Reply To: Fusion Oil

[Brian H]

Lerner wrote: You are right Brian—shorting out the coil can be a problem, But it is not shorting it to the plasma—we can have a ceramic insulator around it, and the magnetic fields that induce the current will penetrate the insulator. But the plasma itself could carry the return current—the electrons moving in the same direction as the ions. We have to make sure that this return current has higher resistivity than the coil and moves outside the coil. That could involve manipulating the plasma density by putting a magnetic mirror at the entrance to the drift tube. Since the background plasma in the chamber is not very hot, it is much easier to control than fusion plasma.

Yes, I see. I had already begun to think about simple insulation for the coil, but still wondered how the alpha beam would behave in the plasma, and what the overall “circuit” would look like. (Clearly the helium ions would be neutralized in the receiver chamber, but I couldn’t visualize the overall electron flow.) So I assume the m-mirror would be negatively charged to exclude free electrons? Or is it a more complex device?
Edit: I’ve looked up m-mirror, and see that it is like an onion of mag fields that pinch and reflect ions. There’s a fusion design based on them. I’ll add a link to the Fusion Alternatives thread!