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Defense Intelligence Reference Document Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion

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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.

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  • 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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temperatures are suppressed. These issues will be discussed further in Section IV on
theory and Section VI on a proposed breakeven experiment.
REFERENCES
1.1 W. Elmore, J. Tuck, and K. Watson, "On the Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement of
a Plasma", Phys. Fluids, vol. 2, No. 3, ( 1959) pp. 239-246.
1.2 R.L. Hirsch, "Inertial-electrostatic confinement of ionized fusion gases," J. of Appl.
Phys., vol. 38, (1967) pp. 4522-4534.
1.3 W. M. Black and E. H. Klevans, "Theory of Potential-Well Formation in an
Electrostatic Confinement Device", J. of Appl. Phys., Vol. 45, No. 6 (1974) pp. 2502-
2511.
1.4 T. A. Thorson, R. D. Durst, R. J. Fonck, and L. P. Wainwright, "Convergence
Electrostatic Potential, and Density Measurements in a Spherical Convergent Ion
Focus", Phys. Plasmas, vol. 4, no. 1, (1997) pp. 4-5.
1.5 G.H. Miley, et al., "Inertial-electrostatic confinement neutron proton source,"
Third International Conference on Dense 2-pinches, AIP Conference Proceedings 299,
(1993) pp. 675-689.
1.6 R.W. Bussard, "Some Physics Considerations of Magnetic Inertial-Electrostatic
Confinement: A New Concept for Spherical Converging-Flow Fusion", Fusion
Technology, vol. 19, no. 2, (1991) pp. 273-293.
1.7 N. A. Krall, "The Polywell™: A Spherically Convergent Ion Focus Concept", Fusion
Technology, vol. 22, no!, (1992) pp. 42-49.
1.8 S. K. Wong and N. A. Krall, "A Nonlocal Theory of Counterstreaming Ion
Instability", Phys. Fluids B, vol. 5, no.6, (1993) pp. 1706-1714.
1.9 D. C. Barnes, M. M. Schauer, K. R. Umstadter, L. Chacon, and G. H. Miley,
"Electron equilibrium and confinement in a modified Penning trap and its application
to Penning fusion", Phys. Plasmas, vol. 7, no. 5, May (2000).
1.10 R. A. Nebel, D. C. Barnes, Fusion Technology 38, 28 (1998).
1.11 D. C. Barnes, R. A. Nebel, "Stable, thermal equilibrium, large-amplitude,
spherical plasma oscillations in electrostatic confinement devices", Physics of
Plasmas 5, 2498 (1998).
1.12 J. Park, R. A. Nebel, S. Stange, S. K. Murali, "Periodically oscillating plasma
sphere", Physics of Plasmas 12, (2005) 056315.
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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.