Magnetized target fusion and fusion propulsion

• Main Author: Kirkpatrick, R C
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0094-243X

Magnetized target fusion (MTF) is a thermonuclear fusion concept that is intermediate between the two mainline approaches, magnetic confinement and inertial confinement fusion (MCF and ICF). MTF incorporates some aspects of each and offers advantages over each of the mainline approaches. First, it provides a means of reducing the driver power requirements, thereby admitting a wider range of drivers than ICF. Second, the magnetic field is only used for insulation, not confinement, and the plasma is wall confined, so that plasma instabilities are traded in for hydrodynamic instabilities. However, the degree of compression required to reach fusion condition is lower than for ICF, so that hydrodynamic instabilities are much less threatening. The standoff driver innovation proposes to dynamically form the target plasma and a gaseous shell that compresses and confines the target plasma. Therefore, fusion target fabrication is traded in for a multiplicity of plasma guns, which must work in synchrony. The standoff driver embodiment of MTF leads to a fusion propulsion system concept that is potentially compact and lightweight. We will discuss the underlying physics of MTF and some of the details of the fusion propulsion concept using the standoff driver approach. We discuss here the optimization of an MTF target design for space propulsion. (Author)