Plasma Jet Driven Magneto-Inertial Fusion (PJMIF)

Journal Article · Tue May 07 00:00:00 EDT 2019 · Fusion Science and Technology

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1598736· OSTI ID:1506631

Thio, Y. C. Francis ^[1]; Hsu, Scott C. ^[2]; Witherspoon, F. Douglas ^[3]; Cruz, Edward ^[1]; Case, Andrew ^[3]; Langendorf, Samuel ^[2]; Yates, Kevin ^[4]; Dunn, John ^[2]; Cassibry, Jason ^[5]; Samulyak, Roman ^[6]; Stoltz, Peter ^[7]; Brockington, Samuel J. ^[3]; Williams, Ajoke ^[3]; Luna, Marco ^[3]; Becker, Robert ^[1]; Cook, Adam ^[1]

---

1. HyperJet Fusion Corporation, Chantilly, VA (United States)
2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
3. HyperJet Fusion Corporation, Chantilly, VA (United States); HyperV Technologies Corp., Chantilly, VA (United States)
4. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States)
5. Univ. of Alabama, Huntsville, AL (United States)
6. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
7. Tech-X Corporation, Denver, CO (United States)

We report that PJMIF is the only embodiment of magneto-inertial fusion that has the unique combination of standoff implosion and high implosion velocity (50 km/s - 150 km/s). It uses inexpensive plasma guns for all plasma formation and implosion. It has potential for relatively high repetition rate from 1 to 2 Hz. Its configuration is compatible with the use of a thick liquid wall that doubles as a tritium breeding blanket as well as a coolant for extracting the heat out of the fusion reactor. Its operational parameter space allows for the possibility of using a suffciently dense target plasma for the target plasma to have a high beta. If such a high beta plasma could be realized, it would help to suppress micro and MHD instabilities, giving its target plasma classical transport and energy confinement characteristics. Its open geometry and moderate time and spatial scales provide convenient diagnostics access. Diagnostics accessibility, high shot rate and low cost per shot should enable quick resolution of technical issues during development, thus the potential for enabling rapid R&D of PJMIF. There are a number of challenges, however, for PJMIF including being at a very early stage of development, developing the required plasma guns, dealing with potential liner non-uniformities, clearing the chamber of residual high-Z gas between shots, and developing the repetitive pulsed power component technologies. Over the last three years, the development of the Plasma Liner Formation Experiment (PLX-alpha) have been undertaken to explore the physics and demonstrate the formation of a spherical liner by the merging of a spherical array of plasma jets. Two- and three- jet merging experiments have been conducted to study the interactions of the jets. Lastly, six- and seven-jet experiments have been performed to form a piece of the plasma liner. A brief status report on this development is provided in this paper.

• Research Organization: Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (SC-21)
• Grant/Contract Number: 89233218CNA000001; AR0000566; SC0012704
• OSTI ID: 1506631
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1544694
• Report Number(s): BNL--211511-2019-JAAM; LA-UR--19-21026
• Journal Information: Fusion Science and Technology, Journal Name: Fusion Science and Technology Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 75; ISSN 1536-1055
• Publisher: American Nuclear Society
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
ARPA-E ALPHA
Fusion
Innovative Fusion Approaches
MIF
MTF
PJMIF
Plasma Liner
Magneto-inertial fusion
PLX
Plasma jet
Plasma liner
Pulse coaxial plasma guns
Reactor concept
Slab-mode