Inertial fusion power plant

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An Inertial fusion power plant is intended to industrially produce electric power by use of inertial confinement fusion techniques. This type of power plant is still in a research phase.

It is frequently assumed that the only medium-term perspective (within a few decades) for fusion to get to civilian energy production is the tokamak path, through the ITER international project, by use of magnetic confinement techniques. However, as suggested by various proposals in the inertial fusion field, setting up an inertial fusion energy (IFE) path, simultaneously to the tokamak path, is worth considering.

Contents 1 Fusion vs fission 2 Civilian fusion energy techniques 3 History of fusion energy 4 Fusion advantages 5 IFE projects 5.1 The competing projects 5.2 Overall principles of an IFE reactor 6 Notes and references 7 See also 8 External links 8.1 History of fusion 8.2 Generalities about IFE 8.3 Inertial fusion experimentation sites 8.4 IFE projects

[edit] Fusion vs fission

Unlike fission in which a heavy atom nucleus splits into lighter nuclei, fusion occurs when two light atom nuclei merge into a heavier nucleus.

Further information: nuclear fission and nuclear fusion

[edit] Civilian fusion energy techniques

Two competing techniques are candidates to civilian fusion energy production:

• magnetic confinement fusion: the technique which will be used in the ITER experiment; this type of reactor is intended to work in a nearly continuous mode.

Further information: Magnetic fusion energy

• inertial confinement fusion: the technique which would be used in the planned IFE reactors; the energy production method, instead of a continuously fusing plasma, would be the cyclically repeated fusion of microcapsules.

Further information: Inertial fusion energy

[edit] History of fusion energy

Fission as well as fusion were firstly used in the military field, in order to build very powerful bombs: A-bombs for fission and H-bombs for fusion.

Civilian applications, in which explosive energy production must be replaced by a controlled production, were developed later. Although it took less than ten years for going from military applications to civilian fission energy production^[1], it was very different in the fusion energy field, more than fifty years having already passed^[2] without any energy production plant being started up.

Further information: History of fusion energy research

[edit] Fusion advantages

The advocates of fusion energy advance numerous potential advantages in comparison with the other electric power sources:

• no greenhouse gas, like carbon dioxide, is emitted;
• the fuel, a mix of deuterium and tritium (hydrogen isotopes) in most of the present projects, is not subject to any risk of depletion: deuterium is present in almost unlimited quantity in the oceans, and tritium is a by-product of nuclear energy production, as well from fission as from fusion;
• radioactive waste production is reduced^[3] in comparison with the nuclear fission reactors presently used; above all, the half-life of radioactive waste is much shorter: tens of years, rather than hundreds of thousands of years, even millions of years, for the fission reactors waste.

Furthermore, inertial fusion should allow a size and cost reduction for the plants in comparison with the tokamak-ITER path, thus permitting a more decentralized power production.

[edit] IFE projects

[edit] The competing projects

Several projects of inertial fusion power plants have been proposed, notably power production plans based on the following experimental devices, either in operation or under building:

• in United States, the National Ignition Facility (laser confinement) and Z machine (z-pinch confinement) experiments;
• in France, the Megajoule laser experiment;
• in Japan (Osaka University), the KONGOH experiment (laser confinement).

As may be noted, only one of these projects is based on z-pinch confinement, all others being based on laser confinement techniques.

The various phases of such a project are the following^[4] :

• burning demonstration: reproducible achievement of energy release.
• high gain demonstration: experimental demonstration of the feasibility of a reactor with a sufficient energy gain.
• industrial demonstration: validation of the various technical options, and of the whole data needed to define a commercial reactor.
• commercial demonstration: demonstration of the reactor ability to work over a long period, while respecting all the requirements for safety, liability and cost.

At the moment, according to the available data^[5], inertial confinement fusion experiments have not gone beyond the first phase, as well for laser (although it is strongly expected to reach the objectives of the second phase around 2010, when NIF and Megajoule are complete) as for z-pinch (Z machine); these techniques should now demonstrate their ability to obtain a high fusion energy gain, as well as their capability for repetitive working.

[edit] Overall principles of an IFE reactor

For an easier understanding, it is worth using the analogy of operation between an IFE reactor and a gasoline engine. By applying such an analogy, the process may be seen as a four strokes cycle:

• intake of the fusion fuel (microcapsule) into the reactor chamber;
• compression of the microcapsule in order to initiate the fusion reactions;
• explosion of the plasma created during the compression stroke, leading to the release of fusion energy;
• exhaust of the reaction residue, which will be treated afterwards to extract all the reusable elements, mainly tritium.

To allow such an operation, an inertial fusion reactor is made of several subsets:

• the injection system, which delivers to the reaction chamber the fusion fuel capsules, and at the same time the possible devices necessary to initiate fusion:
  • the container (hohlraum), intended to take the fuel capsule to a uniform very high temperature, mainly for laser and ion beam confinement techniques;
  • the "wires array" and its power transmission line, for z-pinch confinement technique;
• the "driver" used to compress the fusion fuel capsules; depending on the technique, it can be:
  • lasers;
  • an ion beam accelerator;
  • a z-pinch device;
• the reaction chamber, build upon:
  • an external wall made of metal;
  • an internal blanket intended to protect the external wall from the fusion shockwave and radiation, to get the emitted energy, and to produce the tritium fuel;
• the system intended to process reaction products and debris.

Further information: An example of a planned IFE plant can be seen in the Z machine article

[edit] Notes and references

1. ^ The first A-bomb shot dates back to July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo (New Mexico desert), while the first civilian fission plant was connected to the electric power network on June 27, 1954 in Obninsk (Russia).
2. ^ The first H-bomb, Ivy Mike, was detonated on Eniwetok, an atoll of the Pacific Ocean, on November 1, 1952 (local time).
3. ^ A zero-waste process should even be possible with fusion reactions producing no neutrons (notably some reactions involving lithium, boron or helium 3), which however request much more high plasma temperatures (from 500 million to several billion degrees Celsius), and are not compatible with tokamak operation. Recent announcements (March 2006) of temperatures above 2 billion degrees Celsius, produced by a z-pinch technique, are a progress in this direction.
4. ^ In the magnetic confinement field, the 2^nd phase corresponds to the objectives of ITER, the 3^rd to these of its follower DEMO, in 20 to 30 years, and the 4^th to those of a possible PROTO, in 40 to 50 years.
5. ^ This chapter is based on data available in June 2006, when Megajoule and NIF lasers are not yet into complete service.

[edit] See also

• Nuclear fusion
  • Inertial confinement fusion
    • Laser inertial confinement
      • Megajoule laser
      • National Ignition Facility
    • Ion beam inertial confinement
    • Z-pinch inertial confinement
      • Z machine
  • Magnetic confinement fusion
    • Tokamak
    • ITER
• Fusion power

[edit] External links

[edit] History of fusion

• Une brève histoire de la fusion magnétique (CEA) (French)
• Controlled fusion and plasma physics studies at the Institute of Nuclear Fusion of RRC "Kurchatov Institute"
• Magnetic fusion (Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1983)

[edit] Generalities about IFE

• La fusion thermonucléaire par confinement inertiel : de la recherche fondamentale à la production d'énergie (Université Bordeaux 1, November 2005) (French)
• Tutorial on Heavy-Ion Fusion Energy (Virtual National Laboratory for Heavy-Ion Fusion)
• Summary Report of the 2nd Research Coordination Meeting on the Element of Inertial Fusion Energy Power Plants (November 2003)
• Review of the Inertial Fusion Energy Program (Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, March 2004)
• Overview of fusion nuclear technology in the US (June 2005)
• Views on neutronics and activation issues facing liquid-protected IFE chambers
• Inertial Fusion Energy: A tutorial on the technology and economics (F. Peterson, University of California, Berkeley, 1998)
• IEEE-USA Position : Fusion Energy Research & Development (June 2006)

[edit] Inertial fusion experimentation sites

• Laser Mégajoule (French)
• National Ignition Facility
• Z-Machine

[edit] IFE projects

• Analyses in Support of Z-IFE: LLNL Progress Report for FY-04
• Nineteen Labs, Universities and Industries Collaborating To Produce Energy From ‘Z-Pinch’ Inertial Confinement Fusion
• Z-Pinch Inertial Fusion Energy (presentation of the Sandia National Laboratories Z-IFE project, October 2005)
• Progress on Z-Pinch Inertial Fusion Energy
• Development path for Z-pinch IFE (collective work, April 2005)
• Design Study and Technology Assessment on Inertial Fusion Energy Power Plant (Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University)
• The High Average Power Laser Program
• Developing the basis for target injection and tracking in Inertial Fusion Energy power plants (July 2000)

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