Fusion Propulsion, FRC Fusion, Fusion:MSR Fission Co-location

Brian Wang presents a trio of fusion-related articles recently:

Pulsed Field-Reversed Configuration Thrusters

Fusion Plasmoid Space Propulsion

Quasi-Steady Fusion Reactor Based on the Pulsed High Density FRC

From the last link above:

By co-locating a molten salt reactor with FRC QSFRs, a waste mitigating closed nuclear cycle is achieved that is highly proliferation resistant. Only non-fissile material enters the plant in the form of thorium. All fuel for the reactor is produced on-site by the FRC QSFR. Only a relatively small fusion power source is required (~ 7% of the fission reactor output) as it is leveraged by the much larger energy yield from the fissile fuel enriched thorium reactor. The fissile fuel doubling time can be as short as 5 years, and essentially all the thorium can be consumed in fission reactions, thus extending the energy reserves from thorium to several thousand years, limited only by the lithium reserves required for DT fusion. Waste from the thorium cycle is orders of magnitude smaller than that of a current PWR, and decays to background levels in less than 500 years – only slightly longer than that from fusion neutron activation. By using the FRC QSFR to enable a thorium based energy cycle, nuclear power can finally deliver what the current uranium based fission can not: abundant, safe, and clean energy. Most importantly, it can be done in a timeframe to allow fusion to play a role in the effort to move from a carbon based energy economy. _NBF

Brian also points to the Advanced Space Propulsion Workshop by Centauri Dreams, which covered the topics above and more. It would be great if the workshop made videos available of the talks.