Beyond the physics and demonstration of ignition.

Abstract

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)'.