Fusion Power Associates Annual Meeting

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Search For A YES WE CAN Ten Year Inertial
Fusion Energy Development Strategy

• Fusion Power Associates Annual Meeting
• Countdown to Ignition and Gain
• December 3, 2008

• John H. Nuckolls
• LLNL Director Emeritus

None of these remarks are necessarily the view of
LLNL, LLNS-LLC, NNSA, the USG, or any other
organization.
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Ten Year Inertial Fusion Energy Development
Strategy?

• Goal In the next decade, develop Inertial Fusion
  Energy to address the great challenges of
  climate, energy, and the economy
• Funding President-Elect Obamas projected high
  national priority 150B, 10 year energy program

• Ten Years??
• Manhattan Project in 4 years
• Apollo Program in 6 years

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Ten Year IFE Development Strategy?Exploits Four
Key Technological Strengths

• Smaller, cheaper lasers enabled by advances in
  targets
• Fusion reaction chamber wall protected from
  radiation damage
• Separate laser, target factory, and fusion
  reaction chamber enable rapid innovation
• NIF, supercomputers, and outstanding experts will
  enable major improvements in target performance

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Ten Year IFE Development Strategy?Accelerate
Ignition and Fast Ignition
How Surge in funding for Rochester FI
experiments, FI target design at LLNL and
University of Rochester, and for a NIF FI laser
capability

• Why FI
• A second robust path to ignition and high gain
• Requires much smaller laser energy enables a
  revolution in fusion energy development and
  economics
• Potential for major increases in target gain via
  increases in implosion efficiency

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Ten Year IFE Development Strategy?Four Steps to
Fusion Power

• Build an efficient high-average power laser
  module, a target factory module and a fusion
  chamber
• Build a surged, heat capacity IFE system
• Build a fusion engine
• Breed tritium supply to initiate larger fusion
  systems
• Waste from fission power plants
• Build a fusion power plant

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Ten Year IFE Development Strategy?
Questions/Issues

• Major technological difficulties? Risks?
• Costs? Less than 10 of 150B?
• Strong, sustained, political support?
• Need detailed plans, system studies