High beta fusion reactor

The Lockheed Martin Compact Fusion Reactor (also known as a high-beta fusion reactor, or the 4th generation prototype T4) is a project being developed by a team led by Charles Chase of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. The project was first presented at the Google Solve for X forum on February 7, 2013.

The "high beta" configuration allows a compact fusion reactor design and speedier development timeline. The plan was to "build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year with a prototype to follow within five years." The prototype would be a 100-megawatt deuterium and tritium reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet that could fit on the back of a large truck and be about 10 times smaller than current reactor prototypes.

High beta implies that the ratio of plasma pressure to the magnetic pressure is 1 (or even higher), compared to tokamak designs that reach only .05.

The Lockheed Martin project began in 2010.

In October 2014 Lockheed Martin announced that they would attempt to develop a compact fusion reactor that would fit "on the back of a truck" and produce 100 MW output - enough to power a town of 80,000 people.

The chief designer and technical team lead for the Compact Fusion Reactor (CFR) is Thomas McGuire. McGuire studied fusion as a source of space propulsion in graduate school in response to a NASA desire to improve travel times to Mars.

In May 2016 Rob Weiss announced that Lockheed Martin continued to support the project and would increase its investment in it.

CFR plans to achieve high beta (the ratio of plasma pressure to the magnetic pressure) by combining cusp confinement and magnetic mirrors to confine the plasma. Cusps are sharply bent magnetic fields. Ideally, the plasma forms a sheath along the surface of the cusps and plasma leaks out along the axis and edges of the sharply bent field. The plasma lost along the edges recycles back into the cusps.

CFR uses two mirror sets. A pair of ring mirrors is placed inside the cylindrical reactor vessel at either end. The other mirror set encircles the reactor cylinder. The ring magnets produce a type of magnetic field known as a diamagnetic cusp, in which magnetic forces rapidly change direction and push the nuclei towards the midpoint between the two rings. The fields from the external magnets push the nuclei back towards the vessel ends.

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Wikipedia