fafalone Posted April 8, 2003 Share Posted April 8, 2003 According to this press release, Sandia National Laboratory's Z Machine (pictured, click here for full size) has produced the first steps towards a viable fusion process. Highly dense plasmas were compressed into a small (2mm) capsule called a hohlraum, which is at the center of the 120ft in diameter machine. This is bringing us closer to achieve ignition, the point at which the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining. The Z Machine uses large pulses of electricity that compress tungsten wires into X-ray emitting foam cylinders. The X-rays then compress deuterium in the capsule enough to fuse the atoms and produce neutrons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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