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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.

  • p. 8 …hence a good probability of fusing before being lost from the fusion reaction chamber. In the…
  • p. 11 …If it can, the device would be simpler and smaller than a Tokamak, making it an…
  • p. 14 …However, they showed that grid deformation could be very harmful. This deserves several comments. First, the…
  • p. 15 …Again, this issue will be addressed further later. While earlier workers sought small grid openings designed…
  • p. 17 …More insights will be provided throughout this report, but the reader is encouraged to study the…
  • p. 19 …Upscattering out of the well must be minimized while electron 12 UNCLASSIFIED//EOAt OFFIQI.«1k 11181…
  • p. 29 …It operates by convergence of ions created between the grid and wall onto a small volume…
  • p. 30 …Such thrusters, however, do not scale well to lower powers for small satellites, nor are exhaust…
  • p. 33 …first, the channel grid will be separately hinged with a small servo motor such that its…
  • p. 35 …Thus, the mass of the IEC jet thruster system can potentially be reduced compared to a…
  • p. 43 …More insight into this can be obtained from the distribution functions for trapped ions, sketched in…
  • p. 44 …The source to sink issue noted several times here can be explained as follows. Two opposite…
  • p. 47 …However, since the fusion core radius in these calculations is very small on the order of…
  • p. 49 …instability in finite spherical systems may be excited for small beam velocities compared to those of…
  • p. 50 …However, an experimental study should be performed to verify this result. RIDER - ENERGY BALANCE STUDY Todd…
  • p. 53 …In addition, since both D-D and D- 3He reactions can be used for proton production…
  • p. 54 …This can be viewed as a small scale soft source for individual laboratory studies such as…
  • p. 55 …The 14.1-MeV neutrons from the D-T reaction will be the primary source for…
  • p. 59 …Due to their small size, they can be used in a large array along with TOF…
  • p. 65 …If vis large compared to v11, the effective scattering angle will be large, resulting in retrapping…
  • p. 67 …Fortunately, the IEC can be scaled up in energy gain while keeping a small size since…
  • p. 68 …The small size of the IEC is a key characteristic. If rapid development is to be…
  • p. 71 …In other words, this could also be thought of as a Q=100 DT equivalent breakeven…
UNCLASSIFIED/ ; t ;- :-- -r-"~ dV
.:: _l I vi.,.
- Real
~ ' >
0: ' cathode
'~ '·-- 0 0.075
Radiu!\ \m I
Figure 4.5. The Definition of the Double Well
Depth: Double Well Depth [%] = -dV /Vtot x 100.
The case shown assumes 30-keV injection.
!EC cathode grid
j ------- -- -- ' •', '
/~ '.
' ·~,vJ.
\,, vt!:v _,:'
' ,
' -- -.... - -...
Figure 4.6. The Definition of the Parallel and
Perpendicular Velocities at the IEC Cathode Grid
The definition of angular momentum is also illustrated in Figure 4.6. In spherical
geometry, the velocity component perpendicular to the radius axis represents the
angular momentum.
TZONEV ET AL. - DEEP WELL STUDY
Tzonev et al. (Reference 4.4) used the IXL (ion accelerated code), a 1-D electrostatic
Poisson-Vlasov equation solver for use in spherical geometry. IXL was originally
developed by Mission Research Corporation for R.W. Bussard. The primary purpose of
the code is to determine an electrostatic potential consistent with the dynamics of the
charged particles within that same potential, and to determine the charged particle
density distribution inside of the spherical cathode. While IXL neglects collisional
effects, it still provides an important limiting case where space charge effects dominate.
The boundary conditions for each particle population are characterized by five
parameters: injected beam current, average injection energy, energy spread associated
with the velocity component in both parallel and perpendicular directions, and the
number of recirculations through the core.
Tzonev et al. found that deep double electrostatic potential wells can occur at high ion
and electron currents (30 A-60 A); high perpendicular ion energy spread (3 keV-14
keV); low perpendicular electron energy spread (3 eV), and low radial ion energy
spread (0.1 eV-0.5 eV). An example is given in Figure 4.7.
39
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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.