kurt9 wrote:chrismb wrote:There are piles of fusion hopefuls. I've been meaning to get a list together of all the different types, past and current.
You should do that. I would be interested in seeing it.
Ask, and ye shall receive;
I've been meaning to kick off this list for a while. As I've researched this subject to gain my own understanding of whether any practical solutions exist for fusion energy, I've come across so many experimental fusion attempts that all extant lists of fusion experiments seem hopelessly wanting and out of date. I hope that many of the ones below might be quite unknown to the reader (and might encourage further study and reading on them) as they don't appear to have been authored into any singular list before. There are vast swathes of literature and factoids to be found behind each and every one of these titles.
Enjoy!:
PIONEERS:
Beam-target (Olliphant, 1934)
Magneto-electrostatic toroid trap (ATOLL, Artsimovich)
Convergent shock-waves (Huemul, Argentina)
Project GNOME (Carlsbad)
Toroidal z-pinch (ZETA)
tokamak (T-1 to 10, Kurchatov Institute)
MAGNETIC:
High beta tokamak (HBT-EP)
stellarator (Wendelstein W 7-X)
Compact stellarator (NCSX Princeton [cancelled])
reversed field pinch (RFX-Mod Italy)
spheromak (SSPX Lawrence Livermore)
spherical tokamak (MAST)
tandem mirror (Gamma-10 Japan)
Galatea (Tornado)
Galatea [magnetic suspension] (Levitron)
accelerated FRC (TCS-U)
LDX
odd-parity RMF
INERTIAL:
Laser Inertial (NIF)
Heavy Ion fusion (HIFAR Lawrence Berkeley)
Z-PINCH:
Pulsed z-pinch (Saturn, Sandia)
Staged Z-pinch (ZOT)
Wire array Z-pinch (Z-machine, Sandia)
High density Z-pinch (MAGPIE Imperial College)
Inverse Z-pinch
ELECTROSTATIC:
Fusor (Fusor, Farnsworth)
IEC (fusor, hirsh-meeks)
Polywell (WB-1 to 7, Bussard)
IEC (POPS)
IEC, plasma electrode (PoF, Sanns)
IEC, beam/spherical capacitor (STAR, Sesselmann)
OTHER/COMBINATORIAL:
Flow Pinch (ZAP, Uni Washington)
CT Accel (CTIX, UC Davis)
magneto-kinetic (PHDX, Plasma Dynamic Lab)
magnetized target (AFRL, LANL)
magneto-inertial (OMEGA laser, LLE, Rochester)
levitated dipole [superconducting] (LDX, MIT, PSGC)
Maryland Centrifugal (MCX)
Sheared magnetofluid/Bernouilli confinement (MBX, Uni Texas)
Penning fusion (PFX, LANL)
plasma jets (HyperV, Chantilly)
magnetised target fusion with mechanical compression (General Fusion, Burnaby)
Field-reversed colliding beams (Tri-Alpha)
multi-beam accelerator (MIGMA)
Piezo/Lithium tantalate (UCLA, Putterman)
sonofusion (ORNL, Taleyarkhan)
LENR/electrolysis cell (need I say the names!!)
Muon catalysed fusion (Berkeley, Alvarez)
Focus fusion (DPF, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Lerner)
Rotating lithium wall (RWE, Maryland)
Notes;
1) I have included one meritous example of each of the fusion methods. Some have many examples, some have just one. There is no order of merit or likelihood of success, etc., implied.
2) I have included methods that I feel differ from all the others in some particular distinct mechanistic way that might conceivably enable stable fusion in a unique manner to the others. A debate can be had over whether, e.g., a tokamak and a spherical tokamak should have separate entries and I am happy to delete examples of what come to be considered 'the same type' where it is correctly argued - but it's my list so ultimately I decide!
3) I have included only *actual physical experiments* that are in the public domain, that have been built in the past or are currently in use or assembly, and are also backed up by either a) numerical simulation, or b) measurements of fusion products. (I've included LENR and sonofusion as results of fusion products have been reported in peer reviewed press, which is a sufficient standard of evidence for this list.)
4) This is my list, and thus my ©copyright, which I state simply so it doesn't get reproduced elsewhere with the addition of someone's 'spark-in-a-bottle' experiment. (Though that would already be included in 'pulsed z-pinch' anyway.)
I will maintain this list in its own thread on;
http://www.fusor.net/board/view.php?bn= ... 1241252795