@jabowery:
Russ’s experiment will produce x-rays. Whenever you have high energy electrons hitting a metal surface, x-rays will result.
The focus fusion (FF) experiment is very close to what Russ is doing and they plan to directly convert x-rays to electricity using a multi layered metal foil x-ray converter. This converter uses thousands of thin metal insolated sheets, x-rays are absorbed by these foils and all the x-rays are converted to electric charge.
I believe that Russ will also produce some neutrons. But not many since he is using ordinary hydrogen with 1 part in 5000 deuterium in it. But for his safety, it is important to know what the x-ray dose is.
FF uses 50KeV and 2,000,000 amps in their spark. And they produce at least 10,000,000,000,000 neutrons per shot using the 50/50 hydrogen isotope mix of deuterium and tritium for their gas.
The mistake that FF is making is that they are not using a piston to do their energy conversion for them.
It would be interesting to combine some of the ideas from FF and the Papp engine together.
We would do well to use some of the FF methods in producing a focused plasmoid. A hollow central anode produces the plasmoid and focuses it into a projected one-directional tight ultra-thin electron beam.
The huge positive electric charge inside the hollow anode concentrates the electron flow into a very thin concentrated and collimated beam in which a knot of ball lightning develops. The electrons and protons are separated leaving a pure electron beam that exits the central anode.
One experiment that would be interesting is to use the FF electrode design in the popper.
Such a tight electron beam might move the piston with high efficiency. Our beam is diffuse and not concentrated like a flash of light from a camera. Their beam is focused like a laser beam.
But this idea may not even work, but even that will tell us something valuable. Failure usually teaches more than success.
On another note, John Rohner says his design produces a plasmoid using the element Strontium. It is easier and less expensive to use a hollow central anode to generate this plasmoid like FF does.
This hollow anode would also eliminate the need for the confinement coils that Papp. Bob and John Rohner all use to keep the plasma off the walls of the cylinder.
The design of this FF device has been going on for the last 35 years. IMHO, it would be smart for the Papp experimenters to take the best ideas from FF and combine them with the Papp technology.
This video shows how the FF electrodes work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVif4hUAJ8c