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Prospects for Low Cost Fusion Development

Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2019 12:51 pm
by crowberry
This documents reports on an ARPA-E sponsored JASON assessment of the “Prospects for Low Cost Fusion Development.” Specifically, the question is whether magneto-inertial fusion (MIF) is a promising approach toward achieving controlled thermonuclear fusion at dramatically lower costs than other approaches.
Table 5 gives an overview of goal parameters and in some cases achieved parameters for the different fusion approaches.

https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=site-page/ ... evelopment

The report can also be downloaded from here: https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/

Re: Prospects for Low Cost Fusion Development

Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:09 am
by Skipjack
Is from last November. I think it was posted here before.
I don't like it much. It seems overly pessimistic and gets some technical details wrong.
E.g. the assumption that a machine capable of achieving scientific break even would cost several hundred million is unfounded. Helion is building a full scale prototype right now with a budget of <40 million.
ZAP (the sheared flow stabilized Z- Pinch) would probably not need more than that.
He did not get the details about Helion's concept right either and he assumes that He3 would be hard to come by.