Magnetic‐mirror performance challenges tokamaks

Results with the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory magnetic‐mirror experiments over the past year and a bit are encouraging ERDA to push much harder in that direction, so that mirrors might share some of the funds tokamaks have been attracting. The results on 2XIIB are showing how to stabilize the mirror plasma, increase its value of beta and raise $nτ$⁠, the product of density and confinement time, considerably. Now Livermore has proposed building a new, $94‐million Mirror Experiment, MX for short. It is rumored that ERDA has requested the Office of Management and Budget to include MX in the FY 1978 budget.