3 ms·

(2004)

• PaulHoule 5y ago
  Unfortunately it's not that active of a research area and newer papers on the topic aren't that much better. The trouble w/ heavy ion fusion is that you need a huge machine to reach the minimum particle energy so that the particles get absorbed in the outer layers of the target. The major advantages relative to lasers are twofold: (1) the heavy ion accelerator is at least 10 more times energy efficient than a laser so breakeven is more plausible than laser fusion. (2) the heavy ion accelerator could plausibly shoot 5-10 a second, the laser is more capable of more 5-10 a day with the difficulty of cooling out the amplifier glass. Any heavy ion fusion lab is going to be a huge expensive facility but scale up to a commercial energy facility looks possible whereas the laser doesn't.