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Hybrid Fusion: The Only Viable Development Path for Tokamaks?

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Abstract

The world needs a great deal of carbon free energy, and soon, for civilization to continue. Fusion’s goal is to develop such a carbon free energy source. For the last 4 decades, tokamaks have been the best magnetic fusion has to offer. But what if its development stops short of commercial fusion? This paper introduces ‘conservative design principles’ for tokamaks. These are very simple, are reasonably based in theory, and have always constrained tokamak operation. Assuming they continue to do so, it is unlikely that tokamaks will ever make it as commercial reactors. This is independent of their confinement properties. However because of the large additional gain in hybrid fusion, tokamaks reactors look like they can make it as hybrid fuel producers, and provide large scale power by mid century or shortly thereafter.

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Acknowledgements

This author was involved in the magnetic fusion program from the middle 1970’s (working on tokamak transport) to the late 1980’s (working on gyrotron development for ECRH) and since has received no support from DoE/MFE. As such he considers himself at least somewhat knowledgeable, while having no direct financial stake in MFE. He certainly has not received any support from the nuclear or any other energy industry. He thanks two editors who over the years have been willing to publish this work in archival form, especially Steve Dean, who so far has been willing to publish 4 articles in Journal of Fusion Energy, but also George Miley who published the first paper in this series in Fusion Technology. Without the help of these two people, it is difficult to see how this work could have been published in archival form, and the author is extremely grateful. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Professor Larry Lidsky of MIT. I knew Larry when I was a graduate student and junior faculty member there, and I always appreciated his intelligence and humor. He was the creator and first editor of this journal. He was a strong proponent of the fusion hybrid, believing it was the only way fusion could impact the overall economy on any reasonable time scale. He was not reticent in expressing his views, and for this he paid a price in acceptance by the fusion community. I am certainly on record as believing him to be a prophet, a man far ahead of his time.

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    Wallace Manheimer

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Correspondence to Wallace Manheimer.

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W. Manheimer has been retired from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

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Manheimer, W. Hybrid Fusion: The Only Viable Development Path for Tokamaks?. J Fusion Energ 28, 60–82 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10894-008-9156-z

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