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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Robert Bieri, Wayne Meier
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 1589-1593
Inertial Fusion Driver | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29946
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Parametric studies to optimize heavy-ion driver designs are described and an optimized 5 MJ driver design is described. Parametric studies are done on driver parameters including driver energy, number of beams, type of superconductor used in focusing magnets, maximum magnetic field allowed at the superconducting windings, axial quadrupole field packing fraction, ion mass, and ion charge state. All modeled drivers use the maximum beam currents allowed by the Maschke limits; driver scaling is described in a companion paper. The optimized driver described is conservative and cost effective. The base driver direct costs are only $120/Joule, and the base driver uses no recirculation, beam combination, or beam separation. The low driver cost we achieve is due, in part, to the use of compact Nb3Sn quadrupole arrays, but results primarily from optimization over the large, multi-dimensional, parameter space available for heavy-ion drivers.