Fusion Message Board

In this space, visitors are invited to post any comments, questions, or skeptical observations about Philo T. Farnsworth's contributions to the field of Nuclear Fusion research.

Subject: Early IEC Reference
Date: May 24, 11:51 pm
Poster: Richard Hester

On May 24, 11:51 pm, Richard Hester wrote:

I very recently was able to get my hands on a copy of the old classic "Controlled Thermonuclear Reactions, by Glasstone and Lovberg, a tome I haven't laid eyes on in over 30 years. On page 46, under "miscellaneous proposals for plasma confinement", is a couple of paragraphs on the IEC approach, referencing a paper by Elmore, Tuck, and Watson in Physics of Fluids, Vol.2, p. 239, 1959.
The authors diss the approach as incapable of sustaining a high enough particle density for straight thermonuclear fusion, rightly so. It was up to others to consider that the non-maxwellian distibution of ion energies in the IEC device might be useful in its own right.

Richard Hester