Inertial Confinement Fusion - Projected Development

Projected Development

The various phases of such a project are the following, the sequence of inertial confinement fusion development follows much the same outline:

• burning demonstration: reproducible achievement of some fusion energy release (not necessarily a Q factor of >1).
• high gain demonstration: experimental demonstration of the feasibility of a reactor with a sufficient energy gain.
• industrial demonstration: validation of the various technical options, and of the whole data needed to define a commercial reactor.
• commercial demonstration: demonstration of the reactor ability to work over a long period, while respecting all the requirements for safety, liability and cost.

At the moment, according to the available data, inertial confinement fusion experiments have not gone beyond the first phase, although Nova and others have repeatedly demonstrated operation within this realm.

In the short term a number of new systems are expected to reach the second stage. NIF is expected to be able to quickly reach this sort of operation when it starts, but the date for the start of fusion experiments is currently suggested to be somewhere between 2010 and 2014. Laser Mégajoule would also operate within the second stage, and was initially expected to become operational in 2010. Fast ignition systems work well within this range. Finally, the z-pinch machine, not using lasers, is expected to obtain a high fusion energy gain, as well as capability for repetitive working, starting around 2010.

For a true industrial demonstration, further work is required. In particular, the laser systems need to be able to run at high operating frequencies, perhaps one to ten times a second. Most of the laser systems mentioned in this article have trouble operating even as much as once a day. Parts of the HiPER budget are dedicated to research in this direction as well. Because they convert electricity into laser light with much higher efficiency, diode lasers also run cooler, which in turn allows them to be operated at much higher frequencies. HiPER is currently studying devices that operate at 1 MJ at 1 Hz, or alternately 100 kJ at 10 Hz.