[ RadSafe ] Reactor in the Basement!

[Peter Thomas]

Kristian Ukkonen wrote (inter alia):

>The "flash" is actually a beatiful "star" in the middle
>of the vacuum chamber with the electrostatic confinement electrodes,
and it stays there - ie. not any flash but a plasma lasting as long  >as
there is the high-voltage.

This is something I'm not very clear on.  Is there a difference between
a discharge and a plasma?  Inside the central electrode I imagine that
the electric potential is fairly flat but it's sitting at -20 to -50 kV
relative to the grounded chamber, throw in some low pressure gas and you
have a Crookes tube.  A lot of these guys test their set-ups with
nitrogen before they run with deuterium, do they still get the pretty
"star" with non-fusing gases?
   
Peter Thomas
Medical Physics Section
ARPANSA

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