Reply To: Investment risk

[asymmetric_implosion]

Vlad: You need to be a bit careful using temperature and ion energy seemingly interchangeably. Temperature is key in thermal fusion devices. In principle, you can have a cold plasma that produces neutrons very well in a pinch. Pinch devices exploit the instabilities to produce non-thermal ions, ions that don’t conform to a thermal distribution. It is of these ions that efficiently produce neutrons. Small PF devices which have temperatures of less than 1 keV can produce neutrons well beyond the expectations of thermal calculations. LPP hypothesizes that their configuration to place a lower limit on the ion energies. If the LPP approach works, energies below 200 keV would not be relevant to the problem. It’s not clear how far the lower limit can be pushed up but the higher the better for p+11B.

As far as the “honest” calculation goes, a great deal of engineering is required to prove that the energy from RLC ring can be recycled. I’ve looked into using energy recovery technology for a small PF device in the past. State of the art technology was nearly enough to work at the 60 kA level. At 3 MA, it seems unlikely with current materials.

Francisl: The MAGLIF concept implodes a pre-magnetized, 100 eV plasma into a pinch. The initial magnetic field is flux compressed limiting the heat transfer of electrons and partly trapping alpha particles. The approach relies heavily on a thermal DT plasma. The density and magnetic field should suppress fast ions that the LPP approach relies on.