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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.

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“The Times”31 pages

  • p. 8 …This is important for long run times since 10n bombardment of the grids, hence grid wire…
  • p. 9 …This time can be restated in terms of the number of ion recirculations in the IEC…
  • p. 15 …This work and others on the small gridded systems at that time showed several important problems…
  • p. 17 …interesting concept is the idea of ion focusing, either in space or time, or some other…
  • p. 18 …confinement time for aneutronic fusion. This assumes, however, very precise control is maintained over the energy…
  • p. 23 …By selecting the pulse width to match or exceed the ion confinement time, typically order of…
  • p. 27 …This is the approach used at the UIUC. However, introduction of the source into the configuration…
  • p. 30 …The second jet would serve the integration purpose of the platform without having to expend time…
  • p. 35 …The issue then is how to achieve adequate confinement times. The approach being pursued at UIUC…
  • p. 36 …step in a timely fashion, however. The Dipole Assisted IEC (DaIEC) The dipole assisted IEC DaIEC…
  • p. 38 …in the current experiment. It is found that electron density increases about 17 times more than…
  • p. 41 …Namely, the time scale for collisional degradation of the beam-like ion distribution function is crucial…
  • p. 42 …would homogenize the speed within the ion beam a~er some time, making the speed difference…
  • p. 43 …1) The electrostatic well is deep enough (Eo > 100 kV); 2) Ion confinement time is long…
  • p. 44 …The source to sink issue noted several times here can be explained as follows. Two opposite…
  • p. 49 …The time convergence test suggests that employing the largest time step compatible with accuracy in a…
  • p. 50 …When an ion beam is hot, the waves excited by the instability are ion acoustic type…
  • p. 51 …used an analytical model of charge- exchange collisions in the IEC plasma to include ion time…
  • p. 53 …Nevins, Can inertial electrostatic confinement work beyond the ion-ion collisional time scale?" Phys. Plasmas, Vol…
  • p. 54 …This method uses a pulsed high-energy neutron source and the time-of-flight (TOF) diagnostics…
  • p. 57 …The longer the charge time, the higher the charge in the energy storage capacitor bank and…
  • p. 58 …The challenge in these systems is that the unloading time is short and the container is…
  • p. 59 …by the number of detectors, the detector configuration, the collimated beam size, the acquisition time, and…
  • p. 62 …The Tokamak has a shorter trip time by employing a power level that is six times…
  • p. 63 …In this fashion, an array of multiple IECs increase the overall confinement time roughly in proportion…
  • p. 64 …This recirculation significantly increases the confinement time verses that of a simple cusp devise, leading to…
  • p. 65 …This re-trapping greatly increases the confinement time of a MCSA fusion device. 58 UNCLASSIFIED/;CEiOAt…
  • p. 66 …in the IEC high power-to-weight of the MCSA enables fast trip times. The concept…
  • p. 67 …across the outer surface, so increased confinement times have been achieved by going to the massively…
  • p. 68 …Here n is the ion density and Tis the ion confinement time. Assuming the converged core…
  • p. 69 …A specially designed radio frequency (RF) ion gun is installed on the side of the chamber…
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the injected electrons so space charge neutralization can be achieved. This formalism is
then included as a boundary condition in a gridless particle code. Results indicate that
although the formalism works well during the early phases of compression, when the
compression gets large the solution bifurcates and becomes unphysical. Subsequent
experiments on POPS at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) were
encouraging, but have not been continued at a high level of effort due to key staff
leaving for EMC2 . Thus, the practicality of this concept remains an open question which
deserves more research.
Miley's "Ion Injected" Device
The key to developing a IEC power device is to use external ion "guns" to form and
inject ions into the spherical IEC chamber. This eliminates the need for a grid and
differential pumping between the gun and chamber allows the high vacuum needed in
the chamber. (Ion injection by external guns was originally used by Hirsch as already
noted. Also, more recently other labs, e.g. the University of Wisconsin and University of
Kyoto/Tokyo Institute of Technology, have started gun injection work. Some of that is
described later in this report). The ion formation is done in the high pressure gun
discharge region outside of the chamber. Miley at UIUC (see Sections IV and VI) has
been studying such a system, both theoretically and experimentally. The theoretical
studies confirm that such an IEC plasma can exist stably and has sufficient confinement
time for aneutronic fusion. This assumes, however, very precise control is maintained
over the energy and angular momentum of injected ions and a balanced supply of
electrons is provided. A radio-frequency (RF) ion injector (or "gun") capable of such
operation has already been developed. A sketch of this design is shown in Figure 1.5.
magnetic focusing lens
stainless steel flange!
coaxial copper resonator: hollow cylindrical
ceramic (insulator)
negative potential
Qion~
positive wall,
partofvacuumchamber-=-
1
j
helical antenna ! glass tube
RF generator
bwer plasma stream: floating
Figure 1.5. Schematic of the UIUC RF Gun Injector for IEC Experiments
11
upper plasma stream: floating
D2 gas feed
j
magnetic differential coils
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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.