Background
Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) is one of the principal approaches being explored around the world for large-scale fusion power generation. IFE has the potential to leverage substantial U.S. government investment and capabilities in related programs at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s national laboratories and partner institutions.
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are expected to play a critical role in IFE Research, Development, and Demonstration (RD&D) and potential commercialization of IFE. Although prior IFE-related science and technology have been nearly all government sponsored, significant private investments into IFE startups have commenced over the last several years and could grow, following the trend of escalating private investments in magnetic and magneto-inertial fusion energy that are now collectively in the multibillion-dollar scale.
The goal of the IFE Collaboratory is to facilitate PPPs for accelerating the development of IFE and help solidify U.S. leadership in this critical energy technology of the future by making available and applying the extensive capabilities, expertise, and knowledge developed over decades in the public sector.
Recent scientific and technical advances, including the demonstration of ignition at the National Ignition Facility, lay the scientific foundations for fusion energy. While the main approach pursued by the U.S. Fusion Energy Science program has been Magnetic Fusion Energy (MFE), another promising approach is Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE), relying on lasers or other drivers to ablatively compress a fuel capsule, or pulsed power to magnetically compress similar volumes. IFE has been pursued largely as a spin-off of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program. To that end, there is significant expertise and capabilities residing at the three NNSA national labs and other DOE-funded institutions involved in ICF and High Energy Density Science (HEDS) research over the past few decades that can be brought to bear to accelerate IFE RD&D for the United States.
The members of the Collaboratory are potentially interested in conducting collaborative research and development in the areas of: fusion system design and integration; high-gain target design (modeling and simulations); fuel target fabrication; materials for the fusion chamber; DT fuel cycles; drivers (e.g. lasers, pulsed power); diagnostics; enabling technologies such as additive manufacturing, machine learning, and design optimization; and processes and applications. Capabilities that may be made available include data sets, access to computing or experimental capabilities, and staff. Of particular interest is the joint development of pre-competitive technologies.
The areas of interest were selected based on the needs, capabilities, and ongoing work at the Collaboratory institutions, as well as what is perceived to have the greatest mutual benefit to industry. Detailed information about these areas of interest and potential projects from each of the members and the ongoing work in ICF can be found in the Capabilities section.
