Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by DennisP 3003 days ago
I was only aware of Helion doing D-3He, and they're in Washington. Do you have a link for the Princeton group?
2 comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_field-reversed_confi...

The small company proposing using this for a notional Pluto orbiter:

http://www.psatellite.com/

Primary patent for the reactor:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/9767925.html

Sam Cohen’s Rotating Magnetic Field experiments have shown higher temperature and reasonably long-lived FRCs. His vision is steady operating, 3He systems, atleast at first targeting propulsion. As you dial up the Helium percentages, the neutron output goes down, though the required ion temperature goes up. Princeton Satellite Systems has several NASA programs looking at the propulsion applications.
"required ion temperature"

The scheme involves significantly non-maxwellian ion distributions, so "temperature" isn't really appropriate. In particular, 3He ions get pumped to higher energy than D ions, which helps suppress DD fusion. They claim the scheme is consistent with Rider's limits on energy circulation in non-maxwellian plasmas.