the weak link

“Nothing is stronger than its weakest link.” Before i address that weak link in the previously presented fusion design, allow me to discuss a natural parallel: human skin. Loosely, that's a multifunctional interface: regulating heat within and allowing warmth to pass when required. It's also a sensory organ capable of detecting temperature and pressure changes. The weak link in the design is the heat extractor. The 'skin' of the fusion chamber needs to be 'dynamically adaptive' in the sense – sometimes it needs to be reflective and sometimes it needs to be absorbing / converting heat to electricity. Of course, a brilliant materials engineer with experience in developing such materials may know the solution 'off the top of their head'. That's one reason for this article. i believe there's two general solutions to the problem: mechanical or material. We may be able to devise a material that absorbs heat and converts that directly to electricity. Or less elegantly, we may have to employ a semi-reflective static material (such as an opaque gold coating) along with a heat exchange system behind. A similar solution would be to employ small wafers which flipped when requirements changed: one side is a pure reflector; the other side – heat absorber/convertor. As you know, the more moving parts you have, the less dependable the system is.. So perhaps a better interim solution is to employ the static partial-reflector with heat exchange system behind. The real question becomes the efficiency of the heat exchange system – is it enough to provide sufficient energy for the power consumers of the system? If not, we may have to supplement the system with a small scaled-down nuclear reactor.

That's the 'bad news' which i have confidence – we can solve with appropriate application of engineering brilliance :) The good news is i believe i've found a good home for the project :) The chair of the relevant department has accidentally dismissed this as 'high energy physics' without realizing it's actually an engineering project. Hopefully, we can clear that misunderstanding up before support deadlines pass. Wish me luck please.

The relevant website is here.