Production and measurement of engineered surfaces for inertial confinement fusion research

Conference · Wed Jan 19 04:00:00 EST 2011

OSTI ID:1047154

Day, Robert D ^[1]; Hatch, Douglas J ^[1]; Rivera, Gerald ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory

Inertial Confinement Fusion uses the optical energy from a very high power laser to implode spherical capsules that contain a fuel mixture of deuterium and tritium. The capsules are made of either Beryllium, plastic, or glass and range from 0.1 mm to 2 mm in diameter. As a capsule implodes, thereby compressing the fuel to reach nuclear fusion conditions, it achieves temperatures of millions of degrees Centigrade and very high pressures. In this state, the capsule materials act like fluids and often a low density fluidic material will push on a higher density material which can be a very unstable condition depending upon the smoothness of the interface between the two materials. This unstable condition is called a hydrodynamic instabillity which results in the mixing of the two materials. If the mixing occurs between the fuel and a non-fuel material, it can stop the fusion reaction just like adding significant amounts of water to gasoline can stop the operation of an automobile. Another region in the capsule where surface roughness can cause capsule performance degradation is at a joint. For instance, many capsules are made of hemispheres that are joined together. If the joint surfaces are too rough, then there will an effective reduction in density at the joint. This density reduction can cause a non-uniform implosion which will reduce the fusion energy coming out of the capsule.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1047154
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-11-00379; LA-UR-11-379
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
42 ENGINEERING
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
BERYLLIUM
DEUTERIUM
GASOLINE
GLASS
HYDRODYNAMICS
IMPLOSIONS
INERTIAL CONFINEMENT
LASERS
MIXTURES
PERFORMANCE
PRODUCTION
ROUGHNESS
THERMONUCLEAR REACTORS
TRITIUM
WATER