Patent Number: 043549993
Section: summary

Over the past 20 years the scientific community has undertaken one of the most difficult tasks in technology, that of devising a feasible method of, and apparatus for, atomic fusion. Because of the limited supply of fossil fuels (i.e., coal, oil, natural gas), recently much attention has been directed to the problem of developing a nuclear fusion reactor. A device of this type could provide a solution to the world's power supply shortage since one of the basic fuels is deuterium, or heavy hydrogen which is contained in the oceans in nearly inexhaustible amounts. Furthermore, a fusion reactor would be inherently stable and not subject to explosion. Hence, if fusion reactors can be made to yield useful power, it will solve the earth's fuel problem. Of the dozens of proposed nuclear fusion reactors, few seem to show an immediate potential feasibility for producing controlled atomic fusion. The large repellent forces, caused by the positive electronic charges on the nuclei prevent the nuclear collisions that are necessary to produce fusion reactions. Only those reactors with nuclear fusion cross sections larger than a millibar (10.sup.-27 cm.sup.2) or energy below 50 KEV merit consideration. Any system for net power production from nuclear fusion must provide an area where the fuel nucleus undergoes many collisions with other nuclei before leaving the system. Therefore, any fuel entering the system will become randomized and develop a kinetic equilibrium described by a temperature (Maxwellian Distribution) and should be in the form of a hot gas. A great many problems are associated in creating the conditions just described. Two of the most fundamental problems lie in the realm of plasma physics, namely; confinement and heating of plasma. The problem of heating a plasma to the required temperature and confining it for the length of time implied by the Lawson criteria, has occupied the attention of hundreds of scientists and engineers in a dozen countries for about 20 years. Confinement may be accomplished either by a gravitational or electromagnetic field. Failing this only inertially confined system (explosions) can be utilized. All prior magnetic containers for hot plasma devices known to me fall into two general categories: those that are closed and those that are open. Neither of these systems are suitable by themselves for stable confinement. An open system can be made suitable by the addition of conventional "Ioffe bar" named after the Russian Physicist who announced his advancement in 1961. Although the Ioffe bar system creates a stable confinement, those plasma particles with velocities parallel to a field line (i.e., parallel to the longitudinal axis) leave the volume and escapes directly along the line creating large end losses.