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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.
“small beings”23 pages
UNCLASSIFIED//Flilll. lilFFllil,t.k '21lii 8Hlo'f 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 UNCLASSIFIED/ ;CFQA arrI@ItllL ~:!E! SHE I
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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.