(shrugs, peels banana):
Yeah, so… I think the big disconnect here is everyone imagining ICF as this super-fragile, precision thing. BSF isn’t like that.
You pour a bunch of FLiBe glipity-glop glug-glug into a big sphere. It’s hot, and it’s happy. Just let it sit there. No rush, just wait.
Somewhere inside, there’s a bubble of fuel. How did it get there? It doesn’t matter, we just wiggle it around until it’s kinda near the middle. Close enough is close enough.
Then you pound on the outside of the sphere with giant acoustic hammers. Not delicate taps — more like one big thump.
When the acoustic waves get close to the center, you turn on the pump lights — full power!
The reactor works like an Easy-Bake Oven. Once it’s hot and sqeezed, ignition of the fuel is automatic. The bubble collapses, flashes, the light bounces around, comes back in, and things go boom without any need for perfect timing.
Neutrons? FLiBe absorbs them before they even get close to a wall. And, because FLiBe is a ‘self-healing’, low-Z, ionic, liquid salt, there is no need to worry about mechanical damage or dirty nuclear byproducts. When it heats up, just pump it through a heat exchanger. Material problems, SOLVED!
No expensive, precision targets. No babysitting. Just heat, shake, repeat.
So yeah
Rosner’s worries make sense for fragile fusion. BSF is the opposite. It’s robust and forgiving — the kind of reactor that just works even if you’re not paying attention.
The DOE published a list of core challenges anyone can vote on.