A toroidal vortex of liquid FLiBe (LiF + BeF/sub 2/) is suggested for the blanket of a fusion reactor. Because this system has no solid first wall, it might avoid many of the problems that accompany conventional blanket design. The liquid is sustained by nozzles that inject a continuous layer of cool liquid on the inner surface. A second set of nozzles sends a stream of droplets across the diverted scrape-off layer or edge plasma to carry its heat away. The feasibility issues of most importance are judged to be avoiding turbulent breakup of the vortex and preventing too much contamination of the plasma by the evaporating FLiBe. 6 refs., 5 figs., 1 tab.

The basic physical processes associated with collisionless magnetic reconnection are investigated using the implicit PIC code AVANTI. The code is based on a 2.5-D fully electromagnetic direct implicit algorithm which has proven stable for arbitrary time step. This stability makes it possible to separate out the respective roles of the highly magnetized electrons and the un-magnetized ions for large ion-electron mass ratios. It is found that the inclusion of a guide magnetic field (magnetic shear) severely slows the initial stages of reconnection and damps out the electrostatic ringing if local values of the guide field are above a threshold determined by questions of electron mobility. 9 refs., 6 figs.

We base our theory of physics and cosmology on the five principles of finiteness, discreteness, finite computability, absolute non- uniqueness, and strict construction. Our modeling methodology starts from the current practice of physics, constructs a self-consistent representation based on the ordering operator calculus and provides rules of correspondence that allow us to test the theory by experiment. We use program universe to construct a growing collection of bit strings whose initial portions (labels) provide the quantum numbers that are conserved in the events defined by the construction. The labels are followed by content strings which are used to construct event-based finite and discrete coordinates. On general grounds such a theory has a limiting velocity, and positions and velocities do not commute. We therefore reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity at an appropriately fundamental stage in the construction. We show that events in different coordinate systems are connected by the appropriate finite and discrete version of the Lorentz transformation, that 3-momentum is conserved in events, and that this conservation law is the same as the requirement that different paths can ''interfere'' only when they differ by an integral number of deBroglie wavelengths. 38 refs., 12 figs., 3 tabs.