A study of fission suppressed blankets for the tandem mirror not only showed such blankets to be feasible but also to be safer than fissioning blankets. Such hybrids could produce enough fissile material to support up to 17 light water reactors of the same nuclear power rating. Beryllium was compared to /sup 7/Li for neutron multiplication; both were considered feasible but the blanket with Li produced 20% less fissile fuel per unit of nuclear power in the reactor. The beryllium resource, while possibly being too small for extensive pure fusion application, would be adequate (with carefully planned industrial expansion) for the hybrid because of the large support ratio, and hence few hybrids required. Radiation damage and coatings for beryllium remain issues to be resolved by further study and experimentation.

The Supervisory Control and Diagnostics System for the Mirror Fusion Test Facility is an event driven system; tasks that handle specific events are active only when those events occur. One method of monitoring and generating events is the data base notification facility; a task can request that it be loaded and started by the dbms if a data element is touched or goes outside of a specified range. The motivations for this facility (along with an example of its use and some specifics regarding how it is done) are presented.

The TMX experiment proved that axial confinement of central-cell ions is improved ninefold by the electrostatic potential of end-cell plasmas. The TMX Upgrade task is to improve this confinement further. This paper discusses the injector system aspects of the TMX Upgrade.

This paper discusses some of the general difficulties and problems encountered during the development of the technology of superconductors and superconducting magnets for fusion and expresses some personal concerns.

Advanced cooling concepts that permit the design of water cooled heat exchangers for use as calorimeters and beam dumps for advanced neutral beam injection systems were evaluated. Water cooling techniques ranging from pool boiling to high pressure, high velocity swirl flow were considered. Preliminary performance tests were carried out with copper, inconel and molybdenum tubes ranging in size from 0.19 to 0.50 in. diameter. Coolant flow configurations included (1) smooth tube/straight flow, (2) smooth tube with swirl flow created by tangential injection of the coolant, and (3) axial flow in internally finned tubes. Additionally, the effect of tube L/D was evaluated. A CO/sub 2/ laser was employed to irradiate a sector of the tube exterior wall; the laser power was incrementally increased until burnout (as evidenced by a coolant leak) occurred. Absorbed heat fluxes were calculated by dividing the measured coolant heat load by the area of the burn spot on the tube surface. Two six element thermopiles were used to accurately determine the coolant temperature rise. A maximum burnout heat flux near 14 kW/cm/sup 2/ was obtained for the molybdenum tube swirl flow configuration.

A modified Voitenko compressor generated a Mach-130 air shock in an outlet pipe open to the atmosphere. Fiber optics transmitted luminosity associated with propagation of the air shock to an external display board, which was scanned with a high-speed streaking camera. We describe the computerized microdensitometer scanning technique for converting the film records to pseudo-3D, isodensity, and density profiles. The isodensity contours can be displayed using different colors to facilitate analysis. This technique can achieve resolutions of 1 ns and 2 ..mu..m. We give examples of the pseudo-3D, isodensity, and density profile plots for the experiment. The microdensitometer output was digitized for input to data display programs run on a CDC 7600. These results were used to provide submicrosecond accuracy for shock propagation over a 5 m of the outlet pipes. In addition, we obtained information about gas flow behind the shock front. Other current or possible applications for the technique are measurement of: target implosion in laser fusion, flash x-ray data in hydrodynamic and ballistic experiments, temperature profiles for high energy (> 10/sup 5/ K) gas dynamics, and dynamic events in weapons testing.

A subkilovolt spectrometer has been produced to permit high-energy-resolution, time-dependent x-ray intensity measurements. The diffracting element is a curved mica (d = 9.95A) crystal. To preclude higher order (n > 1) diffractions, a carbon x-ray mirror that reflects only photons with energies less than approx. 1.1 keV is utilized ahead of the diffracting element. The nominal energy range of interest is 800 to 900 eV. The diffracted photons are detected by a gold-surface photoelectric diode designed to have a very good frequency response, and whose current is recorded on an oscilloscope. A thin, aluminium light barrier is placed between the diffracting crystal and the photoelectric diode detector to keep any uv generated on or scattered by the crystal from illuminating the detector. High spectral energy resolution is provided by many photocathodes between 8- and 50-eV wide placed serially along the diffracted x-ray beam at the detector position. The spectrometer was calibrated for energy and energy dispersion using the Ni L..cap alpha../sub 1/ /sub 2/ lines produced in the LLNL IONAC accelerator and in third order using a molybdenum target x-ray tube. For the latter calibration the carbon mirror was replaced by one surfaced with rhodium to raise the cut-off energy …

The point code TANDEM has been used to survey the range of plasma parameters which can be attained in MFTF-B. The code solves for the electron and ion densities and temperatures in the central cell, yin-yang, barrier, and A-cell regions as well as the plasma potential in each region. In these studies, the A-cell sloshing ion beams were fixed while the neutral beams in the yin-yang and central cell, the gas feed in the central cell, and the applied ECRH power ..beta.., central cell ion density and temperature, and the confining potential are discussed.

TMX experimental data on ambipolar potential control and on the accompanying electrostatic confinement are reported. New results on the radial dependence of the central-cell confining potential are given. Radial and axial particle losses as well as scaling of the central-cell axial confinement are discussed.

The status for related beneficial uses including agriculture, greenhousing, and geothermal wetlands is presented. Data published for the geothermal fluids found in areas of China have been examined and compared with the geothermal fluids used in the agriculture evaluations in the United States. This comparison indicates that the geothermal fluids found in parts of China are similar to those used in the US agriculture experiments. Greenhousing is addressed largely from the standpoint of hardware systems and technology being employed or being proposed in the United States.

The large potentials and potential gradients in tandem mirrors have several effects. Some of these are discussed, together with supporting data from TMX. These include: azimuthal averaging by the E x B rotation, reduction of radial outward drifts (from high order multipoles) by the rapid E x B azimuthal velocity, neoclassical-resonant diffusion, Joule heating of central cell ions due to non-ambipolar transport in the radial electric field, low frequency instabilities, and differences between the details of the electron behavior and theory.