Interesting, the very limited exposure I have had to FRC schemes was geared more towards steady state with the reversed plasmoid essentially acting as a tiny spheromak to be pumped with RF or neutral beam heating. Again not really my area.Skipjack wrote: A FRC plasmoid is created at each end of the device. The two plasmoids are accelerated, translated using pulsed magnetic fields until they are colliding in a central burn chamber. The burn chamber is surrounded by a simple cylindrical lithium blanket. All the expensive equipment is at the far ends of the device. I also think that at least Helion expects to get away without superconducting magnets.
Pulsing would rule out superconducting coils. I wonder what magnetic field strength they are aiming for; i.e. how much power they will be dumping into copper solenoids. My guess is they are shooting for densities much higher than a typical tokamak to make up for the low confinement time?
It seems that Helion is basically the same concept as General Fusion but with a final compression stage using a theta pinch rather than a physical shockwave.