Explosively pumped flux compression generator | Hacker News Reader

Explosively pumped flux compression generator

en.wikipedia.org

27 pointsbglazer13 comments

Perfect garage science experiments. not just unwise explosives, but also unwise amounts of electric current to play with.

what happens if you dump the current into a "shrinker coil" surrounding the generator? before it all becomes an expanding cloud of vapor, that is. I'm not sure but it made great holes in the shed roof. and the tree above the shed.

Someone get Styropyro to build one to power a laser cannon.

https://youtube.com/@styropyro?si=6odE-Af0yU8ZpzxE

And IIUC this is used to generate EMP without using nuke, so you’ll knock out the whole neighborhood powergrid too!

Perfect size to fit into a generic 4U case to sneak into a data center.

Would those have enough range to be used as an anti-drone mine?

It's easier and lighter to just use explosively driven shrapnel weapons. Lighter warhead = potential for better range, speed, maneuverability of the intercepting vehicle. If you have even more precise gear, just slamming into the drone with an inert mass works pretty well, but the gold standard for now is a bursting charge with shrapnel.

I wonder if some miniature chain shot, made with ~2-3mm split shot fishing weights clamped over 20-30cm of monofilament line, all in a smoothbore shell, would work to entangle drone propellors, and perhaps leave the drone in a reusable state.

I have no way of verifying if the guy knew what he was talking about but I've seen a description that was being deliberately a big vague, using multiple explosive stages to boost the power and crush a deuterium-tritium target.

Wikipedia:

    It has been claimed that it is possible to conceive of a crude, deliverable, pure fusion weapon, using only present-day, unclassified technology. The weapon design[2] weighs approximately 3 tonnes, and might have a total yield of approximately 3 tonnes of TNT. The proposed design uses a large explosively pumped flux compression generator to produce the high power density required to ignite the fusion fuel. From the point of view of explosive damage, such a weapon would have no clear advantages over a conventional explosive, but the massive neutron flux could deliver a lethal dose of radiation to humans within a 500-meter radius (most of those fatalities would occur over a period of months, rather than immediately).

    [2]: https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs07jones.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon#Progress

Weapons aside, using EPFCG's as a scrapyard substitute for large capacitor banks in fusion power experiments would also be an interesting story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Star

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Pulsed_Power_Facility

That clarifies some hints I’ve seen. Wow.

Yeah, that's definitely what I was reading about. However, what I was reading said they could ignite a secondary with it. No idea how, though.

Sublethal doses of radiation from these could accumulate to a lethal dose.

I suspect the limit would be the cost of tritium, but if something like Helion's fusion scheme takes off (or, possible, the WHAM mirror now being developed at Realta) then tritium could become cheaper, as DD fusion produces a lot of excess tritium.

For a number of years now, work has been proceeding in order to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of a transmission that would not only supply inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal grammeters. Such an instrument is the turbo encabulator.

Now basically the only new principle involved is that instead of power being generated by the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it is produced by the modial interaction of magneto-reluctance and capacitive diractance.

feel free to downvote as per rules of HN; I just couldn't resist :)

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