Deuterium–tritium catalytic reaction in fast ignition: Optimum parameters approach

Abstract

One of the main concerns about the current working on nuclear power reactors is the potential hazard of their radioactive waste. There is hope that this issue will be reduced in next generation nuclear fusion power reactors. Reactors will release nuclear energy through microexplosions that occur in a mixture of hydrogen isotopes of deuterium and tritium. However, there exist radiological hazards due to the accumulation of tritium in the blanket layer. A catalytic fusion reaction of DTx mixture may stand between DD and an equimolar DT approach in which the fusion process continues with a small amount of tritium seed. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of DTx reaction in the fast ignition (FI) scheme. The kinematic study of the main mechanism of the energy gain–loss term, which may disturb the ignition and burn process, was performed in FI and the optimum values of precompressed fuel and proton beam driver were derived. The recommended values of fuel parameters are: areal density ρR ≥ 5g · cm−2 and initial tritium fraction x ≤ 0.025. For the proton beam, the corresponding optimum interval values are proton average energy 3 ≤ Ep ≤ 10 MeV, pulse duration 5 ≤ tp ≤ 15 ps and power 5 ≤ Wp ≤ 12 × 1022 (keV·cm3 · ps−1). It was proved that under the above conditions, a fast ignition DTx reaction stays in the catalytic regime.