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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.
Kazuo A. Tanaka, Ryosuke Kodama, Peter A. Norreys
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | April 2006 | Pages 342-357
Technical Paper | Fast Ignition | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1153
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper reviews the important schemes that have been investigated thus far in fast ignition research. Integral experiments for fast ignition research have been conducted utilizing various schemes: (a) double-pulse experiments with two 100-ps pulses injected to a compressed core, (b) gold cone-guided implosion with 100-TW laser pulse heating, and (c) imploded core heated by both a 100-TW and petawatt laser pulses through gold cones. Reviewing these results, several important issues were raised for further development of fast ignition research. The imploded core heated by a petawatt laser through a gold cone showed a 103 D-D neutron increase compared to the one with only the CD shell implosion.