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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. 5 …Sketch of Two Opposite Limits of the Beam·Maxwellian Equilibrium .. 38 Figure 4.5. The Definition…
  • p. 6 …Comparison of Analytical and Numerical Estimates of Q-Values in a Beam-Dominated Solution -- for a…
  • p. 8 …shows the "Star Mode" discharge where ion beams are created that pass through the grid openings…
  • p. 9 …discussed later where the recirculating ions possess beam-like trajectories passing through the center of the…
  • p. 10 UNCLASSIFIED/ ;raA 8FFIIItliL ~81!! SHL'f beam-like ions. Since electron energy loss processes such as…
  • p. 11 …In addition, its beam-like reactions (highly non-Maxwellian) make the IEC very well suited for…
  • p. 13 …a beam created at the anode and accelerated by the applied cathode voltage; a low-energy…
  • p. 14 …Good convergence is required to achieve optimal beam-beam reactivity scaling for the application that require…
  • p. 15 …The observed loss of convergence with decreasing pressure and increasing current makes achieving significant beam-beam…
  • p. 16 …For a power reactor the objective is to obtain ion beam-beam collisions in this central…
  • p. 17 …the "conventional" beam-like one. A key issue for this concept is how much plasma compression…
  • p. 19 …The main beam observed is a direct path along the injector angle. Other faint light channels…
  • p. 21 …Note that six ion "guns" were used to create a low energy ion beam that entered…
  • p. 22 UNCLASSIFIED/;SflHl 8FFIIItliL ~81!! 8HL'I' was obtained from recirculation beam-beam reactions in a potential…
  • p. 23 …The key physics point is that the beam-beam fusion rate scales as the ion current…
  • p. 26 …Scoping calculations of beam-background fusion rates predict that a 3 He- 3 He reaction product…
  • p. 27 …of the ion density squared scaling for beam-beam reactions. REFERENCES 2.1 R. L. Hirsch…
  • p. 28 …As such, the beam convergence (compression) is limited to lower values, hence lower core densities (an…
  • p. 30 …by the intersection of the multiple ion beams, serves to deflect ions into the escaping jet…
  • p. 31 …The result is the formation of the intense space charge neutralized ion beam (or "plasma jet…
  • p. 32 …in the symmetric microchannels into a directed beam or jet. Comparison to a Conventional "Plasma" Thruster…
  • p. 33 …The ion beams finally exit through an opening in the ground sphere of the IEC device…
  • p. 35 …These devices operate with ~ 80- keV D-ion beams using the non-Maxwellian character of the…
  • p. 36 …Two ion sources inject 40-keV deuterium and helium-3 ion beams toward the center of…
  • p. 37 …Indeed in this case fusion is dominated by beam-beam (non- Maxwellian reactions). Also, the dipole…
  • p. 38 …the center potential and consequently allow incoming beam ions to penetrate into the core region. In…
  • p. 39 …Comparison of Analytical and Numerical Estimates of Q-values in a beam-Dominated Solution -- for a…
  • p. 40 …Hora, "Converging Beam Neutron Source for Driving a Sub-critical Fission Reactor", Proceedings, ICONE 8, CD…
  • p. 41 …Namely, the time scale for collisional degradation of the beam-like ion distribution function is crucial…
  • p. 42 …For example, a tightly focused monoenergetic ion beam is in fact a pessimistic scenario, because different…
  • p. 44 …Thus, weak sinks and strong sources will result in a large beam population, increasing the beam…
  • p. 45 …Sketch of Two Opposite Limits of the Beam-Maxwellian Equilibrium. The solid line corresponds to a…
  • p. 46 …injected beam current, average injection energy, energy spread associated with the velocity component in both parallel…
  • p. 47 …As stated in Section I, the current scaling for beam-beam reactions is strictly 12. However…
  • p. 48 …is very encouraging for formation of deep wells in IEC devices designed for reactors using beam…
  • p. 49 …To do this, it is assumed that the electrostatic confinement equilibrium ion beams are proportional to…
  • p. 50 …When an ion beam is hot, the waves excited by the instability are ion acoustic type…
  • p. 51 …Rider was particularly interested in the claim that due to its beam-like non- Maxwellian plasma…
  • p. 52 …Diagram Showing Equipotential Surfaces of the IEC Cathode Grid and Their Focusing Effect on a Beam…
  • p. 59 …of detectors, the detector configuration, the collimated beam size, the acquisition time, and other scan-related…
  • p. 63 …Alternately, for space propulsion, the proton beam, augmented by injection of heavy atoms to increase the…
  • p. 68 …Due to its inherent non-Maxwellian (beam-like) plasma, the IEC is especially well suited for…
  • p. 70 …This configuration is highly non-Maxwellian due to the beam dominated nature of the trapped ions…
UNCLASSIFIED/ ;cl (Nomenclature defined in Reference 6.1)
algorithm, H.J. Kim developed a fully implicit particle-in-cell scheme and implemented it
using a Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov algorithm that does not require actual formation
and storage of the Jacobian matrix to minimize the computational costs. The scheme
features the following properties: 1) fully implicit method where all quantities of both
the particle and the field equations are consistent at each time step, and 2) a good
property for energy conservations.
H.J. Kim's study verified that the algorithm correctly handles the typical electrostatic
modes. For example, the results agree with the linear dispersion relations for simple
limits of two cold electron counter-streaming instabilities, electron Landau damping,
and ion acoustic waves. The simulation experience presented here demonstrates the
energy conservation property of the systems and the efficacy of nonlinear solver
combined with an efficient pre-conditioning which is derived from the nonlinear Poisson
equation and particle description relations. For ion acoustic waves, the maximum
variation in the total energy is much less than 0.1 percent, indicating that a fully
implicit technique performs well in that particular simulation. The number of linear and
nonlinear iterations is significantly reduced when the preconditioner is applied. In fact,
for the case of linear iterations, the iteration number of a preconditioned linear system
is 10 times smaller than that of a linear solver without precondition er. In addition, grid
convergence test shows that the scaling of CPU time is virtually linear according to the
grid number. The time convergence test suggests that employing the largest time step
compatible with accuracy in a given calculation is the most efficient route for obtaining
the solution because the CPU time decreases as the time step increases.
H.J. Kim performed a normal mode analysis of the ion-ion counter-streaming instability
in a spherical inertial electrostatic confinement in order to gain insights into the ion-
injected inertial electrostatic confinement equilibrium configuration. To do this, it is
assumed that the electrostatic confinement equilibrium ion beams are proportional to
1/r2, effectively neutralizing the background electron density. It is evident from the
analysis of cold ion beams that two-stream instability in finite spherical systems may be
excited for small beam velocities compared to those of homogeneous and infinite
42
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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.