Documents / Report
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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temperature. With proper selection of the size and type of getter material, plus a good
temperature feedback control, this arrangement was found to work exceedingly well.
This allows a "sealed" IEC unit and removes the bulky pumps. Such an arrangement is
essential for small mobile neutron sources. Daimler-Chrysler licensed use of this IEC
neutron technology through the UIUC and used this approach for their NAA quality
control units.
The general strategy employed by Daimler-Chrysler and others is to send sealed units
into the field for NAA application. The impurity buildup in the chamber gas eventually
causes the performance to deteriorate. At that point, the unit is returned to the
originating "factory" or originating laboratory for refueling by pumping down and, if
necessary, replacing the getter. As it occurred, Daimler-Chrysler uses such units in
Germany on some of their ore delivery belts for NAA inspection of ore composition. In
this role they directly replaced Cf-252 neutron sources, allowing on-off operation,
simpler licensing, and lower costs. Their plan to distribute commercial units externally
for sale did not materialize, however, due to company financial problem.
Another important example of the use of a compact IEC neutron source is the work at
Kyoto University, Japan (Reference 2.7). These investigators used a crane-type device
which was design for mounting on a crane as shown in Figure 2.4 for land mine
detection.
Project of Landmine Detection
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Figure 2.4. IEC Landmine Detection Project at Kyoto University
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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.