Small inertial fusion energy (IFE) demonstration reactors

ICF (inertial confinement fusion) target design studies done for the Nova Upgrade have identified conditions under which the target ignition `cliff´ is shifted to much lower drive energy, albeit with the penalty that the gain achieved at a given drive energy is also smaller. These targets would repeatably produce the output and spectra of higher gain targets at low yield. They should thus allow building much smaller R&D reactors with full thermonuclear effects. Demonstration reactors at the 1 to 100 MW_e level appear to be feasible with driver energies of 0.5 to 2.0 MJ/pulse. These smaller, less expensive test and demonstration facilities should result in a lower IFE development cost. If the US government builds a driver and target factory, it is also conceivable that commercial organizations could build their own scaled concepts of IFE reactors using the beams and targets supplied by the government´s facilities