Pulsed-power-driven cylindrical liner implosions of laser preheated fuel magnetized with an axial field

By S. Slutz, M. Herrmann, R. Vesey, A. Sefkow, D. Sinars, D. Rovang, K. Peterson, M. Cuneo. 2010

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The radial convergence required to reach fusion conditions is considerably higher for cylindrical than for spherical implosions since the volume is proportional to r2 versus r3, respectively. Fuel magnetization and preheat significantly lowers the required radial convergence enabling cylindrical implosions to become an attractive path toward generating fusion conditions. Numerical simulations are presented indicating that significant fusion yields may be obtained by pulsed-power-driven implosions of cylindrical metal liners onto magnetized (>10 T) and preheated (100–500 eV) deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel. Yields exceeding 100 kJ could be possible on Z at 25 MA, while yields exceeding 50 MJ could be possible with a more advanced pulsed power machine delivering 60 MA. These implosions occur on a much shorter time scale than previously proposed implosions, about 100 ns as compared to about 10 μs for magnetic target fusion (MTF) [I. R. Lindemuth and R. C. Kirkpatrick, Nucl. Fusion 23, 263 (1983)]. Consequently t...

Subfields: Geophysics, Mechanics of Materials, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6f39068091553e8902f459fb0ebbe9f9b7f9d011