Good to see a commenter with an ICF background (most of what I know of ICF was only from water cooler chit-chat).
I didn't manage to get a thesis out. I left the PhD program before the funding was cut, but the writing was on the wall.
Yes, it is short sighted to cut funding of small scale plasma confinement concepts. They are high risk / high reward projects which are not expensive ~$1M. And even if they don't pan out as viable confinement schemes, they make for great training platforms for graduate students.
I didn't manage to get a thesis out. I left the PhD program before the funding was cut, but the writing was on the wall.
Yes, it is short sighted to cut funding of small scale plasma confinement concepts. They are high risk / high reward projects which are not expensive ~$1M. And even if they don't pan out as viable confinement schemes, they make for great training platforms for graduate students.