Magnetized target fusion and fusion propulsion.

Conference · Mon Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1449803· OSTI ID:975866

Kirkpatrick, R C ^[1]

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1. Ronald C.

Magnetized target fusion (MTF) is a thermonuclear fusion concept that is intermediate between the two mainline approaches, magnetic confinement and inertial confinement fusion (MCF and ICF). MTF incorporates some aspects of each and offers advantages over each of the mainline approaches. First, it provides a means of reducing the driver power requirements, thereby admitting a wider range of drivers than ICF. Second, the magnetic field is only used for insulation, not confinement, and the plasma is wall confined, so that plasma instabilities are traded in for hydrodynamic instabilities. However, the degree of compression required to reach fusion conditions is lower than for ICF, so that hydrodynamic instabilities are much less threatening. The standoff driver innovation proposes to dynamically form the target plasma and a gaseous shell that compresses and confines the target plasma. Therefore, fusion target fabrication is traded in for a multiplicity of plasma guns, which must work in synchrony. The standoff driver embodiment of MTF leads to a fusion propulsion system concept that is potentially compact and lightweight. We will discuss the underlying physics of MTF and some of the details of the fusion propulsion concept using the standoff driver approach. We discuss here the optimization of an MTF target design for space propulsion.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE
• OSTI ID: 975866
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-01-6318
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS
COMPRESSION
CONFINEMENT
DESIGN
FABRICATION
HYDRODYNAMICS
INERTIAL CONFINEMENT
MAGNETIC CONFINEMENT
MAGNETIC FIELDS
MULTIPLICITY
OPTIMIZATION
PHYSICS
PLASMA
PLASMA GUNS
PROPULSION
PROPULSION SYSTEMS
TARGETS