DFG IEC Fusion reactor

About

Climate change and humanity’s ever-increasing demand for energy sets up nuclear fusion as an enticing source of clean energy. If it were to work at levels anticipated, it would be a cleaner, more reliable source of energy than wind, solar, fossil fuels and nuclear fission. The leading method to attempt to harness a fusion reaction for energy is a tokamak: a large donut-shaped machine that utilizes magnetic fields to confine a hot plasma long enough for it to produce energy. The tokamak quickly becomes large, expensive, and complex. An alternative to the tokamak which can readily produce nuclear fusion is the inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) device [1]. At present, IECs are not contenders for a fusion power device, due to insufficient coulomb collisions, Particle losses through the grids, conduction losses, and Bremsstrahlung(Photon scattering) but due to their comparative ease at accomplishing fusion they do allow for the study of fusion reactions. It is the purpose of this research to propose a design for a domain free graphene IEC fusion device to study the fusion reaction’s response to the superconducting graphene material, IEC input voltage, and model the processes occurring within the device by utilizing computational methods. By developing a computational method that can model the small superconducting graphene IEC device created here, the computations can be extended to simulate bigger IEC devices with variable geometries and power levels.