Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement: An Approach to Burning Advanced Fuels

Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) is currently undergoing renewed experimental and theoretical study as a fusion reactor scheme that can burn advanced fuels such as D-³He and p-¹¹B. The goal of the IEC approach is the confinement of plasma inside multiple nested spherical potential wells. These wells are created by injecting ions into a highly transparent, high voltage (5 – 50 kV) spherical cathode. Multiple passes of ions through the center create a high density non-Maxwellian core. An IEC device can produce intense beam-background (ion-neutral) and beam-beam (ion-ion) fusion reactions with or without the formation of a “Poissor” structure (multiple well). Two different approaches for injecting ions are also under study: ion guns and ionization of background gas. The initial experimental results presented here are taken in the non-Poissor beam-background mode as a precursor to experimentation in the more complex beam-beam and Poissor modes.