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Latest News
INL makes first fuel for Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment
Idaho National Laboratory has announced the creation of the first batch of enriched uranium chloride fuel salt for the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE). INL said that its fuel production team delivered the first fuel salt batch at the end of September, and it intends to produce four additional batches by March 2026. MCRE will require a total of 72–75 batches of fuel salt for the reactor to go critical.
J. Nadler, T. Hochberg, Y. Gu, O. Barnouin, G. Miley
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 20 | Number 4 | December 1991 | Pages 850-857
Electrostatic Confined Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A11946948
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) is an alternative approach to fusion power that potentially offers the ability to burn advanced fuels like D-He3 in a non-Maxwellian, high density core. These aneutronic reactions are ideal for direct energy conversion; since the products energetic ions, they also offer high specific impulse for space propulsion.
The results presented here are the first potential well measurements of an IEC-type device via a collimated proton detector. They indicate that a ~15-kV virtual anode, at least one centimeter in radius, has formed in a spherical device with a cathode potential of 30 kV, and a current of 12 mA. Numerical analysis indicates D+ densities on the order of 109 cm-3, and D+2 densities on the order of 1010 cm-3.
Virtual well formation is very important to IEC devices because they are, in effect, 100% transparent electrodes that can create an electrostatic well to confine energetic ions. A brief description of the theory of IEC is given, followed by a greater description of the results.
