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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…
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The three detection techniques shown in Table 5.1 have previously been used
independently in inspection units. The present integrated unit makes use of all three
simultaneously. Thus, the strengths of each device combine to provide consistent
overall coverage of elements/objects.
Table 5.1. Three Kinds of Techniques Previously Used in Explosives Detection
System
Here, TNA and FNA represent thermal and fast neutron activation, respectively.
TNA FNA X-ray
Element Identification Element Density
Nitrogen High Medium -
Carbon Very Low Very High -
Oxygen NA Iligh -
Hydrogen Very High High -
Chlorine Very High High -
C/0 Ratio NA High -
Background Noise High Low NA
Imaging: geometry & localization Pulsed FNA
Limited provides depth High resolution
information information
Suitcase to Suitcase to cargo,
Application Small suitcase not good for
cargo plastics ohjects
Cunfiguraliun CurnplicatcJ Cumplicatcd Simple
Operation & Maintenance Cost High High Low
The integrated IEC system employs a combination of PFNA/TNA methods and
conventional x-ray techniques to collect elemental information as well as a 3-D imaging
of any suspected objects. The 14.1-MeV neutrons from the D-T reaction will be the
primary source for TOF FNA while thermalized neutrons from a block of neutron
thermalizing plastic in front of the 2.45-MeV DD IEC will be used for TNA. This
combination will increase spatial resolution and significantly reduce the false alarm rate
to a low level compared to conventional methods which employ single sources and are
limited to yield due to lack of broad area sources.
Overview for Weapons/Nuclear Material Simulation Articles
The following three categories of items provide a overview of articles of interest for
detection in inspection stations.
A. Explosives which are of high D and N, low C and H elemental densities are listed
below with sizes ranging from 8 x 8 x 8 cm 3 to 20 x 20 x 20 cm 3 .
• RDX (Cyclonite, C3H6N6O6) with p = 1.83 g/cm 3 .
• TNT(Trinitrotoluene, C1HsNJO6) with p = 1.654 g/cm 3 .
• PETN(Penthrite, CsHsN4O12) with p = 1.773 g/cm3.
• TATB(Triaminotrinitrobenzene, C5H 6N6O6 ) with p = 1.93 g/cm3.
48
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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.