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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“Works”29 pages

p. 7 …Emphasis is placed on work in these areas at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, although…
p. 8 …of how inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion works. Gas ~ccd I in~ Spherical Vacuum . Chamber !!1…
p. 10 …While Hirsh worked with Farnsworth to demonstrate early experimental success with IEC experiments (Reference 1.2…
p. 11 …Such work was soon taken up in several other laboratories, including Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL…
p. 12 …electron) injected traps (as does the present author's work). This selection was largely driven by…
p. 15 …This work and others on the small gridded systems at that time showed several important problems…
p. 17 …Recent work has shown that by properly programming the distribution function of the injected electrons it…
p. 18 …Results indicate that although the formalism works well during the early phases of compression, when the…
p. 21 …Hirsch Working With Philo Farnsworth I' I'· 0 ,,, 10•u w "',. ~ 40~ CRONS D- -,C •~7…
p. 22 …This worked well, but the design was eventually discarded to move to RF guns with much…
p. 23 …This work substituted a metallic hybrid getter for the external pumping on the IEC chamber. With…
p. 24 …Another important example of the use of a compact IEC neutron source is the work at…
p. 25 …2.7) The IEC developed for this work used a magnetron ion generation technique to improve…
p. 26 …Still the design worked reasonably well for the initial mine detection experiments. Unfortunately, the project was…
p. 27 …as shown by the hybrid magnetron source work in Japan. Another point noted is the advantage…
p. 29 …As already noted, the basic physics of this version was originally studied in pioneering work by…
p. 30 …Relation to Other Prior Thrusters NASA and other laboratories have worked toward developing advanced Hall Thrusters…
p. 31 …Indeed, the thruster concept arose from work on a fusion based IEC (Reference 3.5). To…
p. 32 …Khachan's work. It too looks very promising. 25 UNCLASSIFIED/ ,u;oAt OFFIGIPk IP&'i OIIU{
p. 35 …at the UIUC and several other laboratories working on IECs. The issue then is how to…
p. 39 …In follow-on work, they simplified the modeling of charge exchange with an analytical approach to…
p. 40 …Satsangi, "Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Experiments at Low Working Pressure," Prepared under U.S. Army contract DAAK…
p. 42 …In Chacon's work, a bounce-averaged Fokker-Planck (BAFP) model was employed to obtain steady…
p. 45 …Before discussing this work, some definitions for the potential well structure will be reviewed. POTENTIAL WELL…
p. 48 …However, much more work needs to be done along these lines to fully identify the optimal…
p. 52 …As pointed out by Khachan his work noted D2+ becomes more significant in lower voltages). In…
p. 53 …Nevins, Can inertial electrostatic confinement work beyond the ion-ion collisional time scale?" Phys. Plasmas, Vol…
p. 70 …Chacon's work, thermalized ions build up and additional quasi- Maxwellian distriution in the trap). Still…
p. 71 …To accomplish this result quickly on a modest budget, we need to simplify the work by…

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region is essential to decrease the center potential and consequently allow incoming
beam ions to penetrate into the core region. In the DaIEC, it is possible to assist this
effect by an external control of the centerline potential by applying a bias voltage to the
dipole coil. In the UIUC experiment this was done by applying a voltage to a small
copper ring inserted in the core of the dipole magnet. The increase in the electron
density with a small center line bias applied was about 30 percent while the applied
voltage to the dipole structure was ~3 percent of the discharge voltage. The present
setup prevented the use of larger applied voltages which could further improve
neutralization, but these results still demonstrate the basic concept of dipole focusing
with coil bias control.
Figure 3.6 shows how the electron density changes with increasing magnetic field
measured at various coil biases in the current experiment. It is found that electron
density increases about 17 times more than that of non-magnetic field measurement.
So far, this increase is very close to our theoretical estimations.
Electron density vs B-field 25mTorr
I.00E+0S
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
B-field strength (Gauss) I--- Ground -+- Vc=-lOOV ----r- Vc=+IOOV I
Figure 3.6. Electron Density vs. Dipole Magnet Field Strength at 25mTorr, 20mA
The next section turns to some very interesting diagnostic studies of IEC devices,
including a jet thruster configuration, done by Joe Khachan's group at the University of
Sydney, Australia.
KHACHAN'S STUDIES AT U OF SYDNEY
Joe Khachan's IEC research at the University of Sydney has stressed studies of optical
emission spectroscopy of gridded IEC devices (Reference 3.11, 3.12). Using Doppler
spectroscopy of the Hydrogen Ha line they have shown that the micro-channels in an
IEC discharge operating in the units at tens of mTorr pressure range (for voltages less
than 30 kV) are mostly composed of molecular ions with approximately 20 percent
atomic hydrogen. They have also developed a spectroscopic model based on collisional
radioactive modeling to spectroscopically measure ion densities, electron energies and
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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.