Shock Ignitiion: A New Approach to High Gain/Yield Targets for the National Ignition Facility

Technical Report · Thu Mar 26 04:00:00 EDT 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1113383· OSTI ID:1113383

Perkins, L J ^[1]; LaFortune, K N ^[1]; Betti, R ^[1]; Williams, W H ^[1]; Miles, A R ^[1]; Divol, L ^[1]

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1. 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

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