Electron beam fusion pellets

Double shelled pellets seem attractive for the current generation of relativistic electron beam machines such as HYDRA because of the low density of the energy deposited in the relatively heavy shell. This low energy density yields implosion speeds of the order of 1 cm/μsec, which is insufficient to compress and heat the fuel to fusion conditions. Because of the expectation that the inner shell of a double shelled pellet would move at a greater implosion velocity than the outer shell, an investigation was made with computer simulation codes to determine whether such a pellet could produce neutrons, what would be the best design of such a pellet for the HYDRA device, and what problems we might expect.