What is INERTIAL fusion?
Two different schemes have emerged that have led to the construction of huge infrastructures. In the “magnetic confinement” scheme, a low density hot plasma is confined by magnetic fields in toroidal (doughnut-shaped) geometry. The international “ITER” facility is being constructed to lead to the demonstration of net fusion energy production at an industrial scale (~0.5 GW) for the first time. “Inertial confinement” fusion (also called laser fusion) is based on creating much higher densities for much shorter timescales, using tiny (mm-size) pellets containing the fuel. These pellets are imploded using high power laser beams. This leads to fusion reactions taking place inside the compressed fuel at more than a thousand times solid density for a few tens of picoseconds (1 picosecond = 1 millionth of a millionth of 1 second). For a power plant this process is then repeated 5 or 10 times a second to create a continuous flow of electricity at the Gigawatt scale. This is conceptually similar
