From: Yurek, Greg [GYurek@amsuper.com] Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 6:48 PM To: Grant, Paul Subject: RE: MgB_2 Hey, your CryoEnComm is great stuff! Since it is public, I assume you don't mind if I pass it on to a few people here, such as Eric Snitgen, GM of HTS Technologies. Our guys did their calculations years ago - simple stuff, nothing in great detail. But that's neither here nor there - if you are really going to pursue the hydrogen cooling approach let me know if there is any way I can support you. No, I won't be in Seattle. Cees Theime will be representing us there (and sending back a bunch of e-mail reports I'm sure). I have to be at a Goldman-Sachs Investor Conference on Power Technologies in Miami - somebody has to do it! Net-net, however, I think you got the better meeting next week. Very exciting about you being a finalist in teh Congressional Fellowship award programs. Good luck on all - your'e going to be a Washingtonian sooner than later! Greg -----Original Message----- From: Grant, Paul [mailto:PGRANT@epri.com] Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 8:04 PM To: 'Yurek, Greg' Subject: RE: MgB_2 Hey Greg, are you coming to Seattle? We should talk. Your guys obviously didn't mention the "invited poster" I gave last summer at the peer review. I'm sending you the pdf file of the slides. It's the ideal nuke/hydrogen/superconductivity society. Have a look at it. It will be the last 30 second denouenment of my talk Monday night. Jim Daley has suggested just such a study. I've already contacted Alan Wolsky of ANL and Tom Sheahen to work with me on an SPI proposal. I didn't know AMSC had been interested. I definitely intend to pitch the concept to EPRI. Personal news...I'm a finalist in both the AAAS and MRS Congressional Fellowship award programs, and have my interview on March 19 with the former and April 2 with the latter. I haven't heard from AIP-APS yet. I'm rather envious of your situation. In 1987 at IBM I could really make things happen and participate in the research as well. Now I feel too much a bystander. Regards, -Paul -----Original Message----- From: Yurek, Greg [mailto:GYurek@amsuper.com] Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 3:17 PM To: Grant, Paul Subject: RE: MgB_2 Hah! I fear ye know me too well!!! I'm loving the interactions with the scientists and engineers, even coming up with a couple of patentable ideas in the brainstorming sessions - kinda feels good! On the hydrogen idea: we did some calculations a few years ago to investigate using liquid hydrogen as the starting coolant for long distance, submarine cables. We're talking 20 miles in a situation where you can't do any intermediate cooling. Given the properties of liquid and subsequent cold gaseous hydrogen, you can keep HTS wires cold enough over a long distance! The gaseous hydrogen on one end can be used to run fuel cells to generate energy or to run turbines, etc. So, keep in mind that the hydrogen could be used for HTS as well. Maybe EPRI ought to do a study on this? Anyway..... Have a great time next week. Afterall, how many time can this be repeated in a lifetime?? Best regards, Greg -----Original Message----- From: Grant, Paul [mailto:PGRANT@epri.com] Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 11:39 AM To: 'Yurek, Greg' Subject: RE: MgB_2 Greg, thanks for your comments and confidence. Mum's the word on AMSC, but I suspected you guys were working hard exploring opportunities for MgB2. In my "two minute" talk on Monday, I will merely point out performance goals for the usual power apps in the 25-30 K range, especially gaseous H2 ccoled dc transmission lines, for Jc and Hirr. Of course, the big question is cost. Suppose we could develop a "metallurgical" wire processing technique similar to NbTi where the cost of Nb is 70% of the finished wire cost, but with Mg and B at 1/10 of Nb. !! Aren't you the expert in metal alloy processing? I hope you're getting out of the office and a member yourself of the AMSC MgB2 hit squad...don't leave it up to Alex. Regards, -Paul -----Original Message----- From: Yurek, Greg [mailto:GYurek@amsuper.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 10:14 AM To: Paul Grant Subject: RE: MgB_2 Hi Paul: Hope you're enjoying your skiing vacation. Wish I could be with you in Seattle next week - would be fun to see you in action at Woodstock West. So, based on your e-mail to Larry and others, you are hopeful about the borides. Between you and me, and I really mean between you and me, please, I too am quite hopeful regarding the borides. Been following it for awhile and when we learned about the Japanese work in January, I asked Alex to hit it hard. We actually have a group formed inside AMSC working the wire side and have patent disclosures and applications underway. Something tells me this could be a big deal. And Alex agrees! Hope you understand that AMSC needs to keep the lid on with respect to something exciting like this - can't mislead investors through hype and at the same time need to let all investors (Reg FD; i.e., "fair disclosure") know our perspective on new discoveries that start to show up in the papers - at least at a high level. In the meantime, as a company we need to decide if we are going to invest anything in a new area such as this. We have rejected many over the years. In this case, we are investing. Let's keep in touch on this (one on one) and let's hope it's not just another USO!! Best regards, and looking to see your name in the papers next week, Greg -----Original Message----- From: Grant, Paul [mailto:PGRANT@epri.com] Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 8:06 PM To: John E. Jipping (E-mail); Nathan J. Kelly (E-mail); Marco Nassi (E-mail); Roland E. George (E-mail); Russell Eaton (E-mail); Masur, Larry Subject: MgB_2 Guys, here's a strongly edited version of a memo I sent to the EPRI corporate office last week (well before the AMSC broadside. I'm more sanguine about the near-term prospects of MgB_2...sorry, Larry...but maybe that's why David L. visited Westborough this week? Little inside joke there). On Monday evening 12 March at the APS Meeting in Seattle there will be a special evening session on MgB_2 which is already being dubbed "Woodstock West." (another inside joke) I enclose an abstract of a talk I will be giving. None of this affects our project, but I thought you'd like to be kept up-to-date on the latest developments in superconductivity. -Paul <> ******************************************************************* Gentlemen, you're about to see a minor press explosion over the discovery of a new superconductor, MgB_2, magnesium diboride, with a transition temperature around 40 K. In fact, the week after next at the annual general meeting of the American Physical Society in Seattle, we'll be having a special evening session analogous to that in New York in 1987, the famous "Woodstock of Physics" (in fact, the upcoming session is already being called "Woodstock West").http://mgb2.msd.anl.gov:55000/ I've been following developments since its discovery was made just after the first of the year in Japan, and it was immediately verified by six or seven institutions worldwide. Already I've gotten about 30 preprints and the "formal" announcement will occur in this week's issue of Nature tomorrow. This discovery could have enormous impact on certain power applications. I'll get into that in a moment. Background: MgB_2 is a classic example of an intermetallic, a group of compounds rich in displaying superconductivity (e.g., NbTi, the mainstay of the MRI industry). Its crystal structure is hexagonal with alternating layers of Mg and B similar to some of the other intermetallics, and it is brittle, also a common property of intermetallics. Conventional superconductivity theory has long held that intermetallics comprised of light elements have a good chance of displaying relatively high transition temperatures and have been searched for years. How we missed MgB_2 is amazing. All indications are that the superconductivity in MgB_2 is of the old fashioned kind, charge pairing mediated by lattice vibrations, that Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer explained in the 50s, and is completely different from the high-Tc copper oxides whose superconductivity origin we still don't understand. In a well-known series of papers, at least to us in the "trade," the Russian Eliashberg and the American McMillian reformulated BCS theory to include extremely strong charge-lattice pairing and predicted an ultimate transition temperature for this mechanism of 40 K. Well, looks like it's been reached! Scientifically, I think MgB_B will be explained rather quickly. Materials Science and Properties: MgB_2 can be synthesized by several common solid-state reaction processes, the most common is to sinter the two metals at around 950 C. At this temperature, the vapor pressure of Mg is around 200 atm., so the reaction has to be enclosed in a thermally robust refractory vessel, commonly Ta. Already a team of workers at Iowa State, Ames, has made "toy wires" by reacting boron fibers with Mg vapor, which are of amazingly high quality. My instinct tells me there are a number of routes to practical wire production, despite the high Mg vapor pressues, based on the vast body of intermetallic chemical practice background. High magnetic field measurements show that, unlike the HTSC cuprates, critical current is not dominated by "weak links," a major problem in the latter. Right now Jc in the 30 -35 K range is of the order 10**4 A/cm**2, about where NbTi (Tc = 9 K) started and is now around 10**7. Jc in Type II superconductors is due to extrinsically introduced defects and is an art, but, if past is prologue, we're just starting with MgB_2 and progress upward will be fast. Applications: MgB_2 wire will be cheap. Both elements rank in the top ten percent abundance in the earth's crust, and I'm assuming large scale metallurgical manufacturing, similar to that for NbTi, will be achieved rather quickly. There are a number of applications, particularly transformers and uSMES, that could become cost effective at 30 K refrigeration and, in fact, have been under study using HTSC cuprates, but are currently deemed non-competitive in cost/performance. Cables present a very interesting case. Right now, the ac losses in superconducting cables, regardless of material, requires liquid cryogens be used to remove the heat as well as refrigerate the superconductor below its transition temperature. That's why transition temperatures above liquid nitrogen are deemed necessary for our current cables and the wire must be superconducting above that temperature. But what if we could use hydrogen? Last fall I made presentation to DOE of a total energy delivery concept based on a nuclear/hydrogen/superconductivity symbiosis...hydrogen and electricity produced by a nuke, liquid and cold gaseous hydrogen for both energy end use and cryogen for superconducting cables (I have a powerpoint copy if you're interested, and I'm currently working with SAIC and ANL on study proposal to submit to the recent SOE SPI solicitation). The transmission/distribution system would be relatively low voltage dc thus greatly alleviating thermal loss compared to ac, to the point I projected cold gaseous hydrogen could be used in the distribution system (the transmission cable would carry liquid hydrogen...incidentally, both liquid and gaseous hydrogen is no more dangerous then the equivalent phases of methane). All this assumed current technology HTSC cuprate superconducting wires, but now why not base the transmission system on MgB_2? Unidentified Superconducting Objects It seems like any new discovery in superconductivity results in an overflight of "unidentified superconducting objects," and the occasion of MgB_2 is no exception. Last week I received a preprint from a group at the University of Zagreb claiming Tc = 340 K in an AgPbCO compound (that's right 340 K...a mild night in Death Valley). I've known the PI, Daniel Djurek, since the 1970s, visited his lab several times, and although Zagreb is a generally excellent institution, Djurek comes out with wild claims now and then. This latest one I first heard in a talk he gave last year at an international superconductivity conference. No one, to my knowledge, has verified it. However, his latest work contains the most convincing magnetic shielding data I've ever seen from these sorts of "USOs" and I used to make a living doing those measurements. Unlike resistivity data, it's much harder to make experimental mistakes or misinterpretations, so, either there's something there or it's a forgery or other unknown blunder. Djurek has always been good in the past about letting others measure his samples (no one has ever found anything, though), so we'll see.