Comment by pfdietz
7 years ago
This old critique has aged fairly well. It was too optimistic about advanced fission, and the suggestion to move to advanced fuels for fusion was mostly shot down by Lidsky's student, Todd Rider.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fce7/a35629488ec030d983025a...
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/11412
A similar critique was being made around the same time by Pfirsch and Schmitter in Europe.
https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2131865/component/file_2...
There are a few parts that have been overtaken by advances. Improvements in superconductors have driven the minimum size for a fusion reactor far down, for instance.
Lidsky's argument is entirely unaffected by that advance. The power of his argument is that one can just ignore the plasma physics.
Plasma physics tells us the relationship between the minimum workable size and the containment field strength. Change the field strength and the size changes.
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