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This Defense Intelligence Agency reference document, dated 10 March 2010, covers inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion. It was produced in FY 2009 under the DIA's Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) program. The report focuses on work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and reviews IEC basics, experiments, theory and applications such as neutron sources, explosives detection and space propulsion. It concludes by proposing a breakeven experiment for p-11B fusion that uses a hydrogen plasma simulation.
“The Advance”12 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/ ff81il 8PPll!ltllt t!l91!! SHL'I' events take place. Accordingly, he predicted that the Q-value (defined the ratio of fusion power out to ion input power) of an IEC device operating with a 50/50 percent deuterium-tritium (D-T) mixture would be ~0.21 for a 50-kV square well. This conclusion would rule out the possibility of a fusion reactor, but would leave open the development of driven neutron sources. However, this analysis contains several questionable assumptions. For example, a tightly focused monoenergetic ion beam is in fact a pessimistic scenario, because different co-moving ion species (such as D and T with the same energy) result in a finite speed difference, thus fostering ion-ion collisions and the degradation of the ion distribution function. It would be more realistic to consider that, in a square well, friction between species would homogenize the speed within the ion beam a~er some time, making the speed difference infinitesimal. This line of argument was pursued earlier by Barnes et al., (Reference 4.3) who found Q ~ 1. 3 for the same system. ION INJECTION PORT Ion extraction grid Ion divertor Pseudo-spherical well for ion confinement a Electron divertor I E=Emax E=Eo Anode wall (ground) Figure 4.2. Detail of the Anode and the Ion Injection Port in PFX-I (not to scale). Ion and electron divertors are indicated, as well as the Eo and Ern" equipotential lines that define the ion confinement region. The Eo contour line determines the region of absolute ion confinement. In Chacon's work, a bounce-averaged Fokker-Planck (BAFP) model was employed to obtain steady-state solutions for the ion distribution function and to calculate associated fusion energy gains (Q-values) in a variety of operating conditions. These is done in terms of source and sink strengths, ion injection energies, well depths, and electrostatic potential shapes. Thus, the limiting assumptions by Nevins- namely that ions are confined in a square potential well, and that their distribution is tightly focused and monoenergetic, are relaxed. When these restrictive assumptions are removed, it is found that large energy gains (Qs of hundreds) for beam-like solutions in square wells 35 UNCLASSIFIED//F&~ 8FFI&I11tk W&liii SUlklf
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 72 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.