Submegajoule Liner Implosion of a Closed Field Line Configuration

Drake, R. P.; Hammer, J.H.; Hartman, C.W.; Perkins, L.J.; Ryutov, D. D.

doi:10.13182/fst96-a30734

Cited by 52 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Employment of a field-reversed configuration, might permit beta limits close to unity [56,57]. Note, from Eqs.…”

Section: Antiproton Production Storge and Injectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inertial confinement fusion

Nuttall¹

2004

Nuclear Renaissance

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By contrast to the large mass, complexity and recirculating power of conventional drivers for inertial confinement fusion (ICF), antiproton annihilation offers a specific energy of 90MJ/µg and thus a unique form of energy packaging and delivery. In principle, antiproton drivers could provide a profound reduction in system mass for advanced space propulsion by ICF. We examine the physics underlying the use of antiprotons ( p) to drive various classes of high-yield ICF targets by the methods of volumetric ignition, hotspot ignition and fast ignition. The useable fraction of annihilation deposition energy is determined for both p-driven ablative compression and p-driven fast ignition, in association with 0-D and 1-D target burn models. Thereby, we deduce scaling laws for the number of injected antiprotons required per capsule, together with timing and focal spot requirements. The kinetic energy of the injected antiproton beam required to penetrate to the desired annihilation point is always small relative to the deposited annihilation energy. We show that heavy metal seeding of the fuel and/or ablator is required to optimize local deposition of annihilation energy and determine that a minimum of ~3x10 15 injected antiprotons will be required to achieve high yield (several hundred megajoules) in any target configuration. Target gains -i.e., fusion yields divided by the available p -p annihilation energy from the injected antiprotons (1.88GeV/ p) -range from ~3 for volumetric ignition targets to ~600 for fast ignition targets. Antiproton-driven ICF is a speculative concept, and the handling of antiprotons and their required injection precision -temporally and spatially -will present significant technical challenges. The storage and manipulation of low-energy antiprotons, particularly in the form of antihydrogen, is a science in its infancy and a large scale-up of antiproton production over present supply methods would be required to embark on a serious R&D program for this application.

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“…Employment of a field-reversed configuration, might permit beta limits close to unity [56,57]. Note, from Eqs.…”

Section: Antiproton Production Storge and Injectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inertial confinement fusion

Nuttall¹

2004

Nuclear Renaissance

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[1][2][3] and references therein). This approach is commonly called "magnetized target fusion," or MTF [4], and is attractive as a way of demonstrating the fusion ignition in a low-cost set of experiments [1][2][3]. Previous study [1] has shown that reaching fusion gain Q of the order of unity may be possible for the initial energy deposition to the plasma of order of 100 kJ, if one relies on a three-dimensional compression.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plasma Liner with an Intermediate Heavy Shell and Thermal Pressure Drive

Ryutov

Thio

2006

Fusion Science and Technology

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One of the challenging problems of Magnetized Target Fusion is development of the ways of transporting energy to the target situated at a large-enough distance from the energy source: the distance should be such as to prevent damage to the permanent parts of the source. Several schemes have been considered in the past, including the use of particle beams coupled with the inverse diode, mechanical projectiles in combination with magneto-compressional generators, and the plasma liner. In this paper, a possible modification of the original concept of the plasma liner (Y.C.F. Thio, C.E. Knapp, R.C. Kirkpatrick, R.E. Siemon, P.J. Turchi. J. Fusion Energy, 20, 1, 2001) is described. The modification consists in creating a thin, higher density shell made of a high-Z plasma and accelerating it onto an MTF target by a thermal pressure of a hydrogen plasma with the temperature ~ 10 eV. We discuss constraints on the parameters of this system and evaluate convergence ratio that can be expected.

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“…As it turns out (see [3]) the factor that limits plasma gain Q, is a relatively short liner dwell time near the turning point. The Q value determined by this process can be presented as:…”

Section: Parameters Of a Conceivable Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…[3] has shown that even with quite pessimistic assumptions regarding plasma thermal conductivity to the liner walls, thermal losses do not constitute a factor that limits the quality of pellet performance. Bremsstrahlung also constitutes an insignificant energy sink (unless one deliberately seeds the plasma with heavy impurities, in order to use the system under consideration as a pulsed source of X-rays).…”

Section: Parameters Of a Conceivable Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%