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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday February 18 2020, @02:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the playing-with-atoms dept.

Nuclear Fusion Power Without Regular Tokamaks Or Stellarators:

When it comes to nuclear fusion, the most well-known reactor type today is no doubt the tokamak, due to its relatively straight-forward concept of plasma containment. That's not to say that there aren't other ways to accomplish nuclear fusion in a way that could conceivably be used in a commercial power plant in the near future.

As we covered previously, another fairly well-known type of fusion reactor is the stellarator, which much like the tokamak, has been around since the 1950s. There are other reactor types from that era, like the Z-pinch, but they seem to have all fallen into obscurity. That is not to say that research on Z-pinch reactors has ceased, or that other reactor concepts — some involving massive lasers — haven't been investigated or even built since then.

In this article we'll take a look at a range of nuclear fusion reactor types that definitely deserve a bit more time in the limelight.

[...] Inertial Confinement Fusion

[...] Magnetic Confinement Fusion

[...] All the Other Designs


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:11PM (3 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:11PM (#959559) Journal

    Vague enough that I'd say, for example, the Lawerenceville Plasma Physics' Focus Fusion device [lppfusion.com] counts. The fact that they're very public with their engineering changes and experimental results is probably a offset by the fact that their head scientist is a(maybe the) plasma cosmology fringe nutter.

    But the engineering work do seems to be sound, and the results of their experiments seem to be largely in compliance with the underlying plasma models used for z-pinch machines.

    H-B is a pipe dream, though.

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  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by DannyB on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:14PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:14PM (#959562) Journal

    H-B is a pipe dream, though.

    H1B is easy to get however.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:38PM (1 child)

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:38PM (#959572) Journal

    I would say this quote from their site still puts them in the novelty category.

    November 10, 2019

    LPPFusion’s efforts to reduce troublesome oscillations in our FF-2B experimental fusion device have started to make progress.

    https://lppfusion.com/oscillations-down-fusion-yield-up/ [lppfusion.com]

    Something that's only good in the lab is a novelty. At best it's a functional prototype. Still, a functional prototype, is only good, if it then leads to a successful product.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:43PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:43PM (#959576) Journal

      I don't entirely understand your reasoning, but I also don't think there's anything to gain by trying to convince you of something different.

      Thank you for your clarification.