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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. 8 …hence a good probability of fusing before being lost from the fusion reaction chamber. In the…
  • p. 11 …If it can, the device would be simpler and smaller than a Tokamak, making it an…
  • p. 14 …However, they showed that grid deformation could be very harmful. This deserves several comments. First, the…
  • p. 15 …Again, this issue will be addressed further later. While earlier workers sought small grid openings designed…
  • p. 17 …More insights will be provided throughout this report, but the reader is encouraged to study the…
  • p. 19 …Upscattering out of the well must be minimized while electron 12 UNCLASSIFIED//EOAt OFFIQI.«1k 11181…
  • p. 29 …It operates by convergence of ions created between the grid and wall onto a small volume…
  • p. 30 …Such thrusters, however, do not scale well to lower powers for small satellites, nor are exhaust…
  • p. 33 …first, the channel grid will be separately hinged with a small servo motor such that its…
  • p. 35 …Thus, the mass of the IEC jet thruster system can potentially be reduced compared to a…
  • p. 43 …More insight into this can be obtained from the distribution functions for trapped ions, sketched in…
  • p. 44 …The source to sink issue noted several times here can be explained as follows. Two opposite…
  • p. 47 …However, since the fusion core radius in these calculations is very small on the order of…
  • p. 49 …instability in finite spherical systems may be excited for small beam velocities compared to those of…
  • p. 50 …However, an experimental study should be performed to verify this result. RIDER - ENERGY BALANCE STUDY Todd…
  • p. 53 …In addition, since both D-D and D- 3He reactions can be used for proton production…
  • p. 54 …This can be viewed as a small scale soft source for individual laboratory studies such as…
  • p. 55 …The 14.1-MeV neutrons from the D-T reaction will be the primary source for…
  • p. 59 …Due to their small size, they can be used in a large array along with TOF…
  • p. 65 …If vis large compared to v11, the effective scattering angle will be large, resulting in retrapping…
  • p. 67 …Fortunately, the IEC can be scaled up in energy gain while keeping a small size since…
  • p. 68 …The small size of the IEC is a key characteristic. If rapid development is to be…
  • p. 71 …In other words, this could also be thought of as a Q=100 DT equivalent breakeven…
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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
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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.