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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 10 March 2010, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It surveys the basics, experimental status, theory and possible uses of inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion, with emphasis on work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It covers neutron sources, explosives detection and space propulsion. It ends by proposing a 12-gun hydrogen plasma experiment meant to show breakeven conditions for p-11B fuel.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/10/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD surveys inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion, a relatively unconventional fusion concept that uses electric fields rather than the more established magnetic or laser-based approaches to confine ions, and it reviews both the underlying physics and the experimental work associated with the concept. The report emphasizes that IEC may have nearer-term value as a compact neutron, proton, or x-ray source and as a platform for studying experimental fusion approaches, while also presenting more ambitious possibilities such as aneutronic power generation and propulsion applications. At the same time, it makes clear that the concept remained far from practical fusion power, with experimental devices operating several orders of magnitude below breakeven and with major unresolved issues involving confinement, losses, grid damage, and scale-up. Overall, the document treats IEC as a technically interesting but still highly speculative path toward fusion energy, while suggesting that its more limited spin-off applications were more plausible in the near term than its long-range power generation or propulsion applications.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOR OFFIElIAk WSE OPtklf rays which can be extracted through a special port (requires a thin low-Z window for transmission). This can be viewed as a small scale soft source for individual laboratory studi es such as done at various large scale national laboratories like ANL, BNL, and LBL (synchrotron "light sources"). However, this use has not progressed much past the initial laboratory stud ies. The cylindrical geometry offers a unique configuration for security inspection applications. To illustrate this we next consider a design proposed for such a system. INTEGRATED X-RAY/NEUTRON SOURCES This integrated inspection system was proposed by G. Miley, et al., in Reference 5.1. It incorporates combined 2.5 - and 14-MeV IEC neutron sources and an IEC x-ray source. Such neutron sources have already been described, but some comments about the x ray version are worthwhile . The cylindrical IEC, like t he spherical one, can be converted to an attractive tunable x- ray source with minimum alteration of the apparatus. X-ray operation involves reversing electrode polarities and adding electron emitters along the vessel wall. Hydrogen gas is substituted for deuterium since in this configuration the main function of gas ions is to provide electron Bremsstrahlung emission. Intense em ission is concentrated in a small volume surrounding the central axis due to the high electron density formed there. The resulting x-ray energy spectrum is peaked at an energy equ ivalent to about two-th irds of the applied voltage. In the inspection station, a voltage around 120 kV is employed to obtain ~80 - kV x-rays with some distribution of energies above and below this mean value. X-ray production is spread along the axis over a long line- like region in the IEC provid ing broad area coverage for imag ing, consistent with the broad coverage of the companion IEC neutron sources. Consequently, the basic concept of the integrated inspection unit is to comb ine IEC neutron and x-ray sources plus appropriate detectors into a single "package" . This combination expands the range of elements that can be detected during a single scan and incorporates x-ray imaging with the 3-D detector array for NAA to obtain improved identification of the shape and location of suspected objects in a container. In cases where the object is too large to allow good x-ray penetration, information is still obtained from the 3-D NAA detector array. Nuclear and Chemical Explosive Detection Techniques Most current inspection systems concentrate on x-ray imaging. This interrogation relies on the photoelectric effect or Compton Scattering Imaging (CSI). It provides good localization and some geometric information for higher Z materials. The NAA technique, including both thermal neutron analysis (TNA) and fast neutron analysis (FNA), are powerful methods for detecting certain types of explosives. Basic elements such as oxygen, carbon, and chlorine present in the explosives can be identified through the (n, n'y) reaction initiated by fast neutrons. The gamma rays produced in the reaction are characteristic of elements being interrogated. Another basic element in many explosives, nitrogen, is usually measured through (n, y) reactions initiated by thermal neutrons. Either steady-state or pulsed sources can be employed for TNA. However, increased sensitivity can be obtained with pulsed FNA (PFNA). This method uses a pulsed high-energy neutron source and the time-of-flight (TOF) diagnostics to reduce the "noise" effect resulting from scattered neutrons and x-rays. UNCLASSIFIED/ /EAR OFFJCJALt 11ii QrslL¥ 47
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