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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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UNCLASSIFIED/ /f81il 8PPll!ltllt ti.JI! Gilt I valuable fuels, especially the 3He. The ion thrusters run on Argon propellant at a specific impulse of 35,000 sec and an efficiency of 90 percent. The thrust is produced 4370 Newtons, probably an initial acceleration of .0087 m/s2 . A typical trip time for an out-and-back mission to Jupiter is 210 days out and 153 days to return. This is comparable to or faster than that predicted in prior fusion studies. T ' The initial spaceship mass at mission is 500 metric tons start; 222 metric tons are the Argon propellant needed for a Jupiter round trip with t:N of 220 km/s. The IEC reactor, direct energy converters and ion thrusters contribute 178 metric tons. The remaining 100 metric tons includes 20 metric tons for the crew areas, 15 metric tons for the electronics/computers, 20 metric tons for food and life support, 15 tons for crew shielding and 1.2 metric tons for the antenna. Inclusion of a contingency of 30 percent of the dry mass adds 60 metric tons and provides a 30-day "safety factor" to the round trip flight time. Human factors have not been fully evaluated in this design, but are thought to be acceptable with the short mission time achieved. Fusion Ship II would be one of the largest propelled vehicles ever built, although its mass would be ¼ that of the Space Shuttle at liltoff. Table 5.2 compares IEC Fusion Ship I and II designs with a concept based on an "advanced" spherical Tokamak reactor "scaled up" from the spherical Tokamak experiment at Princeton's Plasma Physics Laboratory as reported in an NASA-GLENN Laboratory study in 2001. The Tokamak has a shorter trip time by employing a power level that is six times the IEC units. Further, it is designed for D-T use (D- 3 He is difficult to burn in such Tokomaks), but tritium handling, radiation damage, and radioactivity issues are not addressed. Thus, if the IEC and Tokamak were compared on the same operational basis (i.e., same fuels and power levels), the IEC would clearly show a distinct advantage. Note that this is even true with the Tokamak using a very "advanced" conceptual design well beyond reach of ITER (originally International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) technology. 55 UNCLASSIFIED/ I f81il 8ffl&I.«1k WliEii SUlklf
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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.