Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Can Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Work Beyond the Ion-ion Collisional Time Scale?. written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inertial electrostatic confinement systems are predicated on a non-equilibrium ion distribution function. Coulomb collisions between ions cause this distribution to relax to a Maxwellian on the ion-ion collisional time-scale. The power required to prevent this relaxation and maintain the IEC configuration for times beyond the ion-ion collisional time scale is shown to be at least an order of magnitude greater than the fusion power produced. It is concluded that IEC systems show little promise as a basis for the development of commercial electric power plants.