Patent Number: 040653510
Section: summary

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION In the field of physics it is desirable to inject high energy particles into a toroidal container to produce colliding beams, and reaction products from reactions that convert one form of energy into another, such reactions being described in "Controlled Thermonuclear Reactions," by Glasstone and Lovberg, 1960, which is incorporated by reference herein, but the systems known heretofore were limited to low density beams, and correspondingly low reaction rates, or they required large and cumbersome apparatus, or were otherwise ineffective, inefficient or troublesome. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION This invention provides a poloidal divertor for stacking counterstreaming ion beams to provide high intensity colliding beams. To this end apparatus and method are provided that injects opposing, neutral, high energy, high velocity, ordered, atomic deuterium and tritium beams into a lower energy, neutral, toroidal, thermal equilibrium, target plasma that is magnetically confined in a vacuum tight toroidal housing along an endless magnetic axis by a strong restoring force magnetic field having helical field lines. The plasma converts the neutral beams into thermal electrons and stacked ions that drift along the helical magnetic field lines as stacked, counterstreaming deuteron and triton beams that collide head-on all along the magnetic axis, while the poloidal divertor removes thermal ions and electrons in equal numbers to balance the injection rate. By confining the plasma in a strong restoring force toroidal magnetic having a poloidal divertor, the counterstreaming ion beams are confined and stacked at high densities for up to 1 or 2 density-confinement times, or more, for producing high reaction rates all along an endless magnetic axis. Moreover, large numbers of useful reaction products are produced all along the toroidal target plasma column, and these products can be removed, captured, or used in a conventional manner. In one embodiment, this invention provides apparatus and method for injecting high energy, atomic deuterium and tritium beams into a confining magnetic field containing a lower energy, neutral, toroidal, thermal equilibrium target plasma, comprising vacuum container means having an endless first axis, vacuum pump means and entrance and exit port means communicating with the inside of the container means; means for forming a strong restoring force confining magnetic field having helical field lines forming inner and outer concentric magnetic surfaces centered on an extended magnetic second axis concentric with the first axis in the container means; means for forming an equilibrium, thermal, target plasma column of disassociated electrons, tritons and deuterium ions that are confined by the magnetic field in said column in the container means along the endless magnetic axis at an elevated temperature that causes the ions to diffuse by collisions outwardly away from the magnetic axis toward the vacuum container means; means for continuously injecting neutral atomic beams of deuterium and tritium through the entrance ports to produce thermal electrons and counterstreaming deuterons and tritons in the plasma column along the magnetic axis at energies above the energy of the target plasma; the injection forming ordered, high energy, stacked, high velocity, counterstreaming, deuterons and tritons that circulate along the helical field lines with distinct ion velocity distributions that are oppositely displaced in velocity along the magnetic axis while the helical field lines provide strong restoring forces that maintain the directedness of the fast deuterons and tritons along the magnetic axis until they slow down to the average energy of the confined neutral, thermal, target plasma column, thereby to maintain the plasma temperature by stacking the counterstreaming beams for many orbits around the length of the axis at a rate in balance with the diffusion rate; and divertor means communicating with the field lines of the outer magnetic surfaces having vacuum pumping means for collecting diffusing thermal plasma particles through the exit ports and burying them as they diffuse outwardly from the magnetic axis so as to maintain high counterstreaming fast deuteron and triton number densities and balanced thermal diffusion and injections rates. OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION It is an object of this invention, therefore, to provide a means and method for injecting neutral atomic beams of tritium and deuterium into a magnetically confined equilibrium target plasma column along trajectories that produce high energy, high velocity, ordered, counterstreaming deuterons and tritons along the magnetic axis at a high energy above the energy of the target plasma column.