New Approach to Achieving Ignition in a Small-Scale FRC Fusion Reactor

A new method for FRC formation and compression will be presented that based on previous FRC empirical scaling should achieve fusion ignition. This is accomplished in a manner consistent with long-term repetitive pulsing utilizing only solid-state pulse power. It is also capable of direct electrical conversion of the fusion alpha energy thereby offering nearly the same efficacy as steady-state operation. The Al-Be metal solenoidal coils that surround the 10 cm ID cylindrical burn chamber operate at 10 T. The 1 ms travelling FRC fusion burn produces an energy yield of 10 MJ/pulse. Due to the unavoidably steep gradients at the FRC edge, the compression process maintains the separatrix to coil ratio near unity thereby keeping the edge density low unlike flux compression which increases the density gradient. A high-flux formation method is also critical as FRC confinement scales directly with FRC poloidal flux. It is unlikely that sufficient flux (> 50 mWb) can be achieved by employing the field-reversed pinch technique due to destructive instabilities during formation. Intense neutral beam injection, even to the point of being the dominant energy component, also does not appear to increase the FRC flux. Merging FRC formation is actually detrimental as it delays achieving a quiescent equilibrium. FRC fusion schemes that rely on these methods are also incompatible with DT operation and thus play no role in this new approach. The FRC can be formed efficiently and at sufficiently high poloidal flux by employing the Rotating Magnetic Field (RMF) formation technique to a chamber of sufficient size (~ 0.8 m radius). This is only a factor of two larger than that employed in the experiments at the University of Washington where FRCs were successfully formed and sustained at temperatures greater than 200 eV which was more than sufficient for the pre-compressed startup FRC desired. Details of the entire formation, compression, burn and energy recovery phases will be presented.