Defense Intelligence Reference Document Aneutronic Fusion Propulsion (2)

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Chapter 5: Recent Developments
U.S. DOE PROGRAMS
The current U.S. Department of Energy fusion program is administered by the Office of
Fusion Energy Sciences (http://www.science.doe.gov/ofes/). The FY2010 budget was
$421 million, with over half devoted to tokamak plasma physics and experimental
facilities at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, MIT, and General Atomics. The Advanced
Concepts and High-Energy-Density Laboratory Plasma Physics (HEDLPP) programs,
which support plasma confinement theory and experiments for innovative fusion reactor
concepts and fusion propulsion, are funded at ~$20 million. The HEDLPP program
covers the following areas:
• Radiative hydrodynamics.
• Laser-plasma and beam-plasma interaction.
• Fusion burn.
• Materials under extreme conditions.
• Dense plasmas in ultrahigh fields.
• Laboratory astrophysics.
Technology development funding is directed toward tokomak-related reactors with $135
million contributed to ITER. The National Ignition Test Facility is funded by DOE's
National Nuclear Security Administration and is dedicated for nuclear weapons
simulation. The NNSA-funded research also includes Magneto Target Fusion
experiments at Sandia and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs.
INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a joint undertaking of
the European Union, China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States. The
goal is to demonstrate deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion ignition in a minimum-sized
tokomak confined plasma. The initial plans were to operate ITER as early as 2002 some
10 years after the planned TFTR and JET experimental results shown in Figure 17.
However, delays in TFTR and JET test results, which augmented the size of the ITER
plasma to 6 meters in major radius and 6 meters in height, had pushed the ITER
operation out to 2020 at a cost of $20 billion. It has since been downscaled in
operating requirements due to the cost and problems associated with tritium fuel and
containment with a 2025 operating date and cost of $25B. The operating time of an
ignition burn will be limited to minutes. These constraints have been imposed due to
the excessive costs for the 200 MW power plant needed to supply the energy to ignite
the tokomak plasma as well as the 36 kg of tritium needed for its initial fueling. In
order to compensate for this a Demonstration Power reactor is planned to follow 5 yrs
later at a substantially higher cost.
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