Download or read book PROGRESS TOWARD UNDERSTANDING MAGNETIZED TARGET FUSION MTF written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Progress with Developing a Target for Magnetized Target Fusion written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) is an approach to fusion where a preheated and magnetized plasma is adiabatically compressed to fusion conditions. Successful MTF requires a suitable initial target plasma with an embedded magnetic field of at least 5 T in a closed-field-line topology, a density of roughly 1018 cm−3, a temperature of at least 50 eV, and must be free of impurities which would raise radiation losses. Target plasma generation experiments are underway at Los Alamos National Laboratory using the Colt facility; a 0.25 MJ, 2--3 [mu]s rise-time capacitor bank. The goal of these experiments is to demonstrate plasma conditions meeting the minimum requirements for a MTF initial target plasma. In the first experiments, a Z-pinch is produced in a 2 cm radius by 2 cm high conducting wall using a static gas-fill of hydrogen or deuterium gas in the range of 0.5 to 2 torr. Thus far, the diagnostics include an array of 12 B-dot probes, framing camera, gated OMA visible spectrometer, time-resolved monochrometer, filtered silicon photodiodes, neutron yield, and plasma-density interferometer. These diagnostics show that a plasma is produced in the containment region that lasts roughly 10 to 20 [mu]s with a maximum plasma density exceeding 1018 cm−3. The experimental design and data are presented.

Download or read book Current Trends in International Fusion Research written by Emilio Panarella and published by NRC Research Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Magnetized Target Fusion MTF written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magnetized target fusion (MTF) is an approach to thermonuclear fusion that is intermediate between the two extremes of inertial and magnetic confinement. Target plasma preparation is followed by compression to fusion conditions. The use of a magnetic field to reduce electron thermal conduction and potentially enhance DT alpha energy deposition allows the compression rate to be drastically reduced relative to that for inertial confinement fusion. This leads to compact systems with target driver power and intensity requirements that are orders of magnitude lower than for ICF. A liner on plasma experiment has been proposed to provide a firm proof of principle for MTF.

Download or read book Magnetized Target Fusion Collaboration Final Report written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nuclear fusion has the potential to satisfy the prodigious power that the world will demand in the future, but it has yet to be harnessed as a practical energy source. The entry of fusion as a viable, competitive source of power has been stymied by the challenge of finding an economical way to provide for the confinement and heating of the plasma fuel. It is the contention here that a simpler path to fusion can be achieved by creating fusion conditions in a different regime at small scale (̃a few cm). One such program now under study, referred to as Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF), is directed at obtaining fusion in this high energy density regime by rapidly compressing a compact toroidal plasmoid commonly referred to as a Field Reversed Configuration (FRC). To make fusion practical at this smaller scale, an efficient method for compressing the FRC to fusion gain conditions is required. In one variant of MTF a conducting metal shell is imploded electrically. This radially compresses and heats the FRC plasmoid to fusion conditions. The closed magnetic field in the target plasmoid suppresses the thermal transport to the confining shell, thus lowering the imploding power needed to compress the target. The undertaking described in this report was to provide a suitable target FRC, as well as a simple and robust method for inserting and stopping the FRC within the imploding liner. The FRC must also survive during the time it takes for the metal liner to compress the FRC target. The initial work at the UW was focused on developing adequate preionization and flux trapping that were found to be essential in past experiments for obtaining the density, flux and most critically, FRC lifetime required for MTF. The timescale for testing and development of such a source can be rapidly accelerated by taking advantage of a new facility funded by the Department of Energy. At this facility, two inductive plasma accelerators (IPA) were constructed and tested. Recent experiments with these IPAs have demonstrated the ability to rapidly form, accelerate and merge two hypervelocity FRCs into a compression chamber. The resultant FRC that was formed was hot (T{sub ion} ̃400 eV), stationary, and stable with a configuration lifetime several times that necessary for the MTF liner experiments. The accelerator length was less than 1 meter, and the time from the initiation of formation to the establishment of the final equilibrium was less than 10 microseconds. With some modification, each accelerator can be made capable of producing FRCs suitable for the production of the target plasma for the MTF liner experiment. Based on the initial FRC merging/compression results, the design and methodology for an experimental realization of the target plasma for the MTF liner experiment can now be defined. The construction and testing of the key components for the formation of the target plasma at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) will be performed on the IPA experiment, now at MSNW. A high density FRC plasmoid will be formed and accelerated out of each IPA into a merging/compression chamber similar to the imploding liner at AFRL. The properties of the resultant FRC plasma (size, temperature, density, flux, lifetime) will be obtained. The process will be optimized, and a final design for implementation at AFRL will be carried out. When implemented at AFRL it is anticipated that the colliding/merging FRCs will then be compressed by the liner. In this manner it is hoped that ultimately a plasma with ion temperatures reaching the 10 keV range and fusion gain near unity can be obtained.

Download or read book Final Report on the Magnetized Target Fusion Collaboration written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nuclear fusion has the potential to satisfy the prodigious power that the world will demand in the future, but it has yet to be harnessed as a practical energy source. The entry of fusion as a viable, competitive source of power has been stymied by the challenge of finding an economical way to provide for the confinement and heating of the plasma fuel. It is the contention here that a simpler path to fusion can be achieved by creating fusion conditions in a different regime at small scale (~ a few cm). One such program now under study, referred to as Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF), is directed at obtaining fusion in this high energy density regime by rapidly compressing a compact toroidal plasmoid commonly referred to as a Field Reversed Configuration (FRC). To make fusion practical at this smaller scale, an efficient method for compressing the FRC to fusion gain conditions is required. In one variant of MTF a conducting metal shell is imploded electrically. This radially compresses and heats the FRC plasmoid to fusion conditions. The closed magnetic field in the target plasmoid suppresses the thermal transport to the confining shell, thus lowering the imploding power needed to compress the target. The undertaking to be described in this proposal is to provide a suitable target FRC, as well as a simple and robust method for inserting and stopping the FRC within the imploding liner. The timescale for testing and development can be rapidly accelerated by taking advantage of a new facility funded by the Department of Energy. At this facility, two inductive plasma accelerators (IPA) were constructed and tested. Recent experiments with these IPAs have demonstrated the ability to rapidly form, accelerate and merge two hypervelocity FRCs into a compression chamber. The resultant FRC that was formed was hot (T & ion ~ 400 eV), stationary, and stable with a configuration lifetime several times that necessary for the MTF liner experiments. The accelerator length was less than 1 meter, and the time from the initiation of formation to the establishment of the final equilibrium was less than 10 microseconds. With some modification, each accelerator was made capable of producing FRCs suitable for the production of the target plasma for the MTF liner experiment. Based on the initial FRC merging/compression results, the design and methodology for an experimental realization of the target plasma for the MTF liner experiment can now be defined. A high density FRC plasmoid is to be formed and accelerated out of each IPA into a merging/compression chamber similar to the imploding liner at AFRL. The properties of the resultant FRC plasma (size, temperature, density, flux, lifetime) are obtained in the reevant regime of interest. The process still needs to be optimized, and a final design for implementation at AFRL must now be carried out. When implemented at AFRL it is anticipated that the colliding/merging FRCs will then be compressed by the liner. In this manner it is hoped that ultimately a plasma with ion temperatures reaching the 10 keV range and fusion gain near unity can be obtained.

Download or read book Magnetic Compression written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) was reported in two papers at the First Symposium on Current Trends in International Fusion Research. MTF is intermediate between two very different mainline approaches to fusion: Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) and magnetic confinement fusion (MCF). The only US MTF experiments in which a target plasma was compressed were the Sandia National Laboratory ''Phi targets''. Despite the very interesting results from that series of experiments, the research was not pursued, and other embodiments of MTF concept such as the Fast Liner were unable to attract the financial support needed for a firm proof of principle. A mapping of the parameter space for MTF showed the significant features of this approach. The All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF) has an on-going interest in this approach to thermonuclear fusion, and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and VNIIEF have done joint target plasma generation experiments relevant to MTF referred to as MAGO (transliteration of the Russian acronym for magnetic compression). The MAGO II experiment appears to have achieved on the order of 200 eV and over 100 KG, so that adiabatic compression with a relatively small convergence could bring the plasma to fusion temperatures. In addition, there are other experiments being pursued for target plasma generation and proof of principle. This paper summarizes the previous reports on MTF and MAGO and presents the progress that has been made over the past three years in creating a target plasma that is suitable for compression to provide a scientific proof of principle experiment for MAGO/MTF.

Download or read book Magnetized Target Fusion MTF written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simple transport-based scaling laws are derived to show that a density and time regime intermediate between conventional magnetic confinement and conventional inertial confinement offers attractive reductions in system size and energy when compared to magnetic confinement and attractive reductions in heating power and intensity when compared to inertial confinement. This intermediate parameter space appears to be readily accessible by existing and near term pulsed power technologies. Hence, the technology of the Megagauss conference opens up an attractive path to controlled thermonuclear fusion.

Download or read book Magnetized Target Fusion and Fusion Propulsion written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magnetized target fusion (MTF) is a thermonuclear fusion concept that is intermediate between the two mainline approaches, magnetic confinement and inertial confinement fusion (MCF and ICF). MTF incorporates some aspects of each and offers advantages over each of the mainline approaches. First, it provides a means of reducing the driver power requirements, thereby admitting a wider range of drivers than ICF. Second, the magnetic field is only used for insulation, not confinement, and the plasma is wall confined, so that plasma instabilities are traded in for hydrodynamic instabilities. However, the degree of compression required to reach fusion conditions is lower than for ICF, so that hydrodynamic instabilities are much less threatening. The standoff driver innovation proposes to dynamically form the target plasma and a gaseous shell that compresses and confines the target plasma. Therefore, fusion target fabrication is traded in for a multiplicity of plasma guns, which must work in synchrony. The standoff driver embodiment of MTF leads to a fusion propulsion system concept that is potentially compact and lightweight. We will discuss the underlying physics of MTF and some of the details of the fusion propulsion concept using the standoff driver approach. We discuss here the optimization of an MTF target design for space propulsion.

Download or read book Magnetic Confinement Fusion Driven Thermonuclear Energy written by Bahman Zohuri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers the principles and practices behind the Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF) approach to driven new source of energy. All possible technical methods, including well established theoretical research, as well as findings tested in an experimental tokamak reactor, are examined in order to determine how to best achieve breakeven via this pathway to plasma-driven fusion. The author undertakes a life cycle analysis to compare and contrast the efficiency, environmental impacts, and operating costs of plasma-driven MCF fusion against other forms of energy generation currently in widespread use. The associated computer code and numerical analysis are included in the book. No prior knowledge of MCF and no more than basic background in plasma physics is required.

Download or read book Magneized Target Fusion written by and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magnetized target fusion (MTF) seeks to take advantage of the reduction of thermal conductivity through the application of a strong magneticfield and thereby ease the requirements for reaching fusion conditions in a thermonuclear (TN) fusion fuel. A potentially important benefit of the strong field in the partial trapping of energetic charged particles to enhance energy deposition by the TN fusion reaction products. The essential physics is described. MTF appears to lead to fusion targets that require orders of magnitude less power and intensity for fusion ignition than currently proposed (unmagnetized) inertial confinement fusion (ICF) targets do, making some very energetic pulsed power drivers attractive for realizing controlled fusion.

Download or read book Realizing Technologies for Magnetized Target Fusion written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Researchers are making progress with a range of magneto-inertial fusion (MIF) concepts. All of these approaches use the addition of a magnetic field to a target plasma, and then compress the plasma to fusion conditions. The beauty of MIF is that driver power requirements are reduced, compared to classical inertial fusion approaches, and simultaneously the compression timescales can be longer, and required implosion velocities are slower. The presence of a sufficiently large Bfield expands the accessibility to ignition, even at lower values of the density-radius product, and can confine fusion alphas. A key constraint is that the lifetime of the MIF target plasma has to be matched to the timescale of the driver technology (whether liners, heavy ions, or lasers). To achieve sufficient burn-up fraction, scaling suggests that larger yields are more effective. To handle the larger yields (GJ level), thick liquid wall chambers are certainly desired (no plasma/neutron damage materials problem) and probably required. With larger yields, slower repetition rates (≈0.1-1 Hz) for this intrinsically pulsed approach to fusion are possible, which means that chamber clearing between pulses can be accomplished on timescales that are compatible with simple clearing techniques (flowing liquid droplet curtains). However, demonstration of the required reliable delivery of hundreds of MJ of energy, for millions of pulses per year, is an ongoing pulsed power technical challenge.

Download or read book Progress on the FRX L FRC Plasma Injector at LANL for Magnetized Target Fusion written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The FRX-L Field Reversed Configuration plasma is now operational at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The goal of the project is to demonstrate the production of suitable FRC target plasmas for later MTF (Magnetized Target Fusion) implosion experiments which will first be carried out at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a few years' time. Expected plasma parameters in the 4 cm diameter, 30 cm long FRC are ne(almost equal to)1017 cm-3, T(almost equal to)100-300 eV, at 4-5 Tesla fields, with a lifetime of (almost equal to)20 microseconds. The system includes a 0.5 T bias field, 70 kV 250 kHz ringing pre-ionization, and a 1.5 MA, 200 kJ main-theta coil bank. Maxwell rail gap plasma switches are used to start the PI bank, the main theta coil bank, and to crowbar the main bank. Initial results using the first diagnostic set of excluded flux loops, B-dot probes, visible light diodes, a fiber-optically coupled gated intensified visible spectrometer, and a 3.3 micron quadrature interferometer are presented. Future diagnostics include end-on bolometry, Thomson scattering, and a multi-chord fanned HeNe side-on interferometer. Multi-turn cusp and guide coils will be added later this year, to enable translation experiments into a cylindrical metal liner.

Download or read book Computational Modeling of Magentically Driven Liner on plasma Fusion Experiments written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) is an approach to controlled fusion which potentially avoids the difficulties of the traditional magnetic and inertial confinement approaches. It appears possible to investigate the critical issues for MTF at low cost, relative to traditional fusion programs, utilizing pulsed power drivers much less expensive than ICF drivers, and plasma configurations much less expensive than those needed for full magnetic confinement. Computational and experimental research into MTF is proceeding at Los Alamos, VNIIEF, and other laboratories.

Download or read book Progress Toward Fusion Energy written by and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper summarizes the basis for the present optimism in the magnetic fusion program, and describes some of the remaining tasks leading to a demonstration power reactor and the primary technologies necessary for that endeavor.

Download or read book An Assessment of the Prospects for Inertial Fusion Energy written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-07-05 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The potential for using fusion energy to produce commercial electric power was first explored in the 1950s. Harnessing fusion energy offers the prospect of a nearly carbon-free energy source with a virtually unlimited supply of fuel. Unlike nuclear fission plants, appropriately designed fusion power plants would not produce the large amounts of high-level nuclear waste that requires long-term disposal. Due to these prospects, many nations have initiated research and development (R&D) programs aimed at developing fusion as an energy source. Two R&D approaches are being explored: magnetic fusion energy (MFE) and inertial fusion energy (IFE). An Assessment of the Prospects for Inertial Fusion Energy describes and assesses the current status of IFE research in the United States; compares the various technical approaches to IFE; and identifies the scientific and engineering challenges associated with developing inertial confinement fusion (ICF) in particular as an energy source. It also provides guidance on an R&D roadmap at the conceptual level for a national program focusing on the design and construction of an inertial fusion energy demonstration plant.

Download or read book Current Trends in International Fusion Research written by E. Panarella and published by NRC Research Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of a symposium held to identify, review, and assess the benefits, uncertainties, & potentialities of the conventional, alternative, & exploratory approaches to fusion energy production, and to assess industrial spin-offs & other applications. Topics of the compiled papers include: a new course for fusion research, magnetic confinement, inertial confinement, other confinement, plasma physics, numerical simulation, nuclear processes, fusion burn control, plasma diagnostics, and plasma stability. Includes subject index.