Exploring lower-cost pathways to economical fusion power
This project, the Plasma Liner Experiment–ALPHA (PLX-α)5,is one of nine projects supported by the ALPHA Program6 of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). We use innovative, low-cost coaxial plasma guns (Fig. 1), developed and built by partner HyperV Technologies Corp.7, to launch a spherically converging array of supersonic plasma jets toward the middle of a large, spherical vacuum chamber (Fig. 2). A key near-term goal of PLX-α is to merge up to 60 plasma jets to form a spherically imploding plasma liner, as a low-cost, high-shot-rate driver for compressing magnetised target plasmas to fusion conditions. Our approach is known as plasma-jet-driven MIF (or PJMIF)8. A new startup company HyperJet Fusion Corporation (which recently received seed funding from Strong Atomics, LLC, a new fusion venture fund) aims to develop PJMIF under continued public and private sponsorship.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1406229
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-17-25642
- Journal Information:
- Open Access Government, Vol. 2017, Issue August; ISSN 2055-7612
- Publisher:
- Adjacent Digital Politics LtdCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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