Reduced scale National Ignition Facility capsule design
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94551 (United States)
In this article we describe the design and simulated performance characteristics of an indirectly-driven inertial confinement fusion capsule which utilizes only 900 kJ of laser energy and 250 TW of laser power from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [Paisner {ital et al.}, Laser Focus World {bold 30}, 75 (1994)]. This intentional reduction in laser performance from the nominal NIF specifications of 1.8 MJ and 500 TW results in lowering the hohlraum x-ray drive temperature from 300 eV to 250 eV. These energy and radiation temperature reductions are believed to define a {open_quotes}lower bound{close_quotes} on the successful implosion of an ignition capsule. This reduced scale capsule has a beryllium ablator containing a radially varying copper dopant, and a cryogenic solid deuterium{endash}tritium fuel layer surrounding a cavity filled with equilibrium vapor pressure gaseous deuterium and tritium. Two-dimensional simulations predict ignition and propagated burn from this capsule when either Rayleigh{endash}Taylor instability or time-dependent drive asymmetry effects are included. {copyright} {ital 1998 American Institute of Physics.}
- OSTI ID:
- 658490
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 5, Issue 10; Other Information: PBD: Oct 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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