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Defense Intelligence Reference Document Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion

Defense Intelligence Agency · 72 pages · text from the file's own layer

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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“The Times”31 pages

  • p. 8 …This is important for long run times since 10n bombardment of the grids, hence grid wire…
  • p. 9 …This time can be restated in terms of the number of ion recirculations in the IEC…
  • p. 15 …This work and others on the small gridded systems at that time showed several important problems…
  • p. 17 …interesting concept is the idea of ion focusing, either in space or time, or some other…
  • p. 18 …confinement time for aneutronic fusion. This assumes, however, very precise control is maintained over the energy…
  • p. 23 …By selecting the pulse width to match or exceed the ion confinement time, typically order of…
  • p. 27 …This is the approach used at the UIUC. However, introduction of the source into the configuration…
  • p. 30 …The second jet would serve the integration purpose of the platform without having to expend time…
  • p. 35 …The issue then is how to achieve adequate confinement times. The approach being pursued at UIUC…
  • p. 36 …step in a timely fashion, however. The Dipole Assisted IEC (DaIEC) The dipole assisted IEC DaIEC…
  • p. 38 …in the current experiment. It is found that electron density increases about 17 times more than…
  • p. 41 …Namely, the time scale for collisional degradation of the beam-like ion distribution function is crucial…
  • p. 42 …would homogenize the speed within the ion beam a~er some time, making the speed difference…
  • p. 43 …1) The electrostatic well is deep enough (Eo > 100 kV); 2) Ion confinement time is long…
  • p. 44 …The source to sink issue noted several times here can be explained as follows. Two opposite…
  • p. 49 …The time convergence test suggests that employing the largest time step compatible with accuracy in a…
  • p. 50 …When an ion beam is hot, the waves excited by the instability are ion acoustic type…
  • p. 51 …used an analytical model of charge- exchange collisions in the IEC plasma to include ion time…
  • p. 53 …Nevins, Can inertial electrostatic confinement work beyond the ion-ion collisional time scale?" Phys. Plasmas, Vol…
  • p. 54 …This method uses a pulsed high-energy neutron source and the time-of-flight (TOF) diagnostics…
  • p. 57 …The longer the charge time, the higher the charge in the energy storage capacitor bank and…
  • p. 58 …The challenge in these systems is that the unloading time is short and the container is…
  • p. 59 …by the number of detectors, the detector configuration, the collimated beam size, the acquisition time, and…
  • p. 62 …The Tokamak has a shorter trip time by employing a power level that is six times…
  • p. 63 …In this fashion, an array of multiple IECs increase the overall confinement time roughly in proportion…
  • p. 64 …This recirculation significantly increases the confinement time verses that of a simple cusp devise, leading to…
  • p. 65 …This re-trapping greatly increases the confinement time of a MCSA fusion device. 58 UNCLASSIFIED/;CEiOAt…
  • p. 66 …in the IEC high power-to-weight of the MCSA enables fast trip times. The concept…
  • p. 67 …across the outer surface, so increased confinement times have been achieved by going to the massively…
  • p. 68 …Here n is the ion density and Tis the ion confinement time. Assuming the converged core…
  • p. 69 …A specially designed radio frequency (RF) ion gun is installed on the side of the chamber…
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generation rate is achieved. The net accelerating voltage must be kept within the order
of 1 kV to ensure that the resultant exhaust velocity is in the range of 30,000 m/s (Isp
< 3000 seconds). The mission for a communications satellite is optimized with a
specific impulse in this range. A higher specific impulse would reduce propellant
requirements, but the power requirements and the mass associated with power source
components would increase correspondingly. Xenon is bled into the chamber through
holes at appropriate locations around the wall of the vessel.
Figure 3.3. Illustration of the IEC Jet Thruster Experiment Showing Central Grid and
Two Jet Grids, Opposite to Each Other With On-Off Action
Table 3.1 lists the estimated performance parameters for an IEC electrostatic ion
thruster based on experimental data available to date plus extrapolation of other ion
thruster data. The IEC device will have higher densities and temperatures in the central
core plasma than a conventional thruster, but the increased losses due to
Bremsstrahlung radiation are still negligible when compared to the other power losses.
Thermal radiation losses should be comparable to that in conventional thrusters. The
energy expenditure per ion for conventional ion thrusters and is~ 300 eV per ion. The
energy expenditure per ion for the IEC device has not been established experimentally,
but was estimated in Table 3.1 from simulation studies.
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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.