Once upon a time, I worked at a research institute that was, for the most part, devoted to nuclear fusion. Although I was never involved myself, two things impressed me about the research. The first was the pure difficulty facing researchers: there are material, plasma physics, and control system issues that are enormously challenging. And, yet, progress is made—I am now, and will forever be impressed by the achievements that I saw during my short stay among the fusion researchers.
On the other hand, I was also impressed (and not in a good way) by how locked in certain decisions were. This is a natural consequence of doing science that has an enormous infrastructure—once a facility is built, some decisions simply cannot be unmade. These constraints, understandable as they are, make me fear for the eventual success of tokamak fusion. I would rather researchers were given more money so that they had more flexibility in terms of repurposing facilities to try new avenues of research.
Given these thoughts, you would think that I would be enthusiastic about alternative fusion schemes. Yet, because I am vaguely aware of the challenges, and how robustly they are being addressed, I tend to greet alternative fusion schemes with some skepticism. So, it is with some interest and a bit of trepidation that started examining new research on the Polywell fusion concept, where a group claims to have achieved grand new things in terms of plasma confinement.
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