OVERVIEW OF HEAVY ION FUSION PROGRAM IN U.S.A

The current national program comprises the following major activities: (1) preliminary design, systems studies, and cost estimates for a reference 'pilot-plant' driver [Beam energy = 1 MJ; Beam power on target = 100 TW; specific energy deposition {ge} 20 MJ/gm]; (2) consequent upon this reference design, definition of an intermediate Heavy Ion Demonstration Experiment (HIDE) to test the accelerator technology and to begin to probe the scaling behavior of the heavy-ion target behavior, current thinking suggests that the beam energy should be about 100 kJ, or roughly one-tenth that of the reference design, in present DOE plans, HIDE is assumed to be operating in FY1985 or FY1986. (3) Design of targets optimized for heavy-ion driver; relaxation of the high beam-power requirements would allow accelerator designs to produce lower kinetic energy for the ion and permit a longer final pulse duration, thus easing a difficult demand on present-day accelerator behavior; (4) development of a clear understanding of the design implications of the beam space-charge limits, both longitudinal and transverse, several of the accelerator system design parameters, e.g apertures, number of final beams, size of final focusing magnets, are sensitive to assumptions about the six-dimensional phase-space density and volume of the beam.more » Creatoni and preservation of a suitable density is intimately related to various of the space-charge limits which in turn have an impact on the cost of the driver; (5) demonstration of suitable heavy-ion sources and acceleration of the beams to modest energies as a bench-test of a pre-accelerator; and (6) definition of the final focusing procedures including the final beam propagation and stability in a reactor vessel environment.« less