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Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy

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Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy
> http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/06/mystery-company-blazes-trail-fusion-energy
> http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/thumb_article_l/public/sn-fusuion.jpg

> Of the handful of startup companies trying to achieve fusion energy
> via nontraditional methods, Tri Alpha Energy Inc. has always been the
> enigma. Publishing little and with no website, but apparently sitting
> on a cash pile in the hundreds of millions, the Foothill Ranch,
> California–based company has been the subject of intense curiosity
> and speculation. But last month Tri Alpha lifted the veil slightly
> with two papers revealing that its device, dubbed the colliding beam
> fusion reactor, has shown a 10-fold improvement in its ability to
> contain the hot particles needed for fusion over earlier devices at
> U.S. universities and national labs.
>
> “They’ve improved things greatly and are moving in a direction that
> is quite promising,” says plasma physicist John Santarius of the
> Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
>
> Fusion energy seeks to replicate the power source of the sun and
> stars: heating atoms to enormous temperatures so that their nuclei
> slam together with enough force to overcome their mutual repulsion
> and fuse, releasing energy. The challenge on Earth is to confine
> plasma—an ionized gas, with electrons and nuclei separated—at high
> temperatures (greater than 150 million degrees Celsius) long enough
> for fusion reactions to occur. Most effort over the past 60 years of
> fusion research has focused on tokamaks—huge doughnut-shaped vessels
> that confine plasma with powerful magnets—and laser fusion, which
> uses high-energy laser pulses to squeeze tiny capsules of fuel. But
> between these low-density and high-density extremes there is a range
> of other approaches that have received little government funding.
> Now, startup companies are moving into that vacuum.
>
> Tri Alpha’s device relies on a plasma phenomenon called a
> field-reversed configuration (FRC), akin to a smoke ring of plasma.
> Because plasma is made of charged particles (electrons and nuclei),
> the swirling particles in the FRC create a magnetic field that acts
> to hold the ring together, potentially long enough for fusion to get
> going. Tri Alpha’s 23-meter-long device has at its heart a long tube
> with numerous ring-shaped magnets and other devices along its length.
> It creates a plasma smoke ring close to each end and fires them
> toward the middle at 250 kilometers per second. At the center they
> merge, converting their kinetic energy into heat to produce a
> high-temperature FRC.
>


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Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2015-06-03 06:46 -0500
  Re: Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy "reber g=emc^2" <herbertglazier0@gmail.com> - 2015-06-03 08:54 -0700
  Re: Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2015-06-03 10:58 -0500
  Re: Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy HVAC <Mr.HVAC@gmail.com> - 2015-06-03 17:55 -0400
    Re: Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy "hanson" <hanson@quick.net> - 2015-06-03 15:34 -0700
    Re: Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy benj <nobody@gmail.com> - 2015-06-03 23:25 -0400
      Re: Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy HVAC <Mr.HVAC@gmail.com> - 2015-06-04 06:10 -0400

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