OPERATION OF FUSION REACTORS IN ONE ATMOSPHERE OF AIR INSTEAD OF VACUUM SYSTEMS

Engineering design studies of both magnetic and inertial fusion power plants have assumed that the plasma will undergo fusion reactions in a vacuum environment. Operation under vacuum requires an expensive additional major system for the reactor-a vacuum vessel with vacuum pumping, and raises the possibility of sudden unplanned outages if the vacuum containment is breached. It would be desirable in many respects if fusion reactors could be made to operate at one atmosphere with air surrounding the plasma, thus eliminating the requirement of a pressure vessel and vacuum pumping. This would have obvious economic, reliability, and engineering advantages for currently envisaged power plant reactors; it would make possible forms of reactor control not possible under vacuum conditions (i.e. adiabatic compression of the fusion plasma by increasing the pressure of surrounding gas); it would allow reactors used as aircraft engines to operate as turbojets or ramjets in the atmosphere, and it would allow reactors used as fusion rockets to take off from the surface of the earth instead of low earth orbit.