New issues and direction in the U.S. Inertial Confinement Fusion Program
- Dept. of Energy, Germantown, MD (United States). Office of Research and Inertial Fusion
In pursuit of its goal of developing a laboratory microfusion capability for both defense and other applications, the US Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) Program has developed a set of laser and light ion research facilities which, with their supporting components, represent the most advanced set of high energy density physics research capabilities in the world. The US ICF Program is considering both direct and indirect drive as a path to ignition. In the former, a deuterium-tritium (DT) filled spherical capsule is directly imploded using laser light, while in the latter driver (laser or light ion) energy is converted to x-rays which are then used to implode a capsule. The latter results in greater drive symmetry and reduced hydrodynamic instability at a cost in efficiency. The Program`s major direct drive laser facilities are the NIKE KrF laser at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the Nd-glass OMEGA Upgrade laser at the University of Rochester. The 40-kJ Nova laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), completed in 1984, is the Program`s major indirect drive facility. In addition to their Program related work, a number of these facilities are now available to outside users through a proposal submission process. The next few years are expected to be very exciting for ICF as experiments commence on OMEGA Upgrade and NIKE and efforts continue to construct the National Ignition Facility (NIF) a large glass laser which is designed to demonstrate ignition in the laboratory.
- OSTI ID:
- 505804
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950905--; ISBN 0-7803-2970-8
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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