3 ms·
What about "magnetic mirrors"? https://www.llnl.gov/archives/1980s/mirror-fusion-test-facility https://www.llnl.gov/archives/1980s/mirror-fusion-test-facil...
by pstuart 5y ago
What about "magnetic mirrors"? https://www.llnl.gov/archives/1980s/mirror-fusion-test-facility https://www.llnl.gov/archives/1980s/mirror-fusion-test-facil...
I recall hearing a scientist from the lab say that was the way to go and they mothballed it because they wanted to focus on weapons research.
- willis936 5y agoMirrors are interesting. They hit very high performance metrics in a small budget. However they have this pesky issue of requiring an electrostatic field. Conduction losses are a killer, scale up in nasty ways, and ablate material quickly. In terms of inexpensive neutron sources: they're perhaps some of the best we have.