NnBob, I am impressed. I have not looked at reactor physics in a LONG time.
But isn't part of the issue keeping the temperature high enough, or is that 1970s thinking? Did the Tokamak concept fail? I know they're looking at pulsed generation, but beyond reading about the construction of an immense laser "compression" system at Lawrence Livermore Labs at some time in the dim past, I know nothing.
You have a treat in store.
Dr. Robert Bussard, (the originator of the Bussard Fusion Ram-Jet concept), gave a presentation at Google on the concept of electro-static (as opposed to electromagnetic or inertial) confinement of fusion products in a reactor based on Philo Farnsworth's "Fusor" reactor of the late 'fifties.
Yeah, that's right.
Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of electronic television, was producing fusion in a modified electronic tube in the late fifties.
Bussard's innovation was to replace the electrical grid components with magnetic ones, so that electrons could be induced to stay in the circuit.
He gives a good description of why electromagnetic confinement has been a chimera, forever eluding our grasp. It seeks to confine plasma with magnetic fields, but the plasma is drawn to the walls of the vessel.
In electrostatic confinement, a virtual cage of electrons is built to house loose positive ions such as protons and boron eleven ions that oscillate back and forth inside the cage, occasionally colliding.
If the collision is head-on enough, and energetic enough, fusion results.
Energy can be captured from the flying helium ions by magnetic fields, and the potential for a compact and energetic reactor is enormous.
Bussard thought that we could make space ships fly with it!