Abstract
Over the years the author has written, coordinated, or contributed to numerous reviews of fusion energy. In revisiting them, he is encouraged by the tremendous progress that has been made across the board. Nevertheless, while he believes that a viable fusion reactor could be made in both magnetic and inertial fusion energy, he doesn’t think the best approach has yet been identified in either area. Also there remain a number of critical, hardly-explored areas. The author identifies three key issues. Finally, he comments briefly on all the major confinement approaches.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
J. Sheffield, Status of the Tokamak Program. Proc. IEEE 69, 885 (1981)
J. Shefffield, The physics of magnetic fusion reactors. Rev. Mod. Phys. 66, 1015 (1994)
FESAC, Opportunities in the fusion energy sciences program (1999), http://www.ofes.doe.gov/more_html/FESAC/FES_all.pdf
National Academies, An assessment of the prospects for inertial fusion energy (2013), http://sites.nationalacademies.org/BPA/BPA_058425
J.R. McNally Jr, Physics of fusion fuel cycles. Nucl. Technol. Fusion 2, 9 (1982)
F. Najmabadi et al., ARIES fusion reactor studies bibliography, http://aries.ucsd.edu/ARIES/DOCS/bib.shtml
J. Sheffield, S. Milora, Generic magnetic fusion reactor revisited. Fusion Sci. Technol. (2015, accepted)
Y. Chen, U. Fischer, P. Pereslavstev, F. Wasastjerna, The EU power plant conceptual study—neutronic design analysis for near term and advanced reactor models, Report FZKA 6763, Forschungszentrum Karslruhe (2003)
J. Sheffield, D. Spong, Generic Stellarator-like magnetic fusion reactor. Fusion Sci. Technol. (2015, accepted)
J. Sheffield, M. Sawan, Deuterium-fueled power plants with tritium suppression. Fusion Sci. Techol. 53, 780 (2008)
J. Sheffield, R.A. Dory et al., Cost assessment of a generic magnetic fusion reactor. Fusion Technol. 9, 2 (1986)
J. Menard et al., Prospects for pilot plants based on the tokamak, spherical tokamak and stellarator. Nucl. Fusion 51, 103014 (2011)
M. Gasparotto, C. Baylard, The W7-X Team, Wendelstein 7-X—status of the project and commissioning planning. Fusion Eng. Des. 89(9–10), 2121–2127 (2014)
F. Najmabadi et al., Overview of the ARIES-CS compact stellarator fusion power plant. Fusion Sci. Technol. 54, 655 (2008)
O. Motojima, K. Akaishi et al., Progress summary of LHD engineering design and construction. Nucl. Fusion 40, 599 (2000)
Talks at the 2013 Annual fusion power associates meeting, by G. Wurden (LANL), T. Richardson (General Fusion), and T. Jarboe (U. Washington), http://fire.pppl.gov/fpa_annual_meet.html#2013
J. Slough, G. Votroubek, C. Pihl, Creation of a high-temperature plasma through merging and compression of supersonic field reversed configuration plasmoids. Nucl. Fusion 51, 5 (2011)
M. Tuszewski et al., A new high performance field reversed configuration operating regime in the C-2 device. in 53rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics. Physics of Plasmas 19(5) (American Institute of Physics, Salt Lake City, UT, 2012)
Laser Inertial Fusion Energy, LIFE, https://life.llnl.gov/
Acknowledgments
The author appreciates the helpful comments of Michael Mauel, Stanley Milora, and the reviewer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sheffield, J. Some Observations on Future Directions in Fusion Energy Research. J Fusion Energ 35, 107–110 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10894-015-0022-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10894-015-0022-5