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2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
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What’s the most difficult question you’ve been asked as a maintenance instructor?
Blye Widmar
"Where are the prints?!"
This was the final question in an onslaught of verbal feedback, comments, and critiques I received from my students back in 2019. I had two years of instructor experience and was teaching a class that had been meticulously rehearsed in preparation for an accreditation visit. I knew the training material well and transferred that knowledge effectively enough for all the students to pass the class. As we wrapped up, I asked the students how they felt about my first big system-level class, and they did not hold back.
“Why was the exam from memory when we don’t work from memory in the plant?” “Why didn’t we refer to the vendor documents?” “Why didn’t we practice more on the mock-up?” And so on.
G. H. Miley, J. Nadler, T. Hochberg, Y. Gu, O. Barnouin, J. Lovberg
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 840-845
Advanced Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-3
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) is currently undergoing renewed experimental and theoretical study as a fusion reactor scheme that can burn advanced fuels such as D-3He and p-11B. The goal of the IEC approach is the confinement of plasma inside multiple nested spherical potential wells. These wells are created by injecting ions into a highly transparent, high voltage (5 – 50 kV) spherical cathode. Multiple passes of ions through the center create a high density non-Maxwellian core. An IEC device can produce intense beam-background (ion-neutral) and beam-beam (ion-ion) fusion reactions with or without the formation of a “Poissor” structure (multiple well). Two different approaches for injecting ions are also under study: ion guns and ionization of background gas. The initial experimental results presented here are taken in the non-Poissor beam-background mode as a precursor to experimentation in the more complex beam-beam and Poissor modes.
