Advances in Dense Plasma Focus (DPF) for Fusion Power & Space Propulsion.

By George Miley, PhD.

The Dense plasma focus (DPF) represents one of the oldest proposed approaches to fusion power. It offer very important advantages of simplicity and a highly non-equilibrium plasma which is advantageous for burning neutron-lean fuels. The DPF has found important near-term applications in plasma processing but research on power production has lagged due to instabilities encountered at higher discharge currents in the standard approach. This presentation will discuss new, recent advances that offer significant improvements in performance.

The application to space propulsion will be discussed as one of the ways to capitalize on the ability to directly extract energetic flowing plasma from the DPF.

Dr. George Miley is a Professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering and in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is also Director of the Fusion Studies Laboratory. Dr. Miley is internationally recognized for his innovative research on advanced energy sources and energy conversion. He is a Fellow of three major professional Societies (APS, ANS and IEEE) and has received numerous awards including the Edward Teller Medal and Guggenheim Fellowship. His books on Radiation Energy Conversion and Fusion Energy Conversions (American Nuclear Society) are classics in the field. He has written many professional journal articles, a dozen patents and has supervised over 56 PhD theses.

DVD 60 MINUTES NTSC