June 2019 | C.K. Lau | Nuclear Fusion | Paper
Recent local simulations of the field-reversed configuration (FRC) have reported drift-wave stability in the core and instability in the scrape-off layer (SOL). However, experimental measurements indicate the existence of fluctuations in both FRC core and SOL, with much lower amplitude fluctuations measured in the core.
June 2019 | S.V. Putvinski | Nuclear Fusion | Paper
Fusion reactivity for the pB11 fuel has been reassessed for magnetic confinement devices. This study is based on two factors: new measurements of the fusion reaction cross-sections and an accounting of the kinetic effects that lead to the increase of the number of protons at higher energies (with respect to a pure Maxwellian).
June 2019 | T. Asai | Nuclear Fusion | Paper
Collisional merging formation of field-reversed configurations (FRCs) at super Alfvénic velocity have been successfully initiated in the FAT-CM device at Nihon University. It is experimentally evidenced that the quiescent FRC profile is formed in a self-organizational manner after distructive disturbances by the super Alfvénic collision of two translated magnetized plasmoids.
As CEO of TAE Technologies, the world’s largest private fusion reactor company, Michl Binderbauer is one of those who believes that fusion power could be on the near horizon – and is using artificial intelligence co-developed with Google to help make it a reality.
June 2019 | H. Gota | Nuclear Fusion | Paper
TAE Technologies’ research is devoted to producing high temperature, stable, long-lived field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasmas by neutral-beam injection (NBI) and edge biasing/control.
So far, Norman has produced vortices with temperatures of 3.5m°C that last around ten milliseconds, rather than the microseconds of a conventional frc. TAE hopes, by the end of this year, to have increased that temperature to around 30m°C, and tripled the plasma’s lifetime. All of which is clever. But what makes the firm’s approach special is that it plans to eschew deuterium and tritium in favour of normal hydrogen (the nucleus of which is a lone proton) and boron.