Fusion for what?

"Off the top of my head, here are some fusion highlights for the last 60+ years:

1. 1958 - Scylla I demonstrating controlled fusion.  This was the first man-made device which gave us controlled fusion.  It was a pinch machine, a long cylinder of metal with some deuterium gas inside.  A large current shot down the sides, leading to a 15 million degree plasma.  This was important because it was the first machine to do this. 

2. May 1, 1974 - KMS Fusion demonstrates first laser induced fusion event. Laser hits the target, we get fusion. This is a milestone in the ICF effort which leads to NIF, OMEGA, Laser Meajoule, GECKO, ect...

3. December 23rd 1982 - the TFTR tokamak gets first plasma at Princeton.  This was an important milestone for the US tokamak effort.  Today over 200 tokamaks have been run/planned/decommissioned around the world.

4. 1982 - Direct conversion demonstrates a 48% power capture on the TMX-U magnetic mirror fusion machine. This was done by Dr. Raulph Moir and Dr. William Barr at Livermore in 1986 - 1987.  This is important because it hints that fusion power plants could be run at a very high efficiency.

5. 1991 - JET has the first controlled release of fusion energy. Power extraction - pretty important. JET goes on (in 1997) to set a world record in density, temperature and time.

6. 1999 - Richard Hull fuses the atom in his shed.  This was important because it launched the whole amateur fusion effort, leading to Taylor Wilson, Jamie Edwards, Conrad Farnsworth, the Northwest Nuclear Consortium, ect...  I personally think amateur fusion might play a HUGE role in fusion power.

7. 2012 - University of Washington invents a new way to heat plasma (using induction) on the HIt-SI spherical tokamak.  An over simplified explaination but: when plasma spins it wobbles - this team imposed a wobble and got spinning.  The team hopes this leads to a machine called the dynomak.

8. 2013 - EMC2 Demonstrates Cusp Confinement.  Long predicted, long sought-after idealized trap, where the plasma rejects the outside field.  This is approach to trapping is part of a whole new type of trap and whole family of proposed fusion devices/efforts: ringed picket fence, Lockheeds' compact fusion reaction, the toramac, biconic cusp, ect. 

9. 2015 - Tri Alpha Energy holds a FRC for the duration of the run.  This is important because it was done by a private company and set a world record for FRC stability. Presumably, if they can keep the machine on for 3 hours - they will get a 3 hour FRC.  It also provides us a window into quasi-stable plasma structures for fusion.  TAE did this with the same basic idea they had in 1998 when the company was founded - if we had funded them we would have gotten there much faster.

---

If I had more time, I could give you some more...

This is not a milestone but it is a trend worth mentioning: the rise of high temperature super conductors in fusion.  This has lead to several researchers re-designing their machines, which should lower their costs and size.  This includes Dr. Dennis Whyte ARC Reactor design at MIT and Tokamak Energys' small tokamak (shown below) in England.

Note that 3 of the 4 accomplishments after 1999 were done without government support; outside of the federal effort.  In the last 5 to 10 years, the US has focused the lions share of the ~500 million annual fusion budget on either NIF or ITER.  This has starved many, many other ideas and teams.  I recently wrote a letter to a congressman about it..."

#fusion
#plasa
#reactorcore
#nuclear
#atom