  Hot plasma is highly conductive in the direction parallel to a magnetic
field. This often means that the electrical potential will be nearly constant
along any given field line. When this is the case, the cross-field voltage
drops in open-field-line magnetic confinement devices are limited by the
tolerances of the solid materials wherever the field lines impinge on the
plasma-facing components. To circumvent this voltage limitation, it is proposed
to arrange large voltage drops in the interior of a device, but coexisting with
much smaller drops on the boundaries. To avoid prohibitively large dissipation
requires both preventing substantial drift-flow shear within flux surfaces and
preventing large parallel electric fields from driving large parallel currents.
It is demonstrated here that both requirements can be met simultaneously, which
opens up the possibility for magnetized plasma tolerating steady-state voltage
drops far larger than what might be tolerated in material media.
