Scientific breakeven

Scientific breakeven

Over time, new types of fusion devices were proposed with different operating systems. Magnetic confinement fusion approaches (MCF) are generally designed to operate in the (quasi) steady state. That is, the plasma is maintained in fusion conditions for time scales much longer than the fusion reactions, on the order of seconds or minutes. The goal is to allow most of the fuel time to undergo a fusion reaction. In contrast, inertial confinement fusion (ICF) reactions last only for a time on the order of dozens of fusion reactions, and instead attempt to ensure the conditions are such that much of the fuel will undergo fusion even in this very short time span. To do so, ICF devices compress the fuel to extreme conditions, where the self-heating reactions occur very rapidly.