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Defense Intelligence Reference Document Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion

Defense Intelligence Agency · 72 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Defense Intelligence Agency reference document, dated 10 March 2010, covers inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion. It was produced in FY 2009 under the DIA's Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) program. The report focuses on work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and reviews IEC basics, experiments, theory and applications such as neutron sources, explosives detection and space propulsion. It concludes by proposing a breakeven experiment for p-11B fusion that uses a hydrogen plasma simulation.

  • p. 7 …Emphasis is placed on work in these areas at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, although…
  • p. 8 …of how inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion works. Gas ~ccd I in~ Spherical Vacuum . Chamber !!1…
  • p. 10 …While Hirsh worked with Farnsworth to demonstrate early experimental success with IEC experiments (Reference 1.2…
  • p. 11 …Such work was soon taken up in several other laboratories, including Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL…
  • p. 12 …electron) injected traps (as does the present author's work). This selection was largely driven by…
  • p. 15 …This work and others on the small gridded systems at that time showed several important problems…
  • p. 17 …Recent work has shown that by properly programming the distribution function of the injected electrons it…
  • p. 18 …Results indicate that although the formalism works well during the early phases of compression, when the…
  • p. 21 …Hirsch Working With Philo Farnsworth I' I'· 0 ,,, 10•u w "',. ~ 40~ CRONS D- -,C •~7…
  • p. 22 …This worked well, but the design was eventually discarded to move to RF guns with much…
  • p. 23 …This work substituted a metallic hybrid getter for the external pumping on the IEC chamber. With…
  • p. 24 …Another important example of the use of a compact IEC neutron source is the work at…
  • p. 25 …2.7) The IEC developed for this work used a magnetron ion generation technique to improve…
  • p. 26 …Still the design worked reasonably well for the initial mine detection experiments. Unfortunately, the project was…
  • p. 27 …as shown by the hybrid magnetron source work in Japan. Another point noted is the advantage…
  • p. 29 …As already noted, the basic physics of this version was originally studied in pioneering work by…
  • p. 30 …Relation to Other Prior Thrusters NASA and other laboratories have worked toward developing advanced Hall Thrusters…
  • p. 31 …Indeed, the thruster concept arose from work on a fusion based IEC (Reference 3.5). To…
  • p. 32 …Khachan's work. It too looks very promising. 25 UNCLASSIFIED/ ,u;oAt OFFIGIPk IP&'i OIIU{
  • p. 35 …at the UIUC and several other laboratories working on IECs. The issue then is how to…
  • p. 39 …In follow-on work, they simplified the modeling of charge exchange with an analytical approach to…
  • p. 40 …Satsangi, "Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Experiments at Low Working Pressure," Prepared under U.S. Army contract DAAK…
  • p. 42 …In Chacon's work, a bounce-averaged Fokker-Planck (BAFP) model was employed to obtain steady…
  • p. 45 …Before discussing this work, some definitions for the potential well structure will be reviewed. POTENTIAL WELL…
  • p. 48 …However, much more work needs to be done along these lines to fully identify the optimal…
  • p. 52 …As pointed out by Khachan his work noted D2+ becomes more significant in lower voltages). In…
  • p. 53 …Nevins, Can inertial electrostatic confinement work beyond the ion-ion collisional time scale?" Phys. Plasmas, Vol…
  • p. 70 …Chacon's work, thermalized ions build up and additional quasi- Maxwellian distriution in the trap). Still…
  • p. 71 …To accomplish this result quickly on a modest budget, we need to simplify the work by…
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,02J----'"-.::;;f,"-t-----f'------t------+------1
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Figure 1.2. Idealized Potential Structure Calculated by Hirsch for Monoenergetic Ions With
No Angular Momentum. The nested virtual anodes and cathodes observed were originally termed
"poissors" by the inventor, Philo Farnsworth.
This is a very striking result that enthused these researchers to push on with this
research. It, in effect, circumvents the Elmore et al. restriction by changing the
potential well physics fundamentally. Of course in practice, there will be a spread in
energy and angular momentum, so one would not expect more than a single potential
well (vs. the infinite poissors of Farnsworth) to form in practice. The questions
remaining then were (and still are): "How deep can such a well be in practice and how
high an ion density can be trapped in it?" Various studies followed to study these issues
more thoroughly using simulation codes. For example, Klevens and Black found in
Reference 1.3 that: "A model of an electrostatic confinement device with ion injection
has been developed which provides strong correlation between theory and experiment.
The ion density profile was determined in position velocity throughout the two
concentric grids by considering the processes of charge transfer and grid capture. A
shallow-well approximation was incorporated in the model by assuming that ions
encountering charge transfer in the inner grid region were accelerated up to a
maximum of 5 percent of the applied grid voltage, and that the velocity of beam ions
was constant in this region. Distribution functions in total energy and angular energy
were developed for both ions and electrons. The ion distribution function consisted of
three parts: a beam created at the anode and accelerated by the applied cathode
voltage; a low-energy group produced by charge transfer near the cathode or in the
center; and a intermediate-energy group resulting from charge-transfer reaction
between anode and cathode. For each group the angular energy was assumed uniform
up to a maximum value, which was different for each energy group. The electrons were
assumed to be isotropic in velocity space, and to be uniformly distributed in total
energy in the potential well in which they are trapped. The distribution functions were
substituted into Poisson's equation and potential and density profiles for various
6
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 72 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.