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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 1 November 2010, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications program. It reviews fusion plasma physics, confinement methods and propulsion concepts that use aneutronic fusion fuels such as hydrogen and boron-11. It concludes that pulsed DPF or IEC thrusters may replace satellite ion thrusters in the near term. It also finds that aneutronic fusion propulsion will not be practical beyond the solar system without breakthrough propulsion physics.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 11/1/10, 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 revisits aneutronic fusion propulsion in a more systems-oriented manner, arguing that fusion concepts using low-neutron fuels such as proton-boron or helium-3 could become attractive for space propulsion because they reduce shielding burdens and may support direct conversion of charged-particle energy into thrust or onboard power. The report reviews the relevant fusion plasma physics and focuses on several candidate confinement approaches, then connects those concepts to possible applications in near-space, orbital, and interplanetary propulsion. It presents the most plausible nearer-term use as very high-power electric or plasma propulsion for satellites and deep-space missions rather than atmospheric flight or interstellar travel, while emphasizing that major obstacles remain in ignition, sustained confinement, system mass, power handling, fuel storage, launch integration, and end-to-end engineering.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOR OFFICIAL l:191!! 6HLY 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 tokamak-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 ign ition in a minimum-sized tokamak 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 tokamak plasma as well as the 36 kg of tritium needed for its initia l fueling. In order to compensate for this a Demonstration Power reactor is planned to follow 5 yrs later at a substantially higher cost. UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOR &FFI@IAL l:191!! 014Li 21
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 36 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.