Possibility of low-dense magnetized DT plasma ignition threshold achievement in a MAGO system

Abstract

The MAGO concept using the thermonuclear target with DT gas preliminary heating up to kiloelectronvolt range temperatures, which sufficiently enables the reduction of requirements of the compression rate (to 10 km/s) and the compression degree (to several hundreds) of the target, is investigated. The MAGO chamber with the Laval supersonic annular nozzle is used for plasma preheating. In this chamber magnetized plasma is accelerated up to 1000-km/s velocities and heated by collisionless shock waves. Systems with liner and magnetic compression are considered for the subsequent plasma compression. Energizing of a real-size system can be supplied by the magnetic flux compression generators with energy 100-500 MJ. Experiments close to the threshold of ignition can be conducted proportionally in 2-3 times reduced systems. Then the energy required will be 10-30 times less than in a real-size system.

Rotational stabilisation of the Rayleigh–Taylor instability at the inner surface of an imploding liquid shell

“…The influence of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability on implosion phenomena is of relevance to a number of scientific and engineering applications, including Z -pinch devices (Golberg & Velikovich 1993;Velikovich et al 1996;Ryutov et al 2000), laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (Hsing et al 1997;Mikaelian 2010;Velikovich & Schmit 2015), and magnetic flux compression (Harris 1962;Somon 1969;Buyko et al 1997). Of particular interest for the present work is a magnetised target fusion (MTF) (Kirkpatrick et al 1995;Buyko et al 1997) concept in which a plasma target is compressed by an imploding liquid metal surface to reach fusion conditions (Laberge 2008;Turchi 2008;Suponitsky et al 2014). In this concept, which was initially proposed during the LINUS program (Turchi et al 1980;Robson 1982), a cylindrical or spherical rotating liquid shell is collapsed by mechanical pistons in a quasi-reversible cycle in order to compress the plasma to fusion conditions.…”