The Maryland Centrifugal eXperiment (MCX) was conceived to test the idea of Centrifugal Confinement of Plasmas for Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion.

Centrifugal forces from supersonic plasma rotation can be used to augment magnetic confinement of plasmas. When optimized, this "knob" results in a device that features several advantages over conventional approaches.The idea rests on two prongs: first, centrifugal forces can be used to contain plasmas to desired regions of appropriately shaped magnetic fields; second, the accompanying large velocity shear can stabilize even MHD instabilities.

MCX is located at the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park . 

The first goal of MCX is to achieve a centrifugally confined plasma that is free of any large-scale MHD convection.
  

Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy