We’ve finally, after 9 years, got new yield records for deuterium. Not for a single shot, but for the more scientifically significant average of 2, 3 and 4 consecutive shots with the same conditions, and for all shots with the same conditions. We also have new records for total ion beam and plasmoid energy.

The increase in yield is not breakthrough-level—it’s only 10%, thus lifting the best two-shot yield to 0.21 J from 0.19 J achieved back in 2016. But the new results are significant in confirming that the older results are repeatable with our present device. Indeed, the variance of the yield—a measure of how much yield changes from shot to shot—also got better, dropping from 33% to 26%. They remain the best results of any private fusion company for “wall-plug efficiency”—the critical ratio of fusion energy out to total energy into a device.

In addition, the new yield results have confirmed the predictions of our theory. Now that we have taken into account the limits imposed by the current in the filaments and the limits on total pressure of deuterium, these new, repeatable results are almost identical to our predictions. This give us confidence that the far higher yield we predict for our hydrogen-boron shots will also be confirmed be near-future experiments.(More on boron next week!)

The increase in beam and plasmoid energy is greater than that for yield, doubling to about 8 kJ from the 4 kJ we’ve achieved several times since back in 2013. In at least one shot that we’ve analyzed, shot 3, April 3^rd, we were able to confirm the beam energy with two instruments. Our “Upper Rogowski Coil” measures the current in the beam directly and the energy in each ion by the time it takes the ions to arrive. The faster the ions, the more their energy. This was confirmed by the gamma ray spectrometer that sits under the end of our drift tube. The beam produces the gamma rays when it smashed into the steel pate at the end of the drift tube. From the amount and energy of the gamma rays we can calculate the total energy in the beam. The two instruments agreed on both total energy and energy per ion.

The 7-8 kJ we measured is about 18% of the total energy in the device at the time the plasmoid forms—a significant advance in energy efficiency. We expected this, because we’ve increased the current by 50% with our dual switches and the energy efficiency should go up as the square of the current.

Again, this confirmation of our theoretical predictions helps pave the way for successful boron shots—coming soon!

The deuterium shots have been taken as cleaning shots between boron shots—the pure deuterium shots that are themselves taken after deuterium-nitrogen mix shots are the ones that are generating record yields.

All this progress does take money, and we are a bit behind schedule with our latest Wefunder goal. We’ve raised almost $80,000 so far—thanks to all of you!—but our goal was to be at $100,000 on April 18,so we’re $22,000 short. Who’s going to push us over this time and get a big shout-out?