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As is true for current-day commercial power plants, a reliable and economic fuel supply is essential for the viability of future Inertial Fusion Energy ͑IFE͒ ͓Energy From Inertial Fusion, edited by W. J. Hogan ͑International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1995͔͒ power plants. While IFE power plants will utilize deuterium-tritium ͑DT͒ bred in-house as the fusion fuel, the "target" is the vehicle by which the fuel is delivered to the reaction chamber. Thus the cost of the target becomes a critical issue in regard to fuel cost. Typically six targets per second, or about 500 000/ day are required for a nominal 1000 MW͑e͒ power plant. The electricity value within a typical target is about $3, allocating 10% for fuel cost gives only 30 cents per target as-delivered to the chamber center. Complicating this economic goal, the target supply has many significant technical challengesfabricating the precision fuel-containing capsule, filling it with DT, cooling it to cryogenic temperatures, layering the DT into a uniform layer, characterizing the finished product, accelerating it to high velocity for injection into the chamber, and tracking the target to steer the driver beams to meet it with micron-precision at the chamber center.

Successful ignition of direct drive targets in an IFE