 A similar concept is being attempted Tri-Alpha Energy (TAE), based largely on the ideas of Norman Rostoker, a professor at University of California, Irvine.Early publications from the early 1990s show devices using conventional intersecting storage rings and refocussing arrangements, but later documents from 1996 on use a completely different system firing fuel ions into a field-reversed configuration (FRC).The FRC is a self-stable arrangement of plasma that looks something like a thick-walled tube.