PLASMAK - Another f*sion scam?
Vincent Cate
Paul Dietz:
>An even more novel idea: build one of these devices to prove the
>theory, write a paper about it, and GET IT PUBLISHED IN A PEER
>REVIEWED JOURNAL! *Then* solicit funds for development.
>Naw, too radical.
Paul Koloc:
>To do credible work, a whole range of energies and diagnostics are
>necessary. "Building one" just doesn't cut it. We have done that.
>Acceptable work requires about two million dollars.
>[...]
>Radical?.. In an aggressive, hard driving, "in for the long haul"
>country, perhaps not. But then in such a place this problem wouldn't
>arise in the first place.
Look @#%!, the reason you are having trouble getting money is not because
there is nobody in the U.S.A. that would invest in a good idea that took
more than 5 years to develop, it is simply that you have NOT DEMONSTRATED
any ability to do the fusion you claim you can do.
If you claim your little ball lightning things are doing ***FUSION***
show some evidence!!!! Find some tritium or neutrons. Do some calorimetry.
If you can make your little balls already there is now way at all you
can claim you need 2 million to do "acceptable work". If you can demo
something that produces lots of neutrons even when an investor brings
his own neutron detector you will get lots of money. Until then there
is no reason to expect any *intelligent* investor to invest money in
your company.
If, on the other hand, you are willing to con money off of people by
lying then you should look into Peripheral Systems Inc. Here is an
example of a company that has raised something like $30,000,000 to do
fission by claiming to be able to do things can not be done (like get
75 watts of electricity off of 1 watt of radiation). By the way, these
guys have been saying that fission power plants of a size practical for
use in a car are only 3 years away for about the last 4 years (still
3 years away). All the phone numbers and names are in the ftp file
listed below - get a copy. The 2 main guys (ex-presidents) have left and
might be interested in talking with you. These guys are good at what
they do - they raised lots of money. You might want to talk with them.
There seems to be little danger of the SEC as Peripheral's stock has
gone from $6 down to $0.25 and the SEC still can not find an investor who
is willing to press charges.
ftp furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu:/usr/vac/ftp/peripheral.systems
-- Vince Cate
PS
128.2.209.111 furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu
Mark H. North
>
>Paul Dietz:
>>An even more novel idea: build one of these devices to prove the
>>theory, write a paper about it, and GET IT PUBLISHED IN A PEER
>>REVIEWED JOURNAL! *Then* solicit funds for development.
>>Naw, too radical.
>
>Paul Koloc:
>>To do credible work, a whole range of energies and diagnostics are
>>necessary. "Building one" just doesn't cut it. We have done that.
>>Acceptable work requires about two million dollars.
>>[...]
>>Radical?.. In an aggressive, hard driving, "in for the long haul"
>>country, perhaps not. But then in such a place this problem wouldn't
>>arise in the first place.
>
>Look @#%!, the reason you are having trouble getting money is not because
>there is nobody in the U.S.A. that would invest in a good idea that took
>more than 5 years to develop, it is simply that you have NOT DEMONSTRATED
>any ability to do the fusion you claim you can do.
>
>If you claim your little ball lightning things are doing ***FUSION***
>show some evidence!!!! Find some tritium or neutrons. Do some calorimetry.
>If you can make your little balls already there is now way at all you
>can claim you need 2 million to do "acceptable work". If you can demo
>something that produces lots of neutrons even when an investor brings
fusion. I, on the other hand, believe neutrons are a sufficient signature
of fusion (if they have the proper energy spectra etc). If you show me
neutrons I will consider opening my wallet.
Mark
Paul A. Houle
I think that Paul Koloc is probably sincere. He might be totally
wrong, but he's been on this PLASMAK (tm) kick for more than a decade; there
are scams that are much more efficent than that! He never has claimed to have
produced significant rates of fusion in a PLASMAK. Essentially, he's
claiming that, if his magnetoplasmoids behave the way he thinks they do, he
could squeeze them until they begin to fuse. This could fail -- the plasmoids
might pop well before that pressure is reached. Back of the notepad
calculations that I've made estimate that if he forms his plasmoids at 1 atm,
he'll have to expose them to pressures on the order of 100 to 1000 atm. This
is not something you can do easily in your garage, although it's alot simpler
to generate those kind of pressures than it is to build an engineering
breakeven reactor.
Paul Koloc has one of the better theories of Ball Lightning around.
Like all Ball Lightning researchers, he writes off the cases that don't
fit his theory. <THIS IS UNIVERSAL IN THE FIELD> My only real complaint with
one of his papers is that he describes one case as "a large ball coming down
from the sky", while most other sources seem to agree that witness said it
was "about the size of an orange." A PMK the size of an orange wouldn't be
able to do all the damage that this Ball lighting did (boiling a tub of water)
His theory doesn't require any radical new physics, unlike the 'Boson Vortex'
model that Convectron is working on in the Netherlands (it makes cold fusion
look respectable) -- These guys actually claim they get neutrons when they
shoot deuteurium gas at high speed through an arc. If I was doing an
experiment like that, I'd be more afraid that it would work than that i
would fail! If you look at the chaotic field of Ball Lightning, I'd be
willing to say that Paul Koloc is better than average.
In all, I don't think he's a crook. He might be crazy, but he's
not a crook.
--
Vincent Cate
>>An even more novel idea: build one of these devices to prove the
>>theory, write a paper about it, and GET IT PUBLISHED IN A PEER
>>REVIEWED JOURNAL! *Then* solicit funds for development.
>
>>To do credible work, a whole range of energies and diagnostics are
>>necessary. "Building one" just doesn't cut it. We have done that.
Paul Koloc
>What???
>I have NOT claimed to have produced fusion with PLASMAK(tm) plasmoids.
>[...]
So you have NOT done the "Build one" that you implied. You have built
something but not something to prove your theory.
You do not need a whole range of energies and diagnostics, just significant
fusion products. If you can demo of fusion, the world will beat a pathway
to your door. Really.
>>There seems to be little danger of the SEC as **Peripheral's** stock has
>>gone from $6 down to $0.25 and the SEC still can not find an investor who
>>is willing to press charges.
>
>What's the point? -- You didn't buy Peripheral's stock so you can't
>press charges with the SEC ?? :-(
The point was you can raise lots of money even without having any
ability to make a real product and not have to worry much about the SEC.
No, I did not buy any. I wanted to sell it short but it was already
below $5 and the SEC will not let people sell stocks short that
are selling for less than $5. This explains why almost all of the
fraudulent companies have stock prices under $5 - anything over this
gets sold short and then exposed for a tidy profit.
-- Vince
Paul M. Koloc
>So you have NOT done the "Build one" that you implied. You have built
>something but not something to prove your theory.
You are taking my statement out of context. The major contentions were:
1. Can such an all plasma confinement system exist, according to our
topological description?
2. If it can, then can it be made repeatably and reliably in the
laboratory??
3. Will it be as long lived and stable as predicted.
Note: NO ONE before this has produced such plasmoids reliably.
Item two showed us that they could be formed at remarkably low
thresholds (energy input). The last item gave us a surprise,
since the plasmoids lasted much much longer than predicted and
required a modification (enhancement) of the theory to explain it.
True, we have not compressed a fueled PLASMAK(tm) plasmoid. However,
adiabatic toroidal compression is NOT our theory. It is a well
accepted and powerful engineering tool used to heat tokamaks, for
example. Unfortunately, due to the internal radial barrier of the
iside wall (the portion closest and surrounding the toroidal chamber's
large central hole), a tokamak can only utilize a very small fraction
of this advantageous technique's capability. The superior means of
producing an adiabatic toroidal compression on a PMK is our invention.
Here, the engineering is not a really big problem, since strong fluid
compressions have been made for a century or so. Further the plasma
increases in conductivity (stability) and the field increases in
strength (energy and confinement) during such a compression.
>You do not need a whole range of energies and diagnostics, just significant
>fusion products. If you can demo of fusion, the world will beat a pathway
>to your door. Really.
I think investors are more sophisticated then credit you give them. So
Wrong! Tokamaks produce "fusion products", as well as Jone's type of
CF experiments. However, NEITHER the Public Utilities have supported
the DoE experiment (rather have shunned it), NOR do I see investors
flocking to Jone's door step. For the LOW RISK TAKERS, a COMMERCIAL
Break Even Burn (CBEF) is now required after the years of "We (DoE)
are working toward fusion in 2050 and only need 20-50 billion of your
tax money as investment".
Incidentally, it takes no less money to produce a few fusion products
with this technology, than it does to produce a PLASMAK(tm) CBEF.
>The point was you can raise lots of money even without having any
>ability to make a real product and not have to worry much about the SEC.
Then it doesn't apply to us, does it? Secondly, Prometheus II, Ltd.
has never sold ANY stock; we are privately held. One other associated
company has not sold stock except to insiders over the last five years.
Insiders are those people who are all using their skills to get this
project off the ground. Admittedly, it's slow; however, we don't have
that much further (technical roughness scale) to go. It just costs .
2*10^7$ (unaccelerated).
> I wanted to sell it [.Peripheral.] short but it was
>already below $5 and the SEC will not let people sell stocks short
>that are selling for less than $5.
You didn't move quick enough?? With the accuracy of your speculations,
I can see why you missed the opportunity. :-(
Remember no risk; little or no gain.
Cheer up.. you still have your money, put it in CDs, and maybe you
can sell us short someday. If and when we go that route.
+---------------------------------------------------------+**********+
| +Commercial*
| Paul M. Koloc, President (301) 445-1075 ***FUSION***
| Prometheus II, Ltd.; College Park, MD 20740-0222 ***in the***
| mimsy!prometheus!pmk; p...@prometheus.UUCP **Nineties**
+---------------------------------------------------------************
Barry Merriman
>IF the
>first generation of the idea was a ruse then I doubt seriously that the
>DoE or the national laboratories would have researched it (the Spheromak).
Could you clarify why the Spheromak didn't work, but the PLASMAK will?
(I gather you want the plasmak to compress itself to the ignition point,
whereas the Spheromak maintained a fixed size. But still, wasn't
the Spheromak beset by the usual MHD intstabilities, and nonclassical
energy transport that plague the Tokamak? My Spheromak history is
a little vague, so I'd appreciate a little refresher course. Also,
why was the Spheromak abandoned in favor of Tokamaks?)
--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
ba...@math.ucla.edu (Internet)
Paul M. Koloc
>In article <1990Dec10.0...@prometheus.UUCP> p...@prometheus.UUCP (Paul M. Koloc) writes:
>>IF the
>>first generation of the idea was a ruse then I doubt seriously that the
>>DoE or the national laboratories would have researched it (the Spheromak).
>
>Could you clarify why the Spheromak didn't work, but the PLASMAK will?
>(I gather you want the plasmak to compress itself to the ignition point,
>whereas the Spheromak maintained a fixed size.
You mean that WE would compress the PLASMAK(tm) plasmoid (PMK) -- yes!
It would be nice if they could be "influenced" to compress themselves
(before ignition).
Stable compressibility and higher densities, confinement time and
temperatures that result from it are very critical. But that is not
the only advantage, for what do you do with your high density fusion
power if it works. PLASMAK(tm) technology has a fusion impervious
first wall (Mantle) and fusion energy reservoir (dense fluid blanket).
It also has a means of producing electric power directly by fusion
energized blanket and PMK expulsion through an Inductive MHD generator.
It's a much lighter mass (weight) confinement topology than the tokamak,
by a multitude of orders of magnitude, so it looks like it can be
utilized in special futuristic applications that we dream about or are
entertained by when we see a "Star Wars" movie. Further, it is
potentially as environmentally clean as one can get for such
performance.
>But still, wasn't the Spheromak beset by the usual MHD instabilities,
>and nonclassical energy transport that plague the Tokamak? My Spheromak
>history is a little vague, so I'd appreciate a little refresher course.
No, the Spheromak configuration is ideally MHD stable with sufficient
conductivity and a tightly fitting (highly conducting) shell. However,
there is a class of pseudo Spheromaks, that does not use a tightly
fitting conducting shell as the external pressure boundary. These came
about in an effort to produce more heating by using adiabatic toroidal
compression.
So these false Spheromaks are pressure confined, not by image currents
in a spheroidal shell, but rather by the currents externally driven in
a "fixed" (vertical) field coil. By increasing the coil current, the
Kernel plasma ring compresses to a smaller size and thus becomes less
tightly fitted to the confining coil. It becomes in a sense a magnetic
compass needle, that finds itself pointing to the wrong magnetic pole.
Consequently, in its compressed size and with newly found independence,
the magnetized plasma ring "tilts" or flips over to a lower energy
orientation. The problem is that in such a tilted orientation, the
ring is pulled apart rather than being magnetically pressure confined!
This is not a problem with "true" Spheromaks (or the PMK), since they
are compressed by image currents in the shell, and these image
currents re-orient if the ring tilts. That means they are always
"image current" confined and these image currents are inverse to and
oppose (compress) the toroidal current of the Kernel ring. Of course,
the Spheromak & tokamak both do NOT have the high conductivity and so
that is defeating. Its magnetic energy depletes rapidly and not so
uniformly, as in tokamak. Both are subject to resistive instabilities.
PLASMAK(tm) plasmoids *do have* the necessary high conductivity to
avoid this problem.
Transport has much to do with conductivity as well as the smoothness,
strength and orthogonality of the confining magnetic field. The
integral number of toroidal field coils in a tokamak produces toroidal
ups and downs in the magnetic field intensity (or variations in
curvature). Such a topology induces plasma turbulence. That's very
bad for reduced transport. Spheromaks (esp. PLASMAK(tm) plasmoids)
have very smooth flux and current layers. Further, they are more
nearly force free, that is the current streams are essentially aligned
with the flux lines, so that the cross forces are at a minimum. This
is not the case with tokamaks and rather violent convulsive activity
is present, such as indicated by the presence of "saw tooth" variation
in current intensity.
Another major contributor to bad transport is the strong radial thermal
gradients that are part of all solid vacuum wall and low conductivity
systems. Impurities in solid, liquid or gas states are free to migrate
from the solid vacuum wall into the external plasma surface. Because
of their high "Z" (atomic number) they have lots of bound electrons or
high charge/atom and consequently generate copious amounts of COOLING
radiation. With a low temperature plasma skin and a hot axis, large
thermal electron gradients drive a huge power losses.
Spheromaks are more dense (higher confinement pressure), and so they
might "bull their way through" some of these loss barriers. But the
real killers are the much higher wall loading (impurity blast off) and
the difficulty in heating them. (Not enough room for the needed beam
heating ports)
> Also, why was the Spheromak abandoned in favor of Tokamaks?)
The tokamak is a " *****MAINLINE***** " program, (it main lines money)
The Spheromak is an "advanced concept". (It is more advanced than the
Tokosaur that is). The funding ratio is *still* a few hundred to one. It
will take a bit more time for the axe to cut through the neck of the T-beast.
The Spheromak is cheap, neat for plasma studies, and will benefit when
the inevitable cut in the BIG TORUS happens. Spheromak research has been
cut back, here. That is not unexpected, everything including tokamak has
also seen cuts. However, the Spheromak is still plodding along here and
in places like the Japan, the UK and perhaps elsewhere.
The previous shoot (shut) out was between Mainliners, the Mirror-tokamak
and the tokamak won. The current one is Inertial Confinement/tokamak .
.. .maybe. It may become the tokamak versus common sense and restricted
funds.
Funding of projects becomes self generating once a certain critical "mass"
is achieved. It takes real effort to snuff out low gain/cost programs
that have reached this level. The perception is forming that this
country should spend its BORROWED and tax revenues more carefully; very
hopefully, this realization will eventually help us all.
Since MHD is Barry Merriman's field of study, perhaps he may be interested
in adding his comments and details to this area, as well as to the closely
related one of high temperture transport in strongly magnetized plasmas.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1990 Paul M. Koloc