Thanks, Ivy Matt. It’s still not making sense to me. It is the product of the fusion, the high energy helium nuclei (alpha particles), that carries the output energy of the system, is it not? Isn’t that what the focused beam will consist of? When talking about the plasmoids, aren’t we talking about different stuff – plasma created from the current from the capacitors that compresses ambient fuel to produce the fusion?

Wouldn’t it be the case that if the components of the fusion-triggering plasma do end up in the beams, they are there only incidentally? Isn’t the great majority of the energy in the beam specifically the alpha particles?

Cheers,
Neil Ferguson