A New Approach to Fusion Energy

1
A New Approach to Fusion Energy

• D. C. Barnes
• coronadocon_at_msn.com
• FPA Pathways to the Future
• September 28, 2006

2
Outline

• Ultimate fusion neutronless
• Two new ideas (both for rotating plasmas)
• Use high T to make efficient heat engine
• Use rotation to make waves from static field
  (Doppler effect)
• Summary and plans

3
The challenge of aneutronic fusion

• p-11B is 1000 times more difficult than D-T
• T is 6 x and 3 electrons/ion ? n is 0. 05 x , and
  yield is 1/2 ? P' is 0.001 ? V is 1000 x
• Thermonuclear p-11B tokamak wont work (physics
  or economics)
• What alternatives might exist?
• Apply to D-T reduced size and field

4
How to lower the fusion threshold?

• Beam-target fusion
• 100 keV D beam into T plasma
• More heat than fusion

16 bar
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New idea 1 Heat engine power flow
Beam-target fusion gives this Qphys 10-20
Plant engineers see this Qeng 10
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Plasma Centrifuge Heat Engine for Colliding Beam
Fusion Reactor
Plasma Centrifuge Heat Engine for Continuous Beam
Fusion Reactor
Plasma Centrifuge Heat Engine Beam Fusion
Reactor
Patent Pending, App. No. 60/596567, USPTO
(2005). Patent Pending, App. No. 60/766791,
USPTO (2006). Patent Pending, App. No.
1153471, USPTO (2006).
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How to make plasma heat engine?

• Several ways
• Make potential field force on plasma
• Plasma does work against field, giving mechanical
  energy to source of field
• Barnes Nebel POPS (1998)
• Collisionless plasma can oscillate without
  entropy generation
• Chacón et al. work (2000)
• Thermonuclear plasma in equilibrium with low T
  particle replacement
• Continuous or oscillating

• Continuous trap (Pastukov 1974)

This result can be understood if one bears in
mind that all the energy of an escaping particle
consists of transverse motion,
If make B ? 0 at outflow, get low T exhaust!
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How to make plasma heat engine?

• Centrifugal well created in rotating plasma
• Make B and r small at ends where particles escape
• Open field is that outside a field reversed
  configuration (FRC)

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Supersonic rotating plasmas exist
Maryland Centrifugal eXperiment (MCX) From Ellis,
et al.
PSP-2 ½ MV Experiment at Novosibirsk From
Abdrashitov, et al.
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P-CHES D-T reactor
1T
1m

• High-b and beam-target operation implies low B
  operation 33 W/cm3 ? 400 MW

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P-CHES D-T reactor (cartoon approximation)

• Beam formed by electrostatic acceleration of
  injected, low-energy particles
• e.g. Ftrapped 0.45 W ? Vtrapped 200 kV

• Toroidal current driven by rotating magnetic
  field (RMF) with stationary dipole

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P-CHES on the path to fusion energy

• Form supersonically rotating FRC
• Study Tloss/Tcentral show small and dependencies
  to minimize
• Raise applied and induced voltage and inject beam
  to get fusion conditions
• D-T fusion system
• p-11B fusion system

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Forming rotating FRC

• New idea 2 Make and use waves with plasma
  rotation e.g. RMF

From Slough and Miller
From Hoffman, et al.
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Forming rotating FRC

• Firing end anodes produces rotating plasma

Rotating plasma sees RMF, producing FRC
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Summary and future

• A new paradigm is proposed
• Beam-target fusion with heat recovered to
  rotation
• High efficiency of beam formation from rotation
• Many advantages
• Very high power density
• Required T reduced (500 eV for D-T)
• Required confinement reduced (lt 1 ms for D-T)
• Static fields, DC operation

• Extensible to aneutronic systems
• 2 new ideas suggest a modest experiment
• Demonstrate formation of rotating FRC
• Heat engine physics diagnosed if warm FRC
  produced
• Propose future study
• Theory and design
• Small experiment