (MCF) and inertial confinement (ICF). This is a series contenter for a real fusion reactor and has been described as a low cost path to commercial fusion. It is strickly speaking an inertial method. The density is increased through a …
Continue reading Pulsed Plasma Uses Novel Compression to Achieve a Low Cost Path to Fusion Energy.
Mike B Hopkins 