Intertial Confinement Fusion Essay -- Nuclear

Missing Figures INERTIAL CONFINEMENT FUSION 1. Introduction / Beginnings In the 1940s during the development of nuclear explosives, the inertial confinement approach to fusion was born. Weapons researchers determined that by use of high energy sources, such as the fission reaction, light nuclei could be fused, thus creating intense fusion energy. Scientists in the controlled fusion camp also realized that tight compression of fuel pellets could increase the fusion reaction rate which is proportional to fuel density. (Robert A. Gross, Fusion Energy, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 295) Scientists were, at this stage, trying to discover a mechanism which could compress a light-nucleus fuel. The invention of high power lasers encouraged the inertial-confinement camp. The radiation from the laser heats a fuel pellet, and as the plasma from the pellet rapidly expands, a momentum reaction sends compressive waves inward, converging on the pellet's core. The energy in the core causes the ignition of the pellet. The common desire is to obtain a thermonuclear energy yield that exceeds the energy which is required to heat and compress the solid before the pellet explodes; hence the name inertial confinement. Some of the early research in this subject was done by Nuckolls and Kidder of the Livermore Laboratory, and Bosov and Krokhin of the Kurchatov Institute in the USSR. (Gross, 295) Since these great efforts, the scientific community has considered inertial-confinement fusion to be the top alternate method for controlled thermonuclear fusion. The most probable containment, of course, is magnetic confinement fusion. Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) in Princeton, New Jersey is argueably the premier ma... ...died; however, the heavy-ion accelerators show much promise in its short time of consideration. Laser light coupling and laser efficiencies have been a problem for laser-driven designs. Ion-driven devices have problems of their own, particularly in focusing to the required power density. (Dean, 75) The HYBALL-II project as well as other ICF projects today have easily surpassed the yields of the early ICF reactors (SOLASE). In the big picture, however, one should keep in mind that magnetic-confinement devices show much more promise at this point. Works Cited Dean, Stephen O., (ed.). Prospects for Fusion Power. New York: Pergamon Press, 1981. Gross, Robert A. Fusion Energy. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1984. Velarde, Guillermo, et. al, (ed.). Nuclear Fusion by Inertial Confinement: A Comprehensive Treatise. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1993.