Steven Krivit wrote:
According to three of my sources in the hot fusion field, (the
spokesman for PPPL, a plasma physicist at General Atomics, and
someone working in the public relations office of EFDA-JET) none,
repeat, none have produced excess energy.
Greatest Q= 0.67 was at JET
I suppose it depends upon how you define excess energy. In all cases
the reactor is hotter than it would be if there were no reaction
going on inside it. Q=0.67 indicates that the heat from the nuclear
reaction is 67% of the input power. Evidently they are defining
excess as "nuclear power output exceeding total input electric
power." By that standard, a cold fusion cell producing 30% of input
power has a Q=0.3 and no excess, but we still call it "excess heat."
Few cold fusion cells have had a Q>1.0. It would be easy to increase
the Q by reducing input power, using conventional electrochemical
techniques such as moving the anode and cathode closer together.
People have not done that because there is no point.
A Q-value is defined as, "The amount of energy released in a nuclear
reaction," by the way.
- Jed
