ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Feb 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2026
Nuclear Technology
January 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
S. P. Hatchett, D. Clark, M. Tabak, R. E. Turner, C. Stoeckl, R. B. Stephens, H. Shiraga, K. Tanaka
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | April 2006 | Pages 327-341
Technical Paper | Fast Ignition | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1152
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fast ignition concept requires the generation of a compact, dense, pure fuel mass accessible to an external ignition source. The current baseline fast ignition target is a shell fitted with a reentrant cone extending to near its center. Conventional direct or indirect drive collapses the shell near the tip of the cone, and then an ultraintense laser pulse focused to the inside cone tip generates high-energy electrons to ignite the dense fuel. Two-dimensional (2-D) calculations of this concept have sparsely explored the large design space available to optimize compaction of the fuel and maintain the integrity of the cone. Experiments have generally validated the modeling while revealing additional complexities. Away from the cone, the shell collapses much as does a conventional implosion, generating a hot, low-density, inner-core plasma that exhausts out toward the tip of the cone. The hot, low-density inner core can impede the compaction of the cold fuel, lowering the implosion/burn efficiency and the gain, and jetting toward the cone tip can affect the cone integrity. Thicker initial fuel layers, lower velocity implosions, and drive asymmetries can lead to decreased efficiency in converting implosion kinetic energy into compression. Fast ignition burn hydrodynamics can generate additional convergence and compression. We describe 2-D and one-dimensional approaches to optimizing designs for cone-guided fast ignition.