Book Synopsis Progress in Laboratory High Gain ICF (inertial Confinement Fusion) by :
Download or read book Progress in Laboratory High Gain ICF (inertial Confinement Fusion) written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inertial confinement fusion (ICF), a thermonuclear reaction in a small ((approximately)5 mm diameter) fuel capsule filled with a few milligrams of deuterium and tritium, has been the subject of very fruitful experimentation since the early 1970's. High gain ICF is now on the threshold of practical applications. With a Laboratory Microfusion Facility (LMF), these applications will have major implications for national defense, basic and applied science, and power production. With a driver capable of delivering about 10 MJ in a 10-ns pulse at an intensity of (approximately)3 x 1014 W/cm2, an appropriately configured cryogenic capsule could be compressed to a density of about 200 g/cm3 and a temperature of 3--5 keV. Under these conditions, up to 10 mg of DT could be ignited, and with a burn efficiency of about 30%, release up to 1000 MJ of fusion energy, an energy gain of about 100. A thousand megajoules is equivalent to about one quarter ton of TNT, or about 7 gallons of oil--an amount of energy tractable under laboratory conditions and potentially very useful for a variety of applications. 61 refs., 33 figs.