Author_Institution :
McDonnell Douglas Corp., St. Louis, MO, USA
Abstract :
An industry team, led by McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, has developed two inertial fusion energy reactor plant designs that are predicted to compete favorably with other energy sources. Symmetrically illuminated, direct drive targets were chosen for the KrF laser driver for better gain at a lower cost. The 4 MJ pulse energy to the target is provided by 960 medium-sized (6 kJ) electric discharge lasers. This provides redundancy, system reliability, and stringent illumination requirements. Innovative non-linear optics (NLO) design for beam combination and pulse compression converts the beams into temporally-shaped, high quality beams. The 60 beamlines are shielded to minimize the radiation to the reactor and driver buildings. Long-lived, aluminum-coated, grazing incidence metal mirrors (GIMM), supported by SiC structure, are located within 20 meters of the center of the reactor cavity. These GIMMs and the final focusing mirrors are high-speed, adaptable structures that help steer the beams to the position of the tracked target. The second reactor design uses an innovative, lower-cost, pulsed, single beamline LINAC to deliver heavy ion beams into 14 storage rings. Tailoring of the beam storage, compression, and extraction from the storage rings provides the required temporal and energy shaping. The sets of beams are divided to illuminate the indirectly-driven target from two sides with 7 MJ of energy. The beams are focused to a point on the backside of the blanket where the beams are stripped to a high charge state. This enables formation of a small diameter transport channel through the blanket and across the cavity to the target. The first wall system for both designs uses a SiC structure cooled internally and on the surface with liquid lead. The lead is evaporated and recondensed on the surface to protect and cool the first wall from the 3 to 5 Hz target explosions. The blanket is a Li2 O solid breeder, cooled with low pressure helium. The two Prometheus IFE reactor designs show that IFE has the potential to be economically competitive with very attractive safety and environmental features while maintaining a high degree of technical credibility
Keywords :
fusion reactor blankets; fusion reactor design; fusion reactor safety; fusion reactors; gas lasers; nonlinear optics; particle beam fusion accelerators; plasma heating by laser; plasma inertial confinement; plasma production by laser; 4 MJ; 6 kJ; 7 MJ; IFE reactor design; KrF; KrF laser driver; Li2O; Li2O solid breeder; McDonnell Douglas Aerospace; Prometheus; SiC; SiC structure; direct drive targets; electric discharge lasers; final focusing mirrors; first wall system; grazing incidence metal mirrors; heavy ion beams; illumination requirements; indirectly-driven target; inertial fusion energy reactor plant designs; nonlinear optics; pulse compression; single beamline LINAC; Aerospace industry; Fusion reactor design; Inductors; Laser beams; Laser fusion; Mirrors; Nonlinear optics; Optical pulse compression; Silicon carbide; Storage rings;
