Reduction in inertial confinement fusion ignition energy of 3He-3He plasma by laser-accelerated deuterons
Introduction
The ability of available lasers does not permit the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) approach to create break-even situations. The reason is that the efficiency of converting electrical energy into radiation is very low. As the result, other methods are being investigated to reach the ignition temperature of a fusion nuclear reaction.
One approach is the use beams of charged particles instead of lasers in fast ignition (FI) scheme. FI is a procedure of ICF, in which the ignition step and the compression step are discrete processes [1]. The concept of particle beam fusion began with a scheme driven by relativistic electron beams in 1970s [2]. To dominate feasible problems in fast ignition (FI) electron, another procedure has been proposed which uses accelerated energetic ion beam. The use of ion beam in ICF approach has many advantages in comparison with the beam of relativistic electrons. Ion beams are used in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) reactors for achieving high efficiency. They are significant since they can be generated efficiently with great energy deposition, better focus, parallelized beams production, clear interaction with the plasma and further flexibility, inconsiderable preheat, low ignition energy relative to lasers, and heavy ion beams [3]. Light ion beams are important driver option for the ICF explosion because they can be produced efficiently and at low cost relative to lasers and heavy ion beams. It will be a great help to the design of a future fusion power plant, If one can find a way to increase energy efficiency by the use of light ion beams. However, some suggestions are provided for increasing energy efficiency or reducing of ignition energy in ICF apporach for example using two laser beams for enhancing the rate of a laser-driven p11B reaction [4], using a beam from the accelerator that hits the target plasma on the resonance of the fusion reaction [5] to help quasi-monoenergetic ions [6] and using two proton beams [7]. Nowadays, researchers are expanding several concepts for doing FI with high efficiency which demonstrate that fusion power can be used to produce electricity securely, stably, and reliably.
In this research, it is suggested to use high energy beams of deuterons for fast ignition in a 3He-3He fusion reactor. The deuteron particles, beside depositing their energy into the 3He-3He fuel directly, can fuse with helium-3 ions inside pre-compressed fuel and produce additional energy during a slow down. This feature reduces ignition energy and increases the subsequent energy gain in a 3He-3He fusion reactor. Therefore, the investigation of the amount of the added energy and the effective parameters are very important in this reactor. The structure of this paper is as follows: In section The characteristic of 3He-3He reaction, is explained. In section The fusion averaged reactivity, is reviewed. is investigated in section Excess energy efficiency due to energetic deuterons injected into 3He-3He target plasma. Finally, the conclusion is presented in section Conclusion.
Section snippets
The characteristic of 3He-3He reaction
The 3He-3He reaction releases two protons and one 4He ion as . This reaction does not produce neutrons in the whole process of decay and all energy is released through charged particles. Knowledge of the 3He-3He reaction is very important because of its significant role in the total energy produced by solar through the proton-proton chain. Helium isotopes are not used for the weapons craft therefore unlike for the DT plasma cycle there is no hazard of efficiency. The
The fusion averaged reactivity
The reactivity is a fundamental parameter in the researches related to fusion energy generation, ignition and break-even analysis in both inertial and magnetic confinement fusion reactors. Thermonuclear reactivity relates to a fusion reaction can be determined by the following equation:where is the relative velocity between the interacting species in Centre of-Mass frame of reference, is the relative velocity distribution and is the microscopic fusion cross
Excess energy efficiency due to energetic deuterons injected into 3He-3He target plasma
In this method, deuteron particles with high kinetic energy, generated in an ion source, are injected into the 3He-3He plasma. They transfer their energy to the plasma through collisions. A deuteron beam is significant because of its desirable focusing ability and the excess energy obtained while it interacts with the helium-3 in the target during the “hot spot” heating operation. A ultra-high-density deuterium cluster material as the basis for converter-foil has been proposed for using as a
Conclusion
Increasing the energy efficiency is necessary for the development of a fusion reactor with reduced electric power costs. The advanced 3He-3He aneutronic fuel is very attractive due to the very low neutron production and low radioactive inventory. One of the significant requirements is the reduction of the necessary energy for achieving the ignition of reaction. In order to decrease 3He-3He ignition energy has been proposed the use of energetic deuterium beam in fast ignition approach. Deuterons
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