Fusion holds the promise of providing growing world energy demand with a carbon-free power source having a universally available fuel source and attractive safety and environmental characteristics. A significant global effort has been underway for over 50 years aimed at the achievement of fusion by inertial confinement. The effort to date has necessarily emphasized understanding the physics of compressing and heating a small amount of fusion fuel to the high densities and temperatures required for ignition and energy gain. Though steady progress has been and is still being made to achieve the required physics understanding and energy gain, those goals have not yet quite been met. It is timely to put progress toward fusion power by inertial confinement into perspective by developing an updated roadmap. Preparing a roadmap from present achievements to the ultimate goal of commercial fusion power requires formally identifying and implementing complementary efforts on a number of fronts. These include the choice, development and demonstration of high repetition rate compression drivers (e.g. lasers) to succeed present day single-pulse sources; design, fabrication and testing of high gain targets (gain of order 100); development of mass production, cost-effective, target fabrication and delivery systems capable of inserting targets into the reaction chamber several times per second, and demonstrating ability to accurately hit and efficiently compress those targets to reliably produce the required fusion yields; design and demonstration of reaction chambers capable of handling energy yields and target debris clearing at the levels required for achieving high power plant reliability with low induced radioactivity. A robust ongoing effort on competitive power plant conceptual design is necessary to guide the implementation of a roadmap, including the timing and level of effort on the ‘beyond ignition’ demonstrations. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Prospects for high gain inertial fusion energy (part 1)’.

中文翻译：

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超越物理和点火演示

Fusion 有望为不断增长的世界能源需求提供无碳能源，该能源具有普遍可用的燃料来源和有吸引力的安全和环境特性。50 多年来，一项重大的全球努力一直在进行，旨在通过惯性约束实现聚变。迄今为止的努力必然强调理解将少量聚变燃料压缩和加热到点火和能量增益所需的高密度和温度的物理学。尽管在实现所需的物理理解和能量增益方面已经并且仍在取得稳步进展，但这些目标尚未完全实现。现在是时候通过制定更新的路线图来看待通过惯性约束实现聚变动力的进展了。制定从目前的成就到商业核聚变最终目标的路线图，需要正式确定并实施在许多方面的互补努力。其中包括选择、开发和演示高重复率压缩驱动器（例如激光器）以取代当今的单脉冲源；高增益目标的设计、制造和测试（增益为 100）；开发大规模生产、具有成本效益的目标制造和输送系统，能够每秒多次将目标插入反应室，并展示准确击中和有效压缩这些目标以可靠地产生所需聚变产率的能力；设计和演示反应室，其能够处理能量产量和目标碎片清除，达到高发电厂可靠性和低感应放射性所需的水平。为了指导路线图的实施，包括“超越点火”演示的时间和努力程度，有必要对具有竞争力的发电厂概念设计进行强有力的持续努力。本文是讨论会议问题“高增益惯性聚变能的前景（第 1 部分）”的一部分。