ANULUM / SCPN Reactor Systems / Inertial confinement

Inertial confinement

Inertial confinement relies on the target's own inertia: a driver compresses and heats a small fuel capsule faster than it can disassemble. Laser drive acts directly on the capsule or indirectly through a hohlraum, with fast and shock ignition as separate ignition routes. Ion beams and pulsed electron beams replace light with mass as the driver; impact ignition uses the kinetic energy of a projectile.

Each device core below is the single owner of its reactor family's configuration truth inside the SCPN Reactor Systems research group. Solver mathematics stays in SCPN-Fusion-Core, shared physics and geometry kernels in SCPN Reactor Kernels; a device core consumes them through versioned seams and cannot actuate anything directly.

Device cores in this family

SCPN-ICF-LASER-CORE · Laser ICF · Light Becomes Pressure Owns the configurations: laser ICF, direct drive, laser ICF, fast or shock ignition, laser ICF, indirect drive repository · evidence maturity: computational_prototype · 5 implemented capabilities: device configuration model, diagnostic and clock semantics, level-0 device physics, device 3D model, device CAD model · no release, no demo
SCPN-ICF-BEAM-CORE · Beam ICF · Mass Instead Of Light Owns the configurations: ion-beam ICF, pulsed-electron-beam ICF repository · evidence maturity: computational_prototype · 5 implemented capabilities: device configuration model, diagnostic and clock semantics, level-0 device physics, device 3D model, device CAD model · no release, no demo
SCPN-ICF-IMPACT-CORE · Impact ICF · Kinetic Energy As The Driver Owns the configurations: projectile or impact ICF repository · evidence maturity: computational_prototype · 5 implemented capabilities: device configuration model, diagnostic and clock semantics, level-0 device physics, device 3D model, device CAD model · no release, no demo

Where to start

Read the physicsThe hot-spot ignition condition in its four printed forms, the figures a one-dimensional design is quoted by, the beam illumination and coupling chain, and what a flying plate carries. Try the explorerLoad the 1.5 MJ direct-drive design of the laser review, the Ho capsule and Callahan beam arrangement, or the LA-8000-C uranium plate and fuel sphere, and move the inputs. Walk the three configurationsLaser, beam and impact ICF: what each core owns, excludes, anchors on, does not reproduce and does not claim. See the magneto-inertial neighbourMagnetised targets compressed on inertial time-scales: the family boundary with MagLIF and the material liner. Check the sourcesCraxton et al. 2015, Ho et al. 1994, Callahan-Miller and Tabak 1998, the Impact Fusion Workshop 1979, and what each core reproduces.

Other families

Closed magnetic confinement5 device cores Open and non-toroidal magnetic confinement3 device cores Self-magnetic and pulsed pinches3 device cores Inertial confinement3 device cores Magneto-inertial and magnetised-target systems4 device cores Electrostatic, beam-target and hybrid systems3 device cores Compare all sixevery level-0 anchor side by side