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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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UNCLASSIFIED/ ,'f811. 8ffl81*1e lal!i! 8111!¥ Section II. Select Experiments In this section some select experiments are briefly reviewed with the main focus on ion- injected IECs. Beginning with the early Hirsch gun injected IEC experiments that are important both historically and from a physics perspective. Other experiments aimed at "spin-off" applications are then covered, followed by a discussion of several recent gun injection type studies. Readers interested in more detail should consult references. In Reference 2.1, Robert Hirsh disclosed experimental results with very high D-T neutron rates from an ion-injected IEC shown if Figure 2.1. Note that six ion "guns" were used to create a low energy ion beam that entered the chamber and was trapped via electrostatic structures to form the potential well structure desired for IEC operation. However, differential pumping was not used so beam-background and charge-exchange collision must have still played a significant role in this experiment. Still Hirsch obtained "record" neutron rates for DT fusion shown in Figure 2.2. ROBERT L. Hl~SCl! ;-UOOE St<nL / VIEW!~~ PORT ,.,,,,,_ - -i.._,~1 ~ I Lc'b"~s~:•\~i L,o~ Gu~ .J---TO P~WPS ,I Figure 2.1. The "Historic" Early IEC Ion Injection Experiment of R. Hirsch Working With Philo Farnsworth I' I'· 0 ,,, 10•u w "',. ~ 40~ CRONS D- -,C •~7 ,08s, ~ Cl M CRONS7 "~ 3 , 10' a "~7., 7 ~II M'CRO".S o, 106 t DJ7.8 IJ.1CRONS ,,o 150 Figure 2.2. Neutron Rates Measured With the IEC of Figure 2.1 Exceeded 109 DT n/s at 150 kV. For perspective, note that, as discussed later, UIUC IEC gridded devices routinely produce 108 DD n/s at ~ 80 kV. This is slightly above Hirsch's result but uses higher ion currents. The key point about this remarkable result is that the neutron production rates are well about that predicted by simple beam-background fusion reactions, implying that benefit 14 UNCLASSIFIED/ ,sralil 8FFIIIAI!: 1!181! ....."
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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.