Analysis of compression, thermonuclear burn and hydrodynamic stability of a reactor-size radiation driven inertial fusion target

Abstract

This paper presents one-dimensional numerical simulations of implosion of a reactor-size, indirect drive inertial confinement fusion target that consists of a capsule surrounded by a solid gold casing. The radius of the casing is twice the outer radius of the capsule so that the casing to capsule surface area ratio is 4. The capsule absorbs about 3 MJ input radiation energy while 2.4 MJ energy is lost into the casing wall. The implosion yields an output thermonuclear energy of 770 MJ so that the capsule gain, Gc, is about 257 while the target gain Gt, is of the order of 140. It has been found that the hydrodynamic stability of the target during the compression phase is substantially improved due to ablative effects. Moreover, a parameter study of the target gain versus input pulse parameters shows that the target gain may be insensitive to changes in the input parameters over a wide range.