A cost-effective target supply for inertial fusion energy

Abstract

A central feature of an inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plant is a target that has been compressed and heated to fusion conditions by the energy input of the driver. This is true whether the driver is a laser system, heavy ion beams or Z-pinch system. The IFE target fabrication, injection and tracking programmes are focusing on methods that will scale to mass production. We are working closely with target designers, and power plant systems specialists, to make specifications and material selections that will satisfy a wide range of required and desirable target characteristics. One-of-a-kind capsules produced for today's inertial confinement fusion experiments are estimated to cost about US$2500 each. Design studies of cost-effective power production from laser and heavy-ion driven IFE have suggested a cost goal of about $0.25-0.30 for each injected target (corresponding to ∼10% of the 'electricity value' in a target). While a four orders of magnitude cost reduction may seem at first to be nearly impossible, there are many factors that suggest this is achievable. This paper summarizes the design, specifications, requirements and proposed manufacturing processes for the future for laser fusion, heavy ion fusion and Z-pinch driven targets. These target manufacturing processes have been developed-and are proposed-based on the unique materials science and technology programmes that are ongoing for each of the target concepts. We describe the paradigm shifts in target manufacturing methodologies that will be needed to achieve orders of magnitude reductions in target costs, and summarize the results of 'nth-of-a-kind' plant layouts and cost estimates for future IFE power plant fuelling. These engineering studies estimate the cost of the target supply in a fusion economy, and show that costs are within the range of commercial feasibility for electricity production.

Review on high repetition rate and mass production of the cryogenic targets for laser IFE

“…The main steps of this production line have been investigated over the period of 1995-2016. They are as follows: mass production of shells [34,[36][37][38][39][40][41] , shell coating with protective layers [42][43][44][45] , fuel filling [30,31,44,46,47] , cryogenic fuel layering [45,46,48,49] , target acceleration and injection [47,[50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57] , flying target tracking and shooting [50,[57][58][59][60][61][62][63] . It is supposed that the first power plants will work with radioactive D-T fuel, which is a major limitation to IFE.…”

“…This Au/Pd coating is about 30-100 nm thick. Note that application of Pd as an outer coating greatly increases the shell wall permeability thus allowing rapid filling with D 2 and D-T fuel [34,68] . The time required for the inner droplet to achieve centering is reduced from ∼80 to ∼45 s and this lower field strength sustains the concentric condition indefinitely (taken from Ref.…”

“…Taking advantage of significant previous research (USA [34,41,42,44,54,69,[76][77][78][79][80] , Japan [81,82] , Europe [83] , Russia [46,52,75,[86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99] ), future work in this direction must include IFE-scale target science and technology development and demonstration. High-repetition-rate IFE-scale target science and technology comprises target fabrication, injection and tracking.…”

“…Design studies of cost-effective power production from laser and heavy-ion driven IFE have suggested a cost goal of about $0.25-0.30 for each injected target (corresponding to ∼10% of the 'electricity value' in a target)' [34] .…”

On-Chip Double Emulsion Droplet Assembly Using Electrowetting-on-Dielectric and Dielectrophoresis

“…The corresponding repetition rates then must be in the range from several per second to about once every ten seconds for a l-GW(e) power plant. [4] Therefore, between 100,000 and 500,000 targets per day will have to be made at a fraction of a dollar per target [4,24] to produce economically useful power. To avoid the need for a huge inventory of Tritium, these targets must be produced and then consumed continuously.…”