Shock Ignitiion: A New Approach to High Gain/Yield Targets for the National Ignition Facility
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
In this 1-year LDRD project, a new concept for igniting thermonuclear fuel – “shock ignition” – was explored as a potential approach to high gain, inertial confinement fusion targets for the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Under shock ignition, fusion fuel is separately ignited by a strong spherically-converging shock and, because capsule implosion velocities are significantly lower than those required for conventional ignition targets, more fuel mass can be assembled for a given laser drive energy. The benefit of decoupling compression from ignition on NIF is that an order-of-magnitude higher fusion energy gains/yields are potentially achievable. Our results indicate thermonuclear yields of ~120-250MJ may be possible with laser drive energies of 1-1.6MJ, while gains of around 50 may still be achievable at only ~0.2MJ drive energy. The scaling of NIF energy gain with laser energy is found to be of the form G~126E(MJ)0.510. This offers the prospects for high-gain targets that may lead to smaller, more economic fusion power reactors and a cheaper fusion energy development path.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 1113383
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-TR-411758
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
On the Fielding of a High Gain, Shock-Ignited Target on the National Ignitiion Facility in the Near Term
Progress towards ignition on the National Ignition Facility