Question

Can somebody explain me what is magnetic confinement and its' limitation ?

Answer 1

Magnetic confinement usually refers to the confinement of a superhot plasma for the purposes of nuclear fusion. The idea is that the plasma, consisting of charge particles (ions and electrons) can be confined by a suitably designed magnetic field. That will keep them from hitting the walls of the container -- which you definitely want, since a plasma at 10 million kelvins will readly melt or at least damage any material at all.

The problem is that the hotter your plasma, the faster the particles in it, and the stronger your magnetic field needs to be, and it takes a lot of power to maintain the field, plus it has to be really really perfect -- no crevices or weak spots where the plasma could leak through.

The Sun doesn't have this problem, because it relies on the sheer mass of all the nonfusing gas on top of its core to confine the fusing plasma. A thermonuclear weapon relies on inertia -- the fusion happens only for a few microseconds, and during that short time the fusing plasma simply can't accelerate outward fast enough, because of its inertia. The latter has led to the idea of inertial confinement fusion, where you essentially set off teeny-tiny fusion bombs again and again. For example, you fire powerful lasers at tiny drops of deuterium and they go off, like tiny H-bombs, again and again.

Answer 2

Thank you @Carl_Pham

Answer 3

Beautiful, Carl. Just Beautiful....