Applications of the dense plasma focus to nuclear fusion and plasma astrophysics

Abstract

This paper investigates the dense plasma focus (DPF)for applications to nuclear fusion processes in reactors and in astro-physical plasmas. The scaling derived from experiments suggests aDPF of 100 MJ could reach break-even in a reactor and providesparameter space information for astrophysical problems. The costand technological problems associated with this achievement areanalyzed and environmental concerns discussed. The results, as ap-plied to several fields of science and technology and space plasmaphysics, are presented.