Descriptions of IFE R&D Topical Areas
See CAPABILITIES tab for specific capabilities and associated project areas each Collaboratory site is interested in partnering on
High Gain Designs
IFE is predicated on target designs that can achieve high gain (ratio of energy out/energy in) robustly and repeatedly. Besides directly and indirectly-driven central hot spot approaches, there are also alternate concepts with the potential to further increase performance by shaping the drive (shock ignition), separating compression and heating (fast ignition), or utilizing higher efficiency drivers (e.g., ion beams or magnetic fields). Alternative fuels and other ideas such as cross section modification may also offer additional avenues for exploration. Challenges in this area include: development of high gain point designs, validated modeling of coupling, compression, and burn physics for a given design, and scaled experiments.
Materials
The IFE chamber and target environment will be highly specialized and extreme will require new materials that can withstand high radiation fluxes and damage. Challenges include: materials and irradiation modeling, fundamental data and modeling on cascade damage, development of a wide-range of first wall, blanket, blanket structural, and functional materials, lifetime and disposal pathways, tritium breeding and extraction from blanket materials, radiation transport/neutronics.
High Volume Target Technologies
Targets for future IFE power plants will have to have standard, low-cost designs that are mass-produced in numbers as high as a million targets per day per power plant. For today’s ICF or HED proof-of-principle experiments or physics investigations, targets are currently fabricated to exquisite precision. R&D is required to develop new fabrication techniques that can manufacture targets at a significantly higher yield and lower cost.
Diagnostics
Innovation in measurement techniques is needed to achieve higher fidelity spatial, temporal, and spectral measurements of target, driver, and system performance. Amongst the challenges in this area are: diagnostics that are robust to high radiation environments, diagnostics for high yield, diagnostics and detection media for high repetition rate, and innovative analysis techniques.
High Repetition Rate Systems
IFE power plants will need to operate in pulsed mode at rates ~Hz or higher. Driver, target and target injection, diagnostic, and controls systems thus must all run at a commensurate rate. Opportunities currently exist to develop these subsystems for high repetition rate and automated operations, with the potential to utilize feedback loops for optimization.
Enabling/Emerging Technologies
Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and high performance computing can enable new optimization and automation strategies previously inaccessible. Additive and advanced manufacturing may enable new materials and novel target designs. Quantum sensing and computing for higher fidelity measurements and calculations. New driver technologies have potential for higher efficiencies and more flexible modes of operation.
Modeling & Simulation
Modeling and simulation tools and codes that can accurately capture the complex physics of coupling, compression, and burn, at multi-scales and multi-physics (molecular dynamics, kinetic, radiation hydrodynamics) are required to develop feasible high gain designs. Needs in this area include: benchmarking of models against experimental data, predictive modeling of laser-plasma instabilities, improve modeling of kinetic effects, EOS, transport properties (opacities, conductivities) in high energy density regimes, etc.
