Reply To: What are the top Alternative Fusion candidates?

[Brian H]

Transmute wrote: As long as its energy positive and cheap, this is where tokamak fails (ungodly expensive). If DPF fusion only manages a source-to-gird net energy of 110% its will still be worth its as long as its producing a few megawatts per cheap reactor. Tokamak is predicted to be producing 1MW per $25 million in its construction and research, coal power plants is at $1.3 million per MW (not include the price of coal) and if its works as claimed DPF could do $.2 million or less per MW! but yes monkeys could help.

In imagistic terms, it seems to me what FF has achieved is the exploitation of a discontinuity, or tipping point, such that a tiny amount of the right stuff is induced to self-constrict into a tiny volume with exponentially escalating pressure and temperature. The “break” that stops the process is the absorption of the hydrogen and breakup of the C12, which transforms the magnetic and temperature energies into a kinetic jet of H3. Which is easily “bled” of its power in a solenoid. The “bigger boxes”, like ITER, are playing on scales where there is no mechanism for self-containment, and no way to keep the reacting elements in contact long enough. Gravity works on large, stellar scales, and “pinch” magnetic effects on the FF scale, but in between is pure energy sink wasteland.