Personally, I suspect he was talking about ICF, not IEC, especially given reference to the hybrid system that UTexas is proposing. ICF neutron source, thorium reactor IIRC which I may not be!
Of course, given his roots, who knows? He may have been talking about both.
Well, ICC could mean "innovative confinement concepts" which includes IEC, as well as FRCs, RFPs, spheromaks, and even spherical tori by some definitions.
Solo wrote:Well, ICC could mean "innovative confinement concepts" which includes IEC, as well as FRCs, RFPs, spheromaks, and even spherical tori by some definitions.
Is this "prior art" in fusion lingo? Cite? It is not in wikipedia, not that that is definitive!
I think Miley is criticizing the Tokamak approach and is insisting that more money be put into other approaches including IEC polywell and the like. I don't think he is arguing that the IEC polywell is the only approach that should be funded, but that others, such as FRC and spheromak should be funded as well. Also, the hybrid fusion-fission concept as well. I think these other approaches should be funded as well. We still have no guarantee that IEC polywell will work. It is silly to put all of our eggs into one basket (Tokamak), but that is the nature of bureaucracy driven science.