6th Symposium on Current Trends in International Fusion Research

Posted by Admin on Mar 08, 2005 at 09:43 PM
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Sentiment at the Symposium

The symposium in DC, an every-other year fusion summit,  was extremely interesting and productive. Sentiment in the fusion research community is certainly hardening against the boondoggle of the International Tokomak Experimental Reactor (ITER), which was roundly denounced by several speakers as a waste of money.

In particular researchers are alarmed that the US contribution to ITER, rapidly rising to $150 million a year, will be taken from other fusion research, killing what’s left. Bruno Coppi of MIT, one of the most senior and respected researchers (whose research focuses on small-scale tokomaks) delivered a blistering critique of the folly of the current DOE fusion program. He compared the idea of a single big 35-year long fusion experiment to building a single hospital to find a cure for cancer. Instead he strongly urged that the fusion program emphasize broad-based scientific research, including funding for many different devices. He emphasized the need to link fusion with other fields, especially astrophysics. Finally he urged that advanced fuels, such as pB11 not be neglected, as they have been up to now.

Our Presentation

Our presentation directly followed Dr. Coppi’s speech, which was encouraging, since of course, it dealt with non-tokomak devices, advanced fuels, and connections with astrophysics (both my basic theory, with its roots in the study of quasars, and the magnetic field effect, which has been applied to neutron sorts, have close ties to astrophysics.) FFS Exectuive Director Lerner presented our overall approach and recent simulation runs, while our collaborator, Dr. Robert Terry of Naval Research Lab, presented his “fluid particle” ideas for simulating the vortex filaments and plasmoids. The reaction was entirely favorable. Dr. Coppi in particular said that this approach was certain to produce interesting and important results, that we had a strong team and that “somehow, we must find funding for it.”

TriAlpha Energy at the Symposium

Ours was not the only group aiming at pB11 fusion at the symposium. TriAlpha Energy also presented their work, which is privately funded on a large scale.  This approach involved shooting two counter-circulating beams of ions at each other in a confining magnetic field. However, ion densities would always be very low. TiAlpha combined this idea with another device, the Field Reversed Configuration, sending the beams into the FRC.

The FRC is essentially a large-scale plasmoid centimeters rather microns across, with much lower densities and magnetic fields than with the DPF. It does not benefit from the magnetic field effect. Scientifically, TriAlpha’s results so far are very modest compared with focus fusion’s. The average ion energy, a measure of plasma temperature is a few 10’s of eV. This is a factor of 10,000 short of what is required for pB11 fusion. Of course, focus fusion has already achieved the needed ion energies (100keV) with focus fusion. In addition, it is by no means guaranteed that their confinement will remain stable if they can reach higher temperatures.However, TriAlpha has been impressive at raising private funds. So far they have raised nearly 12 million dollars, beginning in 2000, mostly from two investors.