The Z-Pinch
Originally, the Z-pinch was an attempt to initiate fusion by passing a strong electric current through a deuterium gas. This current simultaneously ionizes the gas and generates a magnetic field that "pinches" the resulting plasma to high temperature and density along the current path, conventionally labeled the z-axis[3]. However, the inability of technology at the time to compress the resulting plasma uniformly made this method inadequate to support fusion. Also, an indirect result of compressing the plasma in this way generates X-rays with energies up to 1000 eV[4]. Since the Z-pinch did not prove itself as a fruitful plan for a fusion reactor, the idea was dropped and for 30 years, researched as a means to test the response of materials and electronics to radiation from nuclear weapons.
It recently, however, is the focus of development at Sandia Labs for a pulsed-power inertial confinement fusion system. Obtaining this lied in the X-rays produced during a Z-pinch. The beauty of X-rays is that they can uniformly fill the space around a fuel container, theoretically providing the necessary uniform confinement required to sustain a fusion reaction.