This is a very good point. Extraordinary claims...
If you haven't hung around talk-polywell.org before, you might want to. It's focused on the polywell but they seem to at least try to fairly evaluate all contenders.
New confinement techniques (NIF, this article, Helion, Polywell) are actually making real progress. So it's becoming less likely that an announcement like this is 100% vapor.
Put another way, we're getting to the point now where we have tools sufficient to actually know what the results will be. That, more than anything, is the benefit from the billions spent on tokamaks.
The AviationWeek article even mentions that the LMSW team drew from Polywell:
> "We also have a recirculation that is very similar to a Polywell concept," he adds, referring to another promising avenue of fusion power research. A Polywell fusion reactor uses electromagnets to generate a magnetic field that traps electrons, creating a negative voltage, which then attract positive ions. The resulting acceleration of the ions toward the negative center results in a collision and fusion.
It's great that they've scoured even the non-mainstream ideas and incorporated them.
It doesn't talk about how recirculation is used. I was thinking maybe it has something to do with sealing the cylinder end caps, to keeping plasma loss to near zero?
If you haven't hung around talk-polywell.org before, you might want to. It's focused on the polywell but they seem to at least try to fairly evaluate all contenders.
New confinement techniques (NIF, this article, Helion, Polywell) are actually making real progress. So it's becoming less likely that an announcement like this is 100% vapor.
Put another way, we're getting to the point now where we have tools sufficient to actually know what the results will be. That, more than anything, is the benefit from the billions spent on tokamaks.