A Quasi-Spherical Fusion Reactor Burning Boron-11 Fuel

In this study, particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation was used to validate a conceptual design for a quasi-spherical, net power, hydrogen-plus-boron-11-fueled fusion reactor incorporating high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. By burning a fully thermalized plasma, our proposed MET6 reactor uses the principles of the 1980 magneto-electrostatic trap design of Yushmanov to improve the classic Polywell design. Because the input power consumed by the reactor will barely balance the waste bremsstrahlung radiation, future research must focus on reducing the bremsstrahlung losses to reach practical net power levels. The first step to reducing bremsstrahlung, explored in this paper, is to tune the reactor parameters to reduce the energies of trapped electrons. We assume the quality factor Q can be approximated as the ratio of fusion power output divided by bremsstrahlung power loss. Thus, assuming the particles’ power loss is negligible compared to bremsstrahlung power loss, the resulting quality factor is estimated to be Q ≈ 1.3.