Mirror Fusion Test Facility
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The Mirror Fusion Test Facility, or MFTF, was an experimental magnetic confinement fusion device built using the magnetic mirror design. It was designed and built at LLNL, one of the primary research centers for mirror fusion devices. Construction was cancelled just before operation was to start.
Following on from the earlier Baseball II device, the facility was originally a similar system in which the confinement area was located between two horseshoe-shaped "mirrors" . During construction, however, the success of the Tandem Mirror Experiment ('TMX') led to a redesign to insert a solenoid area between two such magnets, dramatically improving confinement time from a few milliseconds to over one second[1]. The new version, officially MFTF-B, started construction in 1978 but was never completed, as rollbacks in fusion research funding dramatically reduced funding levels across the entire field.
Parts of the MFTF have since been re-used on newer fusion experiments, one such re-use winning a recycling award[2].
