Inertial Fusion Power Plant - Overall Principles of An Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) Reactor

Overall Principles of An Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) Reactor

For an easier understanding, it is worth using the analogy of operation between an IFE reactor and a gasoline engine. By applying such an analogy, the process may be seen as a four strokes cycle:

• intake of the fusion fuel (microcapsule) into the reactor chamber;
• compression of the microcapsule in order to initiate the fusion reactions;
• explosion of the plasma created during the compression stroke, leading to the release of fusion energy;
• exhaust of the reaction residue, which will be treated afterwards to extract all the reusable elements, mainly tritium.

To allow such an operation, an inertial fusion reactor is made of several subsets:

• the injection system, which delivers to the reaction chamber the fusion fuel capsules, and at the same time the possible devices necessary to initiate fusion:
  • the container (hohlraum), intended to take the fuel capsule to a uniform very high temperature, mainly for laser and ion beam confinement techniques;
  • the "wires array" and its power transmission line, for z-pinch confinement technique;
• the "driver" used to compress the fusion fuel capsules; depending on the technique, it can be:
  • lasers;
  • an ion beam accelerator;
  • a z-pinch device;
• the reaction chamber, built upon:
  • an external wall made of metal;
  • an internal blanket intended to protect the external wall from the fusion shockwave and radiation, to get the emitted energy, and to produce the tritium fuel;
• the system intended to process reaction products and debris.

Further information: An example of a planned IFE plant can be seen in the Z machine article