Talk:Conversion reactor

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Magnetically separating a 5MeV positron-electron beam into 2 beams, with each beam generating DC power in a high voltage plate resistor[edit]

If a magnetic field in a cathode ray tube can precisely deflect an electron beam, then a magnetic field should be able to significantly separate a positron-electron beam. The actual energy and current of the experimental 5MeV positron-electron beam is low. If you can deflect an electron beam, you can deflect a positron beam the exact same way.

At this low beam power probably divertor plates should be allowed to float up to 5MeV. For the beam target plates let the current go into a HV resistor stack (very high resistance) to generate up to 5MeV. A big cylindrical plate located at the end of a positron (or electron) beam would be a good target. The plate should be connected to ground via a high voltage resistor stack (up to 5MeV). For the plate load resistance R, plate current X stack resistance = generated voltage. Could voltage gradient along insulating pipes be dealt with by a semiconductor coating, something like a CRT. Some of the old Tektronix CRTs had a spiral coating inside ….was that for voltage gradient. They only had to deal with 15keV and here there should be 5MeV without arcing. Anyway each separated positron and electron beam should generate DC power in the high voltage resistor stack connected to the plate target in each tube. V = IR. It would be good to let the plates float up to 5MeV and see what happens. But the plate resistors will have to be quite large in resistance as the positron or electron current available current is very small. Maybe a good way to do the experiment would be to simply have a 10 or 100 teraohm resistor stack as a plate resistor, and measure the voltage generated in the resistor with an electrostatic voltmeter.

Presently very powerful neutral beam heaters are used for fusion power research, and they would probably have much more available convenient power than the positron-electron beam experiment, but they are ion-electron plasma. Separated ion-electron beams wouldn't be symmetrical and the ion plate would have to handle a lot of heat, but it would probably be much easier to demonstrate direct conversion of a higher current, lower voltage beam using a conventional ion-electron neutral beam heater used in fusion research. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.69.31.40 (talk) 19:42, 19 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe save a few old CRTs to study, and read the old Tektronix CRT handbook on CRTs.

Separating neutral beams for electrical generation won't be useful if you can't generate the beam, maybe only good for studying compact star jets. Maybe its worth revisiting the old ideas of generating ion plasma fusion by using negative high voltage on a plate to dramatically increase ion concentration. Was the problem the plates got too hot from impacts or fusion power? Connect a heat pipe to the plate to remove the heat. The plates should operate at a temperature way above the atom's ionization temperature and not absorb the ions. Problem is the plate has to avoid contact with the ions or the plate will cool the ions. How to keep a plasma hot and concentrated? (Talk) 19:29, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Discussion of omitting "(energy source)" from title[edit]

While the bulk of the article, as well as the concept at large, mostly pertains to mass-to-energy conversion as a power source, due to the inclusion of the reverse conversion process, energy-to-mass, which instead consumes energy, it seems more proper to generalize the title of the article to simply be "total conversion" to reference both processes described in the article. TheK2Despot (talk) 04:38, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]