Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are adding tiny, Swiss-cheese-type holes to components to improve fusion energy generation processes. Above -PPPL physicist Andrei Khodak next to diagrams showing his concept for a porous fusion facility wall (Collage by Elle Starkman / PPPL Office of Communications) New computer simulations …
The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and General Fusion have announced an agreement under which General Fusion will build and operate its Fusion Demonstration Plant (FDP) at UKAEA’s Culham Campus. General Fusion will enter into a long-term lease with UKAEA following construction of a new facility at Culham to host the FDP. The FDP will …
The Limitless Space Institute had a report from its Interstellar Initiative Grant recipients. One of the presenters is from the University of Albama who are working on a sub-kilowatt system to generate nuclear fusion pulses for propulsion. Dr. Jason Cassibry, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and an assistant research professor at the …
TAE has produced a stable plasma at 50,000,000°C within a compact reactor and repeated this over hundreds of testing cycles. They have had over 25,000 fully integrated fusion reactor core experiments. The experiments were optimized with machine learning from a collaboration with Google. The current goal is a commercial fusion power plant by 2030. They …
The Helicity Drive concept is a novel magneto-inertial fusion concept designed for a fusion space propulsion system. It has promising Lawson criterion performance scaling with input geometry resulting in power output that is uniquely scalable across thrust power classes (10s kW to GW levels) at high specific power. It exploits magnetic reconnection as a fast, …
Fission/fusion hybrid and pulsed fusion propulsion have been shown to significantly reduce the trip times for space travel. The specific approach being pursued at UAH PRC is called z-pinch. Jason Cassibry has been funded by Limitless Space Institute to study and advance 100 kev nuclear pinch propulsion. They have a near-term goal of scaling to …
Direct Drive Centrifugal Fusion has achieved 25 MW for parts of demonstrations in the lab. The ISP is 60 times too high for an optimal Mars mission and the thrust is 60 times too low. They have received a Limitless Space Institute grant and are working towards improving their system to become practical for rapid …
Limitless Space Institute is sponsoring student programs and giving away about $2 million every two years in grants for work towards enabling interstellar travel. They gave out nine grants. Limitless Space Institute is working with the Breakthrough Institute. Limitless Space Institute is led by Sonny White. Sonny White and his team is also working on …
A Masters Thesis analyzed a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan using the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Direct Drive Fusion system. The Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) is based on a D-3He fueled, aneutronic, thermonuclear fusion propulsion system. He considered a 2-MW-class single DFD module, which provides 8 N of constant thrust and a specific impulse of …
Commonwealth Fusion Systems new high-temperature superconductor (HTS) cable can be engineered into magnets directly applicable to the high magnetic field approach to fusion. The new HTS cable, called VIPER, can carry over fifty thousand amps of current with magnetic fields over 10 Tesla. Some fusion magnets need to turn on and off continually. VIPER was …
The SPARC Fusion reactor team have made good theoretical progress to the goal of a commercial nuclear fusion reactor. SPARC is a compact, high-field, DT burning tokamak, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The SPARC design with a 12.2 tesla magnetic field and 8.7 megaamps and Ion Cyclotron Range of Frequency …
