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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.
“formation”17 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/ ,era A 8FFlil.l1k WE&i a•lk¥ This capability can provide valuable data regarding 3He fusion cross sections at "low" energies with better counting statistics than accelerator measurements. It appears that good progress has been made in this direction. CLOSING COMMENTS The experiments selected for this section are far from exhaustive. The main concentration here is on ion-injected IECs such as studied at the UIUC, although various electron injected devices such as the "Polywell" are mentioned. The experiments were selected then to explain some issues and status relative to gridded devices for near-term applications such as neutron sources and also to address some issues such as ion injection related to future fusion power units. The latter issues revolve around how to create deep potential wells in the IEC and trap the reacting ions in the well while excluding neutral gas atoms. The use of external ion sources with differential pumping then becomes a key approach for production of ions while keeping ultra low background pressure in the reacting chamber. This is the approach used at the UIUC. However, introduction of the source into the configuration such that the ions are born at potentials below the well depth is another possibility as shown by the hybrid magnetron source work in Japan. Another point noted is the advantage of using pulsed operation to obtain high peak ion currents to take advantage of the ion density squared scaling for beam-beam reactions. REFERENCES 2.1 R. L. Hirsch, "Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement of Ionized Fusion Gases," J. Appl. Physics 38, no.11, (1967) pp. 4522-4534. 2.2 A. L. Gardner, "Studies of Charged-Particle Distributions in an Electrostatic Confinement System, "U. S. Atomic Energy Commission Final Report N. C00-2180-7, Washington, D. C. (1974). 2.3 G. H. Miley, Y. Gu, J. M. DeMorea, R. A. Stubbers, T. A. Hochberg, J. H. Nadler, and R. A. Anderl, "Discharge Characteristics of the Spherical Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) Device," IEEE Transactions Plasma Science, Vol. 24, No. 4, (1997) pp. 733-739. 2.4 T.J. McGuire and R.J. Sedwick, "Improving IEC Particle Confinement Times Using Multiple Grids" 7th US-Japan IEC Workshop, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM, March 14-16 (2005). 2.5 R.A. Anderl, J.K. Hartwell, J.H. Nadler, J.M. DeMora, R.A. Stubbers, and G.H. Miley, "Development of an IEC Neutron Source for NDE," 16th Symposium on Fusion Engineering, eds. G.H. Miley and C.M. Elliott, IEEE Conf. Proc. 95CH35852, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, (1996) pp. 1482-1485. 2.6 Y. Gu, M. Williams, R. Stubbers, and G. Miley, "Pulsed Operation of Spherical Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement Device", Fusion Technology, Vol. 30, no. 3, (1996) pp. 1342-1346. 20 UNCLASSIFIED/ ,<EiOAt OEiEilil.ltk Wli&i &••LY
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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.