Prospects for Low Cost Fusion Development

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

Post Reply
crowberry
Posts: 672
Joined: Sun Sep 08, 2013 6:34 am

Prospects for Low Cost Fusion Development

Post 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/

Skipjack
Posts: 6805
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Re: Prospects for Low Cost Fusion Development

Post 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.

Post Reply