A Quasi-Spherical Fusion Reactor Burning Boron-11 Fuel

Particle in Cell (PIC) simulation has been used to validate a conceptual design for a quasi-spherical, net power, hydrogen plus boron fueled, fusion reactor incorporating high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. By burning a fully thermalized plasma, our proposed MET6 reactor uses the principles of Magneto-Electrostatic Trap design of Yushmanov (1980) to improve the classic Polywell design, resulting in a predicted power-balance Q ≈ 1.3. Because the input power consumed by the reactor will barely balances the waste bremsstrahlung radiation, future research must focus on reducing the bremsstrahlung losses to reach practical net power levels. A first step to reducing bremsstrahlung, explored in this paper, is to tune the reactor parameters to reduce the trapped electrons energies.