The quest for controlled fusion energy has been ongoing for over a half century. The demonstration of ignition and energy gain from thermonuclear fuels in the laboratory has been a major goal of fusion research for decades. Thermonuclear ignition is widely considered a milestone in the development of fusion energy, as well as a major scientific achievement with important applications in national security and basic sciences. The US is arguably the world leader in the inertial confinement approach to fusion and has invested in large facilities to pursue it, with the objective of establishing the science related to the safety and reliability of the stockpile of nuclear weapons. Although significant progress has been made in recent years, major challenges still remain in the quest for thermonuclear ignition via laser fusion. Here, we review the current state of the art in inertial confinement fusion research and describe the underlying physical principles. The quest for energy production from controlled nuclear fusion reactions has been ongoing for many decades. Here, the inertial confinement fusion approach, based on heating and compressing a fuel pellet with intense lasers, is reviewed.

Inertial-confinement fusion with lasers

A series of cryogenic, layered deuterium-tritium (DT) implosions have produced, for the first time, fusion energy output twice the peak kinetic energy of the imploding shell. These experiments at the National Ignition Facility utilized high density carbon ablators with a three-shock laser pulse (1.5 MJ in 7.5 ns) to irradiate low gas-filled (0.3  mg/cc of helium) bare depleted uranium hohlraums, resulting in a peak hohlraum radiative temperature ∼290  eV. The imploding shell, composed of the nonablated high density carbon and the DT cryogenic layer, is, thus, driven to velocity on the order of 380  km/s resulting in a peak kinetic energy of ∼21  kJ, which once stagnated produced a total DT neutron yield of 1.9×10^{16} (shot N170827) corresponding to an output fusion energy of 54 kJ. Time dependent low mode asymmetries that limited further progress of implosions have now been controlled, leading to an increased compression of the hot spot. It resulted in hot spot areal density (ρr∼0.3  g/cm^{2}) and stagnation pressure (∼360  Gbar) never before achieved in a laboratory experiment.

https://link.aps.org/accepted/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.245003

Fusion Energy Output Greater than the Kinetic Energy of an Imploding Shell at the National Ignition Facility.

Capsule performance optimization campaigns will be conducted at the National Ignition Facility [G. H. Miller, E. I. Moses, and C. R. Wuest, Nucl. Fusion 44, 228 (2004)] to substantially increase the probability of ignition. The campaigns will experimentally correct for residual uncertainties in the implosion and hohlraum physics used in our radiation-hydrodynamic computational models using a variety of ignition capsule surrogates before proceeding to cryogenic-layered implosions and ignition experiments. The quantitative goals and technique options and down selections for the tuning campaigns are first explained. The computationally derived sensitivities to key laser and target parameters are compared to simple analytic models to gain further insight into the physics of the tuning techniques. The results of the validation of the tuning techniques at the OMEGA facility [J. M. Soures et al., Phys. Plasmas 3, 2108 (1996)] under scaled hohlraum and capsule conditions relevant to the ignition design are shown ...

Capsule Implosion Optimization during the Indirect-Direct National Ignition Campaign

The last few years have seen significant progress in constructing the atomic models required for non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) simulations. Along with this has come an increased understanding of the requirements for accurately modeling the ionization balance, energy content and radiative properties of different elements for a wide range of densities and temperatures. Much of this progress is the result of a series of workshops dedicated to comparing the results from different codes and computational approaches applied to a series of test problems. The results of these workshops emphasized the importance of atomic model completeness, especially in doubly excited states and autoionization transitions, to calculating ionization balance, and the importance of accurate, detailed atomic data to producing reliable spectra. We describe a simple screened-hydrogenic model that calculates NLTE ionization balance with surprising accuracy, at a low enough computational cost for routine use in radiation-hydrodynamics codes. The model incorporates term splitting, {Delta}n = 0 transitions, and approximate UTA widths for spectral calculations, with results comparable to those of much more detailed codes. Simulations done with this model have been increasingly successful at matching experimental data for laser-driven systems and hohlraums. Accurate and efficient atomic models are just one requirement for integrated NLTE simulations. Coupling the atomic kinetics to hydrodynamics and radiation transport constrains both discretizations and algorithms to retain energy conservation, accuracy and stability. In particular, the strong coupling between radiation and populations can require either very short timesteps or significantly modified radiation transport algorithms to account for NLTE material response. Considerations such as these continue to provide challenges for NLTE simulations.

/pdf/advances-in-nlte-modeling-for-integrated-simulations-1p4pg7mdmc.pdf

Advances in NLTE Modeling for Integrated Simulations

The matter in extreme conditions end station at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a new tool enabling accurate pump–probe measurements for studying the physical properties of matter in the high-energy density (HED) physics regime. This instrument combines the world's brightest x-ray source, the LCLS x-ray beam, with high-power lasers consisting of two nanosecond Nd:glass laser beams and one short-pulse Ti:sapphire laser. These lasers produce short-lived states of matter with high pressures, high temperatures or high densities with properties that are important for applications in nuclear fusion research, laboratory astrophysics and the development of intense radiation sources. In the first experiments, we have performed highly accurate x-ray diffraction and x-ray Thomson scattering measurements on shock-compressed matter resolving the transition from compressed solid matter to a co-existence regime and into the warm dense matter state. These complex charged-particle systems are dominated by strong correlations and quantum effects. They exist in planetary interiors and laboratory experiments, e.g., during high-power laser interactions with solids or the compression phase of inertial confinement fusion implosions. Applying record peak brightness x-rays resolves the ionic interactions at atomic (Angstrom) scale lengths and measure the static structure factor, which is a key quantity for determining equation of state data and important transport coefficients. Simultaneously, spectrally resolved measurements of plasmon features provide dynamic structure factor information that yield temperature and density with unprecedented precision at micron-scale resolution in dynamic compression experiments. These studies have demonstrated our ability to measure fundamental thermodynamic properties that determine the state of matter in the HED physics regime.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0953-4075/49/9/092001/pdf

Matter under extreme conditions experiments at the Linac Coherent Light Source

The National Ignition Campaign (NIC) was a multi-institution effort established under the National Nuclear Security Administration of DOE in 2005, prior to the completion of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in 2009. The scope of the NIC was the planning and preparation for and the execution of the first 3 yr of ignition experiments (through the end of September 2012) as well as the development, fielding, qualification, and integration of the wide range of capabilities required for ignition. Besides the operation and optimization of the use of NIF, these capabilities included over 50 optical, x-ray, and nuclear diagnostic systems, target fabrication facilities, experimental platforms, and a wide range of NIF facility infrastructure. The goal of ignition experiments on the NIF is to achieve, for the first time, ignition and thermonuclear burn in the laboratory via inertial confinement fusion and to develop a platform for ignition and high energy density applications on the NIF. The goal of the NIC was to develop and integrate all of the capabilities required for a precision ignition campaign and, if possible, to demonstrate ignition and gain by the end of FY12. The goal of achieving ignition can be divided into three main challenges. The first challenge is defining specifications for the target, laser, and diagnostics with the understanding that not all ignition physics is fully understood and not all material properties are known. The second challenge is designing experiments to systematically remove these uncertainties. The third challenge is translating these experimental results into metrics designed to determine how well the experimental implosions have performed relative to expectations and requirements and to advance those metrics toward the conditions required for ignition. This paper summarizes the approach taken to address these challenges, along with the progress achieved to date and the challenges that remain. At project completion in 2009, NIF lacked almost all the diagnostics and infrastructure required for ignition experiments. About half of the 3 yr period covered in this review was taken up by the effort required to install and performance qualify the equipment and experimental platforms needed for ignition experiments. Ignition on the NIF is a grand challenge undertaking and the results presented here represent a snapshot in time on the path toward that goal. The path forward presented at the end of this review summarizes plans for the Ignition Campaign on the NIF, which were adopted at the end of 2012, as well as some of the key results obtained since the end of the NIC.

Ed Moses

Papers

Review of the National Ignition Campaign 2009-2012