Outlook for inertial confinement fusion

Abstract

During the next ten years the National Ignition Facility (NIF) will be completed and substantial fusion gains are likely to be achieved with the NIF megajoule class solid state laser. A facility very similar to NIF is being constructed by the French nuclear weapons program. Technological advances promise to make ICF increasingly attractive as a practical energy source. These advances include very high gain targets (e.g., the fast ignitor), petawatt lasers, diode pumped solid state lasers, and advanced heavy ion accelerators. Beyond the next ten years an experimental inertial fusion (IF) reactor will be needed to take the major step from NIF to a practical fusion power plant. A key question: how is this IF experimental reactor to be funded? A 100 MWe scale IF reactor could produce several kilograms per year of low cost tritium for DOE Defense Programs. Tritium produced by competing fission reactor and accelerator/spallation options is estimated to cost more than one hundred million dollars per kilogram, much more than the cost of tritium produced by a fusion reactor. Tritium production provides a defense funded option for IF`s next step beyond NIF.