Very nice summary CraigD. Phew, that took some time to read.
Well I was thinking about that containment thing, and I think that any strong containment would deflect fuel much stronger than a force of 3g would pull. After some time I came across Dr. Bussards last project. The Polywell, its actually inertial fusion containment device. But as it basically contain ions in the very center, I was thinking about using it for containment of nuclear fission. Although I am not sure how dense would the fuel have to be to become critical. Silly, but practical if whole fusion doesn't come out as its theorized.
Polywell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So I am imagining. Six metal toruses with superconducting wires inside would be cooled with liquid hydrogen. It would flow trough eight tubes which would also suspend the magnets at the corners. Also at one of these corners the ions would be injected. So if these ions would be of sufficient density in the middle, the spontaneous radioactive process would generate enough neutrons to split additional uranium cores and so igniting the core. Whole thing would be placed inside glass sphere so that electrons and ions circulating on the field lines just wouldn't strike it.
As the temperature of about 20k and associated speed of individual particles is much smaller than that required for fusion, containment would be even better, provided that particles would actually be ionized.
Alas it would be nicer if fusion itself would work in the same setting.
