Progress and opportunities for inertial fusion energy in Europe

Abstract

In this paper, I consider the motivations, recent results and perspectives for the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) studies in Europe. The European approach is based on the direct drive scheme with a preference for the central ignition boosted by a strong shock. Compared to other schemes, shock ignition offers a higher gain needed for the design of a future commercial reactor and relatively simple and technological targets, but implies a more complicated physics of laser–target interaction, energy transport and ignition. European scientists are studying physics issues of shock ignition schemes related to the target design, laser plasma interaction and implosion by the code developments and conducting experiments in collaboration with US and Japanese physicists, providing access to their installations Omega and Gekko XII. The ICF research in Europe can be further developed only if European scientists acquire their own academic laser research facility specifically dedicated to controlled fusion energy and going beyond ignition to the physical, technical, technological and operational problems related to the future fusion power plant. Recent results show significant progress in our understanding and simulation capabilities of the laser plasma interaction and implosion physics and in our understanding of material behaviour under strong mechanical, thermal and radiation loads. In addition, growing awareness of environmental issues has attracted more public attention to this problem and commissioning at ELI Beamlines the first high-energy laser facility with a high repetition rate opens the opportunity for qualitatively innovative experiments. These achievements are building elements for a new international project for inertial fusion energy in Europe. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Prospects for high gain inertial fusion energy (part 1)’.

Recent progress in quantifying hydrodynamics instabilities and turbulence in inertial confinement fusion and high-energy-density experiments

“…As a consequence, the most promising path to high gain IFE could not be explored, at least in hydro-scaled conditions. As underlined by Prof. Tikhonchuk in [189], Europe should pave the way for academic studies of IFE. The opportunity was missed 10 years ago with the Hiper laser being removed from the ESFRI Roadmap.…”

The value of fusion energy to a decarbonized United States electric grid

“…All simulations incorporate capacity reserve margin constraints based on regional NERC reference reserve margins [21]. This ensures that each of the six NERC assessment area subregions within the US Eastern Interconnection has, at all times, a prescribed level of available firm generating capacity.…”

“…There are multiple concepts for fusion reactors including pulsed [13][14][15] and steady-state [16] tokamaks, stellarators [17][18][19], laser-driven inertial confinement devices [20,21], magnetized target fusion systems [22,23], mirror machines [24], field-reversed configurations [25], and Z-pinches [26,27]. We developed an abstracted operational model for a fusion plant and linearized it for implementation in GenX [28], a linear programming electricity system capacity expansion model.…”

Prospects for high gain inertial fusion energy: an introduction to the second edition

“…The requirement for high gain in order to drive down the capital infrastructure costs of future inertial fusion power plants (and, therefore, the costs of electricity) when these reactors are ready for market delivery were also reinforced [5]. Following discussions of the welcome formation of a fusion industry advocacy group [6] as well as discussions on the elements required for constructing future roadmaps [7], a number of research articles devoted to understanding obstacles to ignition on current-day devices were then presented [8][9][10][11][12][13]. Part I concluded with a fascinating discussion of the benefits of deploying the Naval Research Laboratory's argon-fluoride (ArF) driver, operating at a wavelength of 193 nm, for direct drive of inertial fusion targets.…”